In our house there’s an issue and his name is Brady. He’s an 8-9 pound maltese I inherited from my parents when they passed away. My parents had him pretty much paper-trained since it was easier for them than having to let him out all the time. When he came to live in my house, he peed on the pee-pads. He also pees on any plastic that happened to be on the floor, such as plastic bags from the supermarket. He pees on any boxes on the floor. He pees on table and chair legs. He likes to pee in the other animals’ food dishes. And sometimes he pees on the floor for no apparent reason.

I clean up as best I can, but it gets tiring mentally for me. We would have to mop the floor every few days, but with everything else in a chaotic household, it sometimes got lost in the shuffle.

I finally caved and decided to buy a robotic mop. After reading reviews and comparing features, I chose the iRobot Braava jet 240 Superior Robot Mop. We have vinyl flooring in the kitchen and laminate flooring in the living room. Those are the two main areas we have to worry about dog pee. Sometimes we find it, sometimes we don’t which is why I like the robotic mop over just a vacuum for these rooms.

The iRobot Braava jet 240 Superior Robot Mop is easy to operate. The battery comes with a charger that I leave plugged in at a central location where I can see it easily. If the battery is depleted, it flashes orange. If the battery is charged, it’s a solid green in color. Once it’s charged, I pop it back in the robotic mop.

The iRobot Braava jet 240 Superior Robot Mop has three types of cleaning depending on your needs. The dry-sweeping pad is white and does just what it sounds like. It’s like using a broom and makes a single pass over the floors. This sweeps up dirt, dust, and hair into the pad attached to the bottom with no moisture. I’ve been impressed with this as we tend to track in a lot of dirt and sand, living in a rural area like we do. It won’t replace a vacuum as it doesn’t really suck it up, but gathers it into the pad.

The second type of cleaning is a damp sweeping pad. This pad is orange and gets a little bit wet but doesn’t actually spray water on the floor and scrub. The robot knows the difference in the pads and selects the correct cleaning for each type. My regular, every day mopping is this one when I’m actually using it daily.

Finally there are the blue pads which are a wet mopping pad. With this it sprays water out the front of the robotic mop and uses a vibration to scrub the floor as it moves. I use this if I haven’t mopped in a couple of days, or the first few times I used the mop. Once I think the floor is fairly clean, I switch back to the orange ones for daily use.

Once I’ve decided which pad I’m going to use, for the damp or wet mopping there is a tank which holds about a half-cup of warm water. The directions are a bit conflicting as they state to only use water in the tank, but there is a hard floor cleaning solution that says it can be used by these products. I have bought it and use two capfuls when I am in wet mop mode, then fill the remainder of the tank with water. I haven’t had any issues with this. I then place the mop on the floor and press the power button twice, a few seconds apart.

While running, the iRobot Braava jet 240 Superior Robot Mop makes straight lines and arches. If it runs into a wall or something else, it will back up and swivel and try to go around it. If it’s a wall or a cabinet, eventually it realizes it can’t go in that direction at all and turns a different way.

Unlike other robotic mops, this doesn’t “map” the area it cleans. It simply goes until the power runs out wherever it can maneuver. It doesn’t cross the saddle onto the laminate floor of the living room if it’s on the vinyl flooring in my kitchen, nor does it go up onto the carpet in the hallway. I have to treat the living room and kitchen like separate areas, which is okay since the living room doesn’t get the beating that the kitchen does and doesn’t need to be mopped as frequently. I can see where the mop has gone over the floor and it does pretty much cover everything each time I run it without mapping the floor. If there’s a spot I especially want it to get, I simply place it near there when I start it that day and I’ve never had an issue with it not being mopped.

The first time I ran it, I was impressed. It picked up stains from spots where coffee had been dripped as well as dog urine spots under the table where we frequently missed cleaning. It got in pretty close under the cabinets where I thought I was going to have to get down with a scrub-brush to get out the spots. After this time, with one of the wet mop pads that came with the robotic mop, it was black. I knew my floors were bad, but not that bad. It took several disposable pads before they were in a condition where I could consider using reusable pads because they were coming back relatively clean.

I have bought reusable as well as disposable pads for the iRobot Braava jet 240 Superior Robot Mop. In all honesty, I prefer the disposable pads, especially since I am dealing sometimes with pet urine issues. I don’t feel the reusable ones get as clean as I would like after using them several times.

When the battery runs out it just stops, no matter where it is. There’s no station that it goes back to like other robotic mops or vacuums. I usually put it near where I recharge the battery and leave it there until I’m ready to run it again.

I’d say the iRobot Braava jet 240 Superior Robot Mop works similar to a Swiffer WetJet. I think it does a bit better in the scrubbing and cleaning department than the wet Swiffer. I also don’t feel like there’s a build-up on my floors like I did when I was using the Swiffer with the fluid, since most of the time I’m running it with just warm water. My floors definitely look a lot better than they did before we bought it, and I’m happy that it’s so easy to do without having to move everything in the kitchen and try to keep people out while I mop it.

Brady is still on my “bad dog” list, but the iRobot Braava jet 240 Superior Robot Mop makes it easier to forgive him.