Scooba

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This article is about the floor washing robot. For the city, see Scooba, Mississippi.

Scooba is an automated robotic floor washer produced by iRobot. It was released in limited numbers in December 2005 for the Christmas season at $399.99, with full production starting in early 2006. The company introduced a $299 version, the Scooba 5800, in the second half of 2006.[1][2]

The Scooba uses a special non-bleach cleaning solution made by The Clorox Company that cleans the floors and prevents rust or skidding and has been nicknamed "Scooba juice," although a solution of white vinegar can also be used. The robot preps the floor by vacuuming loose debris, squirts clean solution, scrubs the floor, and then sucks up the dirty solution leaving a nearly dry floor behind. The robot is safe to use on sealed hardwood floors and most other hard household surfaces, but it cannot be used on rugs. Scooba avoids rugs and stairs, and can clean about 200 square feet on a single tankload of solution. The Scooba is the second major commercial product made by iRobot, which popularized vacuum robots with the Roomba.

[edit] Miscellaneous

The Scooba and Roomba are available in over 40 countries. Outside of these countries, however, Scooba or its spare parts and accessories cannot be bought from the iRobot company website. Many parts and accessories can also be found on ebay and other sites.

Scooba's lights may occasionally be confusing. For instance, the "Check Tank" light may indicate that the battery is improperly installed. These lights, however, are described in the manual.

The Scooba comes with one 8 oz box of Clorox, which is enough for about four washings. Additional Clorox Scooba Cleaning Solution comes in 5-packs and 9-packs of 32 oz bottles, which comes to about 16 washings per bottle.

Scooba 5900 can clean about 500 square feet per cleaning session, while the 5800 can clean about 250 square feet. Recharge times may vary, but typically take hours.

After each cleaning, users must perform some maintenance: empty dirty liquid from the tank, rinse the tanks, rinse the filter and clean the brush.