We love our robot floor vacuum. Having a “non-shedding” westie dog doesn’t mean he doesn’t drop hairs everywhere. And we have a wood stove which brings in a lot of bark pieces, saw dust and ash. We also have a gravel driveway which brings in a lot of bits of stone dust, grit and dirt.
So you can imagine we run our robot vacuum at least every other day.
Our house also has a ton of large glass windows which never seem to get clean using various methods of cleaning we’ve tried including paper towels and Windex, microfiber clothes and even squegees.
And just cooking, breathing and using the wood stove creates a film on the inside of the windows over time. Outside the windows get dusty and dirty from the gravel roads, trees, pollen and mildew.
Enter the window cleaning robot. Believe it or no there are robots which use suction to stick to windows, spray water and glide along to clean windows. They work especially well on large glass windows and can clean hard to reach areas.
The robots plug in because the suction usings a lot of power but have a battery back up In case the power goes out or the dog trips over the plug. They also come with a safety cord in case they got knocked off the window by a pigeon or something.
One of the top rated window cleaning robots is the Ecovac Winbot W1.
ECOVACS Winbot W1 Pro Window Cleaning Robot
Intelligent Cleaning with Dual Cross Water Spray TechnologyWin SLAM 3.0 Path Planning
2800Pa Suction Power
Edge Detection Technology
App Control
Other Window Washing Options
VITEVER Professional 69” Window Squeegee Cleaner Tool with Extension Pole, 2-in-1 Squeegee for Window Cleaning Kit with Scrubber and Rotating Head, 1 Blade 2 Scrubber
ITTAR Window Cleaner Rotatable Squeegee and Microfiber Scrubber with Extendable 3 Section Stainless Steel Pole,Window Cleaning Tool with 2 Microfiber Pads for Shower Glass Door,Car Windshield
Using the ECOVACS Winbot window washing robot
The Ecovacs Winbot (https://amzn.to/4aREvcH) https://amzn.to/4aREvcHis elegantly designed. No doubt the target market is people who reside in high rise apartments with expansive glass windows.
The unit itself is stylishly accented with a leather handle which gives it designer look. And the storage case is wrapped in fabric rather than a cheap plastic case one might expect. Overall the look and feel of the unit is top notch.
Out of the box you have to connect the power cord and charge the window washer unit. It took mine about two hours to come up to charge. A lady’s voice will scold you if you don’t charge it fully.
The battery power is for emergency use. Just in case you trip over the cord or there is a power outage. Using mine, I had the power cord pull out of my extension cord a few times and the warning voice comes on to tell you to plug the unit back in.
The washer will come to a stop when on battery, sending all power to the fan that keeps it stuck on the window. No power will be sent to the driving motors.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. After charging up the window washer robot you have to soak and wring out one of the two included microfiber cloths and then stick it to the bottom of the unit. There are velco spots on the bottom to hold the microfiber cloth in place.
Then you fill the fluid tank with plain water. Don’t use window washing liquid, just water. Anything else risks making the wheels slip.
Then you plug the unit in and push it against the wall or push the button once and a voice will say “Starting”. The robot will move along the window, first measuring it and then starting from the top, work it’s way back and forth, squirting a bit of water out every once in a white until it reaches the bottom.
It will then do a few manuvers to clean up and then stop and announce that it is finished.
You then grab that handle and press the button for five seconds to release the window washing robot from the window.
There is a safety cord included that can be attached to a railing or curtain rod just in case the window washer falls. You wouldn’t want some one to get clocked in the head from a falling robot!
I used it around my house washing about 30 windows and never had it fall but if you live in a high rise apartment or have breakables below, use the safety cord!
So how did it work?
Great! We have a zillion windows in this house and I’ve tried just about every method of getting them clean. The best solution I used in the past was a squeege on a long pole. But that was messy, hard to reach very high windows and it left streaks behind.
The robot managed to move around and remove the streaks left behind from the last washing. Also by getting on a ladder and placing the robot on the bottom of some of our very high windows, it could do it’s thing and then return to basically the same spot it started in.
If the robot stopped out of reach, I could use the app to drive the robot to a better stop for retrival.