Whistle Stopper - iRobot Looj Electric Gutter Cleaning Robot w/Holster #130

	List Price: $129.99 Our Price: $122.62 Your Save: $ 7.37 ( 6% ) Availability: In stock soon. Order now to get in line. First come, first served. Manufacturer: iRobot
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Batteries: 2 Binding: Tools & Hardware Brand: iRobot Color: Grey & Green EAN: 0853816121304 Feature: Three stage auger system dislodges, lifts and tosses wet mud and leaves out of your gutter and away from your home. Label: iRobot Manufacturer: iRobot Model: 130 Publisher: iRobot Size: SMALL Studio: iRobot
Features Three stage auger system dislodges, lifts and tosses wet mud and leaves out of your gutter and away from your home. Complete control over forward and backward movement of the robot and bi-directional rotation of the auger to ensure debris is thrown away from your roof and home. Only 2¿ high so the robot easily passes under gutter straps Waterproof up to 2 feet of water for operation in wet gutters and easy hose-off and cleanup. Remote control also acts as the robot handle for easy storage and carrying. Also includes a holster and belt for transporting the robot
Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: It works. But. Comment: I read all the reviews here before I bought my refurbished (meaning someone sent it back before I got it) Looj from Woot. It works. But there are caveats. Definitely attach a string to it before you send it off to clean a long stretch of inaccessible gutter. The antenna will get stuck when you try to bring it backwards if you don't. Luckily there is a handy place to attach a string, even though the instructions don't mention the necessity. Be patient. You have to work it back and forth when it hits obstacles. It's not going to merrily charge straight down the clogged gutter in a single shot. Big sticks and twigs will stop it. For me, it was worth the money. I have a single-story house whose gutters are all easily accessible except for one long stretch on the steep side of a peaked roof - and it's the one that gets most clogged. Cleaning it required moving and balancing a ladder many times to reach over my head a couple (at least) of times a year. Even then there were parts I could not possibly reach. The Looj got this stretch cleaned in about 15 minutes and it was a lot more fun and safer than moving the ladder. Bottom line: lower your expectations. And use a timer to charge it - I'm surprised no one mentioned this solution to the "exactly 15 hours" charge requirement. I plugged it in to the timer I use for fluorescent lights when I'm starting seeds - problem solved. And for all those who say it isn't really a robot like Roomba because it isn't intelligent: geeze, how intelligent does a robot have to be to clean a damn gutter? Not very. It is really fun to use, though. Customer Rating: Summary: A Product Before Its Time Comment: My Looj, ordered in early November, arrived in mid-December which is winter in New England. Since I only have 30 days to return the unit if I don't like it, I've been trying to evaluate its performance. It WILL NOT work if there is compacted snow or ice in the gutters. It barely works if the leaves are soaking wet and in standing water (water depth was about one inch). Small twigs also give Looj the fits. Back and forth and many auger reversals were necessary to get beyond a foot long twig in my gutter. Professional gutter cleaners are not at risk of losing their jobs because of Looj. It is soooo slooowww and tedious to use only a gadget freak (like me) should even consider buying one. The mess of scattered leaves after using Looj is not a trivial problem, expecially if your home is surrounded by plantings of shrubs and bushes. In using Looj today when there was a significant breeze, I found the leaves thrown into the air by Looj were blown back into the gutter and onto my roof where they will work their way back into the gutter. Additional design flaws beyond the battery removal problem described in the review above include a carrying handle which often cannot be reinserted into Looj because the track for it fills with debris (duh - my gutters contain gritty debris from roof shingles and bits of vegetable matter). The carrying handle is also the controller for Looj and contains two AAA batteries. The battery door is only held in place by friction and is easily dislodged when strugling to reinsert the handle onto Looj. My battery door is now taped in place. The switches on the controller/handle are inside rubber boots to keep water out of the electronics. Operating these switches can be quite difficult, especially if you are bothered by arthritis like I am. Now that I've re-read my review I know what is going to happen to my Looj - I'm going to return it! Maybe sometime in the future iRobot will come up with a gutter cleaner that works in a practical manner. I would not recommend Looj to anyone! Customer Rating: Summary: Keep in mind what it's really built for Comment: I got the Looj as an X-mas gift and was excited about it. I wasn't sure what to expect from it, but it's a really neat idea, so I unpacked the box with much glee. Design concerns appeared from that moment; none critical. The most obvious example is the battery. If you own other iRobot products, especially Roomba or Scooba, you are familiar with one or two methods of charging the battery: 1. click it out of the unit and drop it into a charger, then forget about it until the next time you need to clean 2. plug the unit into the wall and let it charge until you need to clean. With the Looj, the battery MUST be removed and plugged into a wall outlet separate from the unit. This would be okay except: 1. removing the battery from Looj is very inconvenient. The battery compartment is waterproof so opening it up requires removing screws and prying off the VERY TIGHT cover. 2. there are huge warnings in the manual urging you not to overcharge the battery. It specifically says not to charge longer than 15 hours 3. the charger gives you no indication of whether the battery is fully charged. Niether does Looj itself. This means that if you're going to clean your gutters, you need to plan ahead for it, so you can charge the battery (because you can't leave it on the charger). This is painfully inconvenient, but okay as a safety feature-- note that Looj is billed as a safety tool, not a convenience tool. The next problem I had with Looj was just how you run it. Looj is not a time-saving device like Roomba or its cousins-- you must babysit it constantly in order for it to work. Roomba has the intelligence of a small reptile, but Looj is literally a brainless tool. You stand there on your ladder, driving the thing forward and backward with the auger on/off until it pushes enough glop out the gutter to clear it. Again, this is inconvenient but still much safer than moving a ladder around. The next problem is this: when Looj cleans a gutter, where does the debris go? When I clean it by hand, the debris goes into rough piles down below the gutter where I drop them. When Looj does it, the debris is broken up into many pieces and then flung over the side at high power. This creates a debris field that starts roughly beneath the gutter's edge and extends between fifteen and twenty feet out. That's a big mess to clean up after Looj is done cleaning. And after all that, Looj had a great deal of trouble cleaning the gutter. Looj seems to have trouble with small-sized pinecones-- they cause the auger to get stuck. Looj can unstick itself sometimes, but it was not uncommon for me to have to intervene to save Looj. Twice Looj beached itself on some bit of stubborn debris and I had to fetch it with my hands. On the upside, Looj is by far the easiest iRobot gadget to clean. You just spray it with the hose and remove the treads. That's it! ** IF YOU ARE CONSIDERING BUYING A LOOJ ** 1. make sure you're buying it for the right reasons, else you are probably going to be disappointed 2. make sure you check the return policy in case it doesn't work with your gutters, or just can't handle the muck you expect to have in them. 3. make sure you try it out on representative gutter-gunk. In conclusion, I'd say that Looj MIGHT be a great tool for someone with the right gutter situation. This person might be you if: 1. you have no pine trees anywhere 2. you plan your gutter-cleanings ("honey, tomorrow I'm cleaning the gutter, so I'd better start charging Looj's battery...") 3. your reason for buying Looj is SAFETY, not CONVENIENCE (maybe you have a four-story house) 4. you don't mind showering a large area with its debris. (EDIT: hours, not minutes. Thanks for the correction!) Customer Rating: Summary: IRobot Looj Gutter Cleaner Comment: Fundamentally cleaning gutters it not exactly a job we look foward to. Heights, fear of injury, hand cuts and scrapes in addition to the grimy mess that wet leaves bring into the picture, were some of the obstacles I was looking to avoid in this run through. Having recently bought the Looj 150, which includes an extra battery pack when compared to the 130. I found myself as sceptical to the possibility of it doing it's job. I found myself quite surprised by the experiences. I'd also recommend the extra battery pack. The IRobot "Engine" or Looj is waterproof, with the battery compartment having beveled seats that the battery cover, when screwed into place, seals itself very well into and helps prevent from any leaks into the housing unit. Additionally, loading the two AA batteries into the hand-held remote was a snap. In my two tests, the first was not as successful as the second due to having not waited the full 15 hours to charge the first battery. Had I been patient, as I was the second attempt, I would have had a fully appreciative experience. Additionally, having cleaned the remaining gutters during my second attempt, was done so only after the mid-fall leaves had preceded the early winter rains, literally clogging them from 1/2 to 3/4 capacity with cold damp light-iced leave clumps lying ahead for my gutter challenge. Was this too much for the Looj?! Rising up onto the ladder and into my first gutter, I found that placing the Irobot in the K-style gutters (Make sure the Irobot will fit your gutters here: http://www.irobot.com/filelibrary/Gutter_measurement.pdf), you will find yourself manually removing some of the initial gutter sludge and leaves to make way for the device. Once planted firmly into the gutter seam, I turned on the remote and On/Off switch on the Looj. One note: Give the unit about a foot to the left or right from where you are seated on the ladder. Otherwise you'll get splattered! :) The first pass was a left to right one to other side of the rear gutter. The auger button was pressed to the right and Fwd/Reverse button pressed forward. Rata-tat-tat through the leaves it went. Combing, brushing and augering through the mess and even under the gutter clamps placed approx every 3-4 feet. This isn't a one-pass/one way only deal folks perhaps due to the condensed/compact set of wet near iced leaves I was dealing with, however pressing the Fwd/Reverse button back and forth did provide each clumped obstacle it's own demise as it ferretted ahead in it's duties. I found that by leveraging the wheel tracks (very good design) and the movement of the auger against each clump of leaves was best done in patterned back and forth passes. Additionally, the Irobot will undoubtedly appear to "flip" over at times while performing your cleaning. When this happens, righting it was a simple as turning the auger (via the remote) the opposite way and then pressing Fwd to reverse it back onto its "rightside". The additional "hurdle" you may encounter would be having the Looj antenna appearing to become stuck in the roof/gutter seam, however using the auger movements and back and forward motion of the unit allowed it to continue on it's way in 100% of the time during of my 4-5 "periods of concern". To be honest, when you get the hang of it's movements, it's extremely simple to get through what may be initially perceived as physical barriers to the product. As the Irobot worked it's way down the back 20'-25' of gutter there were times when it appeared the remote wouldn't reach the unit, however: 1) placing the remote at a higher elevation than the gutter (line-of sight to the antenna) and 2) placing your hand on the gutter , handled any reception concerns raised during my initial runs. Retrieving the Looj was a simple as having placed it into the gutter. A few important notes: 1) Do NOT get the Looj remote wet. Dry/clean it with a paper towel. 2) Remove the batteries from both the Jooj remote and the Looj robot housing when done. 3) As the unit batteries die down, there is a flashing red light that will appear on the Looj. Give yourself about 2 mins of remaining time to get the Looj back to the place where you put it into the gutter or you may have an extraction issue depending on the slope of access to your gutter! :) After having cleaned the gutters and retrieving the Looj, depending on weather conditions (remember I did my test in wet clogged gutters), you will have a messy unit on your hands. The Looj holster that comes with the 150 is also available as an accessory via Irobot web (http:www.irobot.com). The cleanup of the Looj robot is very easy and was complete in less than 2-3 minutes in my utility sink inside. The rubber wheel tracks are easily removed and cleaned as well. The only downside is having to remove some of the leaves that may cling to the inside tract of the wheel base, but I found it fairly easy to remove these. I did climb up onto the roof for my second tier of gutters, for lack of a sufficiently high ladder and was able to avoid having to find myself close to "death's edge" on a regular basis as is the case when I was cleaning them Loojless. I'm sure the Irobot folks would not recommend using the Looj without a ladder, so I won't as well, but regardless I did manage to avoid falling off the roof. The Looj holster belt was helpful in keeping my pant leg clean, in addition to allowing me to have both my hands available while making trails on the 2nd story roof and up to each point where I'd have to place the unit in each side's gutter line. Additionally, if it's a wet-mess type of gutter exercise for you , hitching the Looj remote back into the unit may not work as easilyt as you think until you remove some leave gunk that may get in the way of the seat and click feature of the remote. The bottom line is that you will get approximately 30 to 40 minutes of gutter cleaning on a fully charged battery. In my opinion, it makes sense to buy the second battery pack if you have a house over 3000+ square feet with tiered gutter lines and some make see this as a downside. The gutter cleaning exercise is just that, an exercise in augering back and forth through leave sludge, recently damp leaves with some ice and/or tennis balls, Nerf arrow tips and the like. The things you'll find in gutters :) I give Looj a 5 star rating, but as a perceptive observer I can see others giving this a 3 or 4 based on some of the observations I raised above, primarily the following: 1) Remote is not waterproof 2) Battery charging unit should have an auto-shut off gauge to tell when the charging is complete Other than these two negatives, I stand by my rating and look forward to next year's gutter excursion. More Reviews
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