iRobot 12101 Looj Electric Gutter Cleaning Robot
by iRobot
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Our Price: $129.99 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $119.99 (click here) Category: Lawn & Patio See more product details |
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Tools and Hardware Reviews of iRobot 12101 Looj Electric Gutter Cleaning Robot
Customer Review: Works if Your Expectations are Realistic
Summary: 3 Stars
I operate a company in the Portland OR metro area that, among other things, cleans gutters. Some gutters are impossible to reach safely and others can be reached only with expensive equipment. We decline those jobs or may add the cost of scaffolding or a boom lift to the proposal--all that for cleaning a gutter?! These are some of the situations that attracted us to the Looj. Our experience so far is that it works satisfactorily if the operator is willing to spend a few minutes to get a "feel" for the tool, i.e., how fast to feed material, backing and filling operations, managing the antenna etc. Given these considerations the Looj met our expectations. The Looj is not a true robot; it is simply a remote controlled tool. If you can get behind that notion then you'll likely be satisfied. By the way, the gutters we clean are often packed with watery goo and organic bits. They basically contain composted leaves and fir needles.
While the Looj does work, there is a downside. This tool flings debris with almost comical mania. It makes quite a mess on the side of the building, neighboring buildings and the ground. The debris is easy to rinse off, but is a consideration if you are going to use it after having the windows cleaned or after a fresh paint job. In this regard, think of your neighbors! There are some gutters that are too big, half round, installed so that shingles partly cover the gutter, etc. and the Looj can't solve these problems. Also, if you are thinking of using the Looj in, say, mid-August, I would bet that the Looj would not be able to dislodge dry mud. You want things wet. All that said, it is a useful tool to have in the arsenal.
This tool does not address the most common reason for a service call--a clog. Clogs develop in downspouts as a rule, not gutters, and the Looj cannot go into a downspout. Clearing downspouts--especially those impacted with debris--requires a different set of techniques and tricks. Many of these dangerous situations are houses in hilly locations. These are often so precarious that reaching a vantage point from which you can view, operate and control the device tends to require some courage, a 40' ladder and definitely OSHA safety gear. Such gutters tend never to get cleaned and consequently the downspouts never get cleaned. So those gutters overflow with each rain. We have some additional methods for safely handling the downspout part of the procedure but we will keep those to ourselves. As a business, we don't feel threatened by the Looj at all.
If you are considering the Looj for cleaning gutters that are relatively easy to reach, you will find that it takes much longer to clean them with the Looj than just doing so by hand. And that does not include the considerable cleanup time. The Looj does not have quite enough battery life to clean all the gutters of an average sized house if those gutters contain the usual mix of goo and wet organic material. The NiCad battery pack with its primitive charging procedure is a real drawback. Since this is a tool that most home owners will use once per year or so, the NiCad batteries will not last very long as they generally need to be cycled more frequently. We devised a different battery power arrangement that works much better and would enable us to operate the machine continuously if needed. However, we deploy the Looj in only certain situations and in general, our needs are different from those of a home user.
Customer Review: Good idea, bad implementation
Summary: 1 Stars
I have a lot of gutters on my house and they are quite high up so I was really looking forward to not having to climb around on ladders or getting up on the roof this year by using the Looj I purchased. Well, I just got done with 45 minutes of climbing around on ladders on the roof to clean the gutters by hand. The Looj is a complete failure in my opinion.
My gutters are standard aluminum gutters and I have to clean them out 2 or 3 times a year, usually only after wind storms. I tried out the Looj on a section that was filled about half way with oak leaves. It's been raining a lot so they were fairly wet on the bottom. There was another section that was chock full of leaves but I never got there.
As noted by the previous reviewer the Looj gets stuck. It gets stuck A LOT. I cleaned out a section of gutter manually to have a place to put in the Looj and placed it in the gutter. I backed off and started it up. Stuff came flying out of the gutter, yay! I moved it forward a bit and within a foot it was in trouble and got stuck.
The Looj tends to "ride up" on debris instead of cleaning it out and this is what happened. If got stuck between the debris it didn't remove and a gutter nail. So I climbed up on the ladder, unstuck it, and started again.
This time it got under the nail and the antenna caught it and the whole Looj flipped over upside down and shut off.
Back up the ladder, flip it over, and start it again. This time I was past the nail so I thought it was home free. It went about another foot and flipped itself over again.
Back up the ladder, flip it over, and start again. It went a short distance and got stuck again.
Back up the ladder, pull it out, and take it down. What went wrong? There are both paddles and bristles to do cleaning and the bristles had gotten tangled somehow around the shaft that drives the auger.
One more back up the ladder and it got stuck again right away. The auger was going and I could hear the gears trying to drive the Looj forward and back but it wouldn't move. It had ridden up on some debris and couldn't get any traction.
OK, 15 minutes to clean 2 feet of gutter (and not cleaned very well) was enough for me. I am going to return it to iRobot and hope they honor their 30 day guarantee.
Some other things I noticed:
The battery is a NiCad and takes 15 hours to charge. My model came with two. NiCads are the "bad" kind of rechargable batteries that don't last very long and have "memory" problems. The cover for the battery pack on the Looj itself is odd (it relies on a rubber seal that you have to force into place) and not easy to get on.
The "handle" is, as the earlier reviewer noted, poorly designed. It is difficult to get on properly and very difficult to get off again. It takes two AA batteries for the remote.
The Looj is REALLY messy when it works. OK, I expected a mess, but it was worse that I had thought would happen. It fling stuff all over the inside of the gutter, up on the roof, over the edge of the gutter, and far out over the roof edge (over 10'). After I finished cleaning out the gutters by hand I had to take a hose and clean off the roof and outsides of the gutter for the little area I had used the Looj. Definitely wear goggles as they suggest.
Customer Review: Works as advertised, and like most things, it isn't perfect
Summary: 3 Stars
Reading the other reviews of this product it seems the other customers expected this little robot to sense when the gutters were full, levitate to the gutter, clean them, powerwash the siding and then float down to a charger. Seriously?
Fiction aside, this little robot works pretty well. My gutters are pretty narrow and the looj fits in the track. This last cleaning was pretty messy because *I* let it sit to long. I have two ginormous maples in my yard and there was a ton of helicopters in the gutters. Filled to the brim, and I was sprouting little maple seedlings. Harry Homeowner I'm not.
I made a hole for the Looj, dropped him in and off to the races we went. You have to engage your brain when using the Looj. If you notice him starting to turn to one direction - reverse the auger direction and he will right himself. 9 times out of 10 he would start to "list" because of a particularly nasty collection of gutter crud. Backing the unit off and taking a few passes at that section of the gutter and your ready to move on.
Looking at the design of the Looj - it should be apparent that this thing flings the gutter-stuff out of the track. As for stories of it hitting other houses, I'd have to say that you'd need to be within 10 feet of another home to really have an issue. If that is the case, then you have other problems - and thanks for contributing to suburban sprawl by living in McMansion Grove.
The remote is also the carry handle, and I'm quite happy with that. Note: that with ANY conductive gutter your best bet is to lay the edge of the remote on the gutter itself. The remote sends continuous instructions to the Looj, and if it can't receive them it does not move. So if you notice your Looj stopping and starting, chances are he's having issue "hearing" the remote. Lay the edge of the remote on the gutter & he'll wake back up.
As another reviewer mentioned, longer runs of gutter will make for a happier experience, as this thing is essentially a torpedo, and as stated before will not levitate to the next gutter track.
Battery Life: The Battery is fine. Just toss it into the charger and get it the next morning when you intend to attack your gutters. This isn't something like a Roomba that you will use every week. The Looj will get called into service a few times a year in the spring and fall - so keeping in mind its designed purpose its no big deal to twist the 2 screws to get into the waterproof battery compartment and scoop up the battery for charging.
Clean up: As easy as advertised. A lot easier then cleaning myself up after scooping out the crud last time I did the gutters by hand. Yuck.
Service Life: I think that all your going to get out of the auger is 1 year of life. Beating leaves, seeds, and gutter-crud out of a metal half pipe is hard on the auger. Expect to dole out $20-$30 bucks every year for a new auger head.
Customer Review: Having Fun With The Looj
Summary: 4 Stars
I wrote about the Looj, the gutter cleaning robot from the makers of of the Roomba, about a year ago. How can you not get excited about a gutter cleaning robot?
I was waiting for it to show up at the local Lowe's so could look at it hands-on before I bought it, but fall was upon me once again and i had gutters to clean.
I found it for $99 at Amazon with free shipping. Amazon has a great and simple return policy so I went for it. It showed up in a pretty bug box and I unpacked it with great anticipation. The unit is pretty simple - a battery pack (NiCad, interestingly), a rubber auger attachment, a remote that snaps onto the main body, and a charger. It also comes with a belt holster if you want to really geek out. The charging cycle before use is quite long so I charged it overnight and figured my son and I could give it a go the next morning.
I have an older house, circa 1966, although the separate garage was re-built in 1990 after a fire. My first stop was the garage, which is built into a hill, so it's very easy to set the Looj into the gutter toward the back and make any adjustments. I kept in mind one of the comments on Amazon - "make sure you keep your mouth closed when you start it" - yuck! The Looj settled nicely into the gutter, which had a good layer of rotting pine needles in it. It has two treads on the bottom and using the remote you can go forward and back, and adjust the direction of the auger.
Two things that drive the effectiveness of the Looj:
1) Gutter bracket height - the Looj is very low profile (2.25") but if your brackets are bent or obstructed then you'll have a problem here.
2) Gutter width - iRobot now has a template on their site for you to measure yourself, but the Looj will only work if the flat bottom part of your gutter is at least 3.25" wide.
I didn't have a problem on the garage - the Looj worked fine. It made a tremendous racket and mess but that was fun for both of us. It gave my car a good splatter. You have to go back and forth to really get the stuff out but it does work.
I wasn't so lucky on the main house with point #2. These still had older gutters and they didn't have the width I needed. The Looj didn't sit flat on the bottom and therefore didn't have the traction it needed. If it's not sitting flat it will also turn over in the gutter. If I couldn't use it on my house I couldn't keep it.
A new 22' fiberglass ladder will run you over $200. Plus, it's dangerous. If your gutters are wide enough I would definitely get a Looj and give it a go. If it doesn't work for you then the Amazon.com return policy is easy - just repack, slap on a return label and you're done. Plus, it's a fun thing to do with your kid!
iRobot Looj Electric Gutter Cleaning Robot #12101
Customer Review: Worked well
Summary: 4 Stars
The ground around my house slopes to varying degrees, making ladder setup a chore, and (along with the two-story construction) making gutter cleaning somewhat more dangerous than I'd like. Always thoughtful, and interested in protecting our home and my life, my wife got me the Looj for Father's Day.
I finally got around to using it this past weekend - the delay in part due to several failures to plan ahead properly for the 15-hour charge.
I hadn't cleaned the gutters in quite a while - almost a year. They weren't packed full of gunk, but they were pretty full - in some places filled to the brim. I chose the lowest section of gutter for the pilot test, climbed up the ladder, put the Looj into a spot I cleared by hand, and (remaining at the top of the ladder so I could see what was happening to the thing) put it to work.
I'll admit I was a bit surprised by the force with which it flung debris into my face, but I quickly learned to keep my mouth and eyes closed when starting it up. And then away it went, cleaning the gutters.
I watched it carefully - when it seemed to be riding up on something, or beginning to slow, I'd back it off and take another run. Within three minutes, the gutter was clean.
But honestly, that gutter was easy - located away from the trees, it was probably the cleanest stretch of all. The real test came next - 30 feet of *very* clogged gutter.
But again, the Looj had no real problem. It got stuck once when I became overly aggressive and jammed the auger between a clump of debris and the gutter hanger (causing me to have to rescue it) and the antenna got stuck on unseen obstacles a couple of times (but working the Looj back and forth freed it). It also flipped over once or twice, but that didn't seem to adversely affect its performance - forward became reverse, but it did keep the antenna out of harm's way. Fifteen minutes later, there was a ton of debris in the yard, and virtually none in the gutter.
After that, the rest of the gutters were easy.
I'd recommend the Looj to anyone who has a hard time keeping their gutters clean - whether because of uneven ground, fear of heights, lots of trees, lack of time, or relatively limited mobility (as often comes with age). With the Looj (and a tether), you only really need to set up, and get up, the ladder once per straight stretch of gutter. That makes me very happy.
I do recommend the tether, because there were a few times I thought I was going to have to rescue the Looj (though it freed itself all but once). I also recommed staying at the top of the ladder if you can stand it, because it really helps to be able to see what the Looj is up against and what position it's in.
A few minor difficulties aside, I have to say that I'm very pleased with the Looj. I'm actually looking forward to cleaning the gutters again in the Fall.