I love my Roomba. It keeps my floors clean and I don’t have to worry about vacuuming. That is, until something breaks.

Roomba is great, when everything is working right. Sometimes, though, it doesn’t work quite right. Some carpets – like the carpet I have in the great room of my house – trigger it’s cliff sensors, causing it to freak out and stop with an ominous tone that sounds somewhat akin to a sad “oh no”. Problems like that are easily solved (put white paper and tape over the cliff sensors), but not all of them are.

Recently, Flomar (my Roomba), has stopped almost immediately into cleaning and asked, rather cheerily, “Please remove and clean Roomba’s brushes!” And so I would open the brush compartment, pull them out and realize….. they’re still clean from the LAST time I removed and cleaned Flomar’s brushes.

I’ve since come to learn that this particular issue is a design flaw with the cleaning head module (CHM) in the 560 model, which – if your roomba is under warranty, iRobot will likely send you a new CHM that uses an improved design. IF however your Roomba is no longer under warranty… there’s still an option. You can perform invasive surgery into your Roomba.

The surgery involves taking out the CHM and cleaning the gearbox.   

First you’ll need to take out the four screws holding the bottom plate onto the Roomba, (you can take off the spinning front brush first, if you want – it saves some effort), and pull that plate off. Then there will be four screws holding the purple frame around the brush box in place. Unscrew those and take the brush box and purple frame out of the Roomba. on one side there’s red gearbox. Unscrew the four screws holding that side of the purple frame together, and remove that side of the frame. Then, unscrew the six screws holding the gearbox cover on and carefully pull it off. Clean the gears inside however you want, if needed re-grease the box with white grease (use sparingly), and put it back together.   

The underlying cause of the problem – as you’ll notice – is an accumulation of hair, dust and dirt in the gearbox that prevents normal operation of the brushes. As a result, a power output is required to keep the brushes turning, triggering the circuitry that determines if the brushes are dirty (and prompts you to clean them.) So, because turning the brushes requires too much power, it constantly stops and tells you to clean the brushes – even if the brushes themselves are already clean.

I have two cats living in the house, which means a TON of fur. This fur gets everywhere, and was a royal pain to remove from the gearbox. If you can, I recommend getting an updated CHM from iRobot. If not, give this a try – it may bring your Roomba back to life.

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