Has anyone got or know about a robotic window cleaners and if so, do they actually work?
Until you made this post, I had never heard of them. This website has some information and reviewsâŠ
Thinking aloudâŠI can see that they may be worthwhile if one has large continuous glass panels (say those on shopfronts or office buildings) which canât readily be cleaned by handâŠbut for small windows in housesâŠI am not sure the feasibility of the devices as one would need to detach and reattach then to each window on the house. I suspect in such cases it would be quicker to hand clean the windows.
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I have a âprehistoricâ version that is manual, but many of my experiences could be relevant. Mine includes a magnetic piece for inside the window and a scrubber piece for outside. The scrubber is wet/soaped and applied to the outside, and the inside magnetic piece is used to hold it on the window and move it around to scrub the outside. I bought it to do second floor windows. Subsequently I bought a long handled conventional windows washer/squeegee that does a significantly better job albeit with minor effort.
Things for consideration:
- the magnets are only so strong and the outside unit can fall off the window.
- the outside scrubber cannot get into corners unless it has a square pad/brush.
- the outside scrubber needs to be periodically resoaked or have a reservoir.
- how does rinsing and squeegeeing work?
- how does it go with spider webs?
and everything @phb postedâŠ
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I started to count up all the seperate panes of glass in our older style double hung and multi pane glass windows. Seventeen for the kitchen, not counting the five sets of louvres or the 7 ripple glass panels in the two entry doors.
They usually get a manual clean when the geckos and butcher birds have not been keeping up with the spiders. Sometimes we wish the butcher birds could outwit the Asian House geckos. All the mess usually ends up on the sills, or slides of more modern windows and around the frames.
Cleaning windows, itâs not the glass that is the problem. It is the frames and surrounds. For modern aluminium sliding glass windows keeping the drainage slots clear is critical especially in cyclone zones. I canât see how the robots would be able to cope with close fitting security or insect screens.
On the other hand if we lived in a Jetson styled single flush glass panelled high rise. A suspicion is either Rosie would move the robotic cleaner as needed or do it all herself.
The products on the net really looked ahead of their time, just waiting for brand new houses to be designed to take advantage of them. Perhaps a suitable contestant challenge for âThe Blockâ? 
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I had never heard of these, and my immediate thought was:
I must admit that I would not be entirely confident in the iMore article, given its first paragraph reference to one cleaner equipped with âan ultrasonic water spray systemâ.
One has to wonder what exactly is intended by this description, or whether it is simply a puff piece repeating the manufacturerâs words. The review identifies this âfeatureâ as a âplusâ, but does nothing to say why or how it is of benefit.
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Has anyone used one of these this year. I have a lot of tall window/doors and live near the ocean. I cannot seem to clean them without leaving smears etc. Window cleaners want $300. to do them which is not feasible on our aged pension. Also I am not as agile as I used to be so am tempted to give the robot a try.
Would welcome any comments.
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Welcome to the Community @petajanepower,
I merged your query into this existing topic. As you can see there is not a lot of experience from members, just some informative comments.
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Hi @petajanepower, welcome to the community.
I suspect a robot cleaner wonât be any more effective with salt as the salt needs to be washed off the glass rather than wiping or squeegeeing (which would just be pushing the salt residue around the glass surface). Unless the robot cleaner washes the salt off, it is likely to make a window worse.
An option may be to hose the windows to remove any salt spray and then use the robot cleaner to finish off the windows. If one has good clean (low total dissolved salt) water, then a good hose may suffice anyway.
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Thanks. A good suggestion. Will ponder a bit longer before making a purchase.
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Perhaps you could get more quotes to do the work? The $300 seems rather a lot, even with tall windows.
Thanks There are 18 large door/windows and that is for inside and out. But I will try other quotes. I thought that even if I bought the most expensive window cleaning robot at approx $500 dollars I would get my money back in one year and could clean the windows more frequently than twice a year.
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This could be true only if the robot cleaners actually work well.
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