Increasing Roomba Battery Life?

shendley · Joined: 09 Oct 2007 Posts: 61

I've had my roomba 535 for a little over half a year and it seems like the battery charge doesn't last as long as it used to. It used to easily clean a couple of rooms, spending about 40 minutes in each and still have a charge to spare. But now when I leave it in a situation where there are lighthouses but no dock, it will tend to exhaust its charge before finishing about half of the time. I did a search on "battery" and found a thread that suggested running the battery completely down and then leaving the Roomba docked for 72 hours as a way to increase its capacity to hold a charge. I'm just checking in to see if that sounds right to you guys. What do you think I should do to get my battery back to where it was?

glo69 · Posted: June 18, 2008, 9:15 am Post subject:

Hello Shendly

That advice is correct. Run the Roomba completely down by either disconnecting the home base or putting your Roomba in an area where it can't get home. Then run several clean cycles until the Roomba refuses to do anymore. Then charge for 72 hrs.

This should be done every month or two. If it has been 6 mos, you might get mote gain if you do the reconditioning cycle twice to catch up.

shendley · Joined: 09 Oct 2007 Posts: 61

Thanks for the reply. But I'm a bit confused about what you mean when you say I should run several clean cycles. My roomba ran down last night in an area where it couldn't get to the dock and I had to dock it manually since it wouldn't even move when I pressed the "dock" button placed just a few inches from the dock. So it sounds like I've run Roomba's battery completely down. What are the clean cycles I need to run after that?

glo69 wrote: Hello Shendly

That advice is correct. Run the Roomba completely down by either disconnecting the home base or putting your Roomba in an area where it can't get home. Then run several clean cycles until the Roomba refuses to do anymore. Then charge for 72 hrs.

This should be done every month or two. If it has been 6 mos, you might get mote gain if you do the reconditioning cycle twice to catch up.

glo69 · Posted: June 18, 2008, 9:55 am Post subject:

Hello Shendly

Sorry, I missed that it was already completely dead when you put it away now. That will be fine.

In the future, if you do a monthly battery recondition you may need to do a 2nd run without recharging to get it completely dead.

shendley · Joined: 09 Oct 2007 Posts: 61

Thanks for the clarification. I guess I'll have to break out the old fashioned vacuum for the next couple of days!

glo69 wrote: Hello Shendly

Sorry, I missed that it was already completely dead when you put it away now. That will be fine.

In the future, if you do a monthly battery recondition you may need to do a 2nd run without recharging to get it completely dead.