Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I had a unit running since November 2009. the old 2009 product, I had to clean the rotation motor mount often with the old model or the gears would fill up with litter dust, it would pack in and cause trouble, I have one cat that is a digger and flings the litter over and out of the base I have 4 Cat's with two units. I have timers on both with them set to be (ON) for 1.5 hours and (OFF) for 1 hour continuously 365 days a year. (The new 2013 version), they have added holes in the bottom base to allow the the litter to escape better. Also added rollers under the pan so it does not scrape on the bottom of the main unit. It seems the mount for the pan motor has been redesigned and I have not yet had the issue of the motor mount and gears being packed with litter and litter dust as before, Bat-Mite the Digger Cat is still flinging litter over the side and I have had no issue with the gears being clogged so far. (The 2009 model) the conveyor motor finally gave out and just makes a grinding noise and does not turn the conveyor any more. I could have ordered a replacement motor but I wanted to check out the new design so I purchased the new redesigned model to see if maintenance was less and so far I am happy to say no issues so far. The conveyor has also been redesigned. When the new one arrived I thought it was defective because it made a tick noise once at the same point in the conveyor rotation so, I returned it for a replacement unit. The replacement unit did the same thing and upon further inspection, I saw this was a normal function of the design of the new conveyor system. As the unit ran for several weeks, this once a minute tick got less and less until I no longer noticed it. Seems the action of the unit just needed time to break-in. With all versions I do have the issue of the conveyor cover being popped up deactivating the switch when a large clump of litter was moving up the conveyor and it would lift the cover enough to open the cover switch and the unit would stop. I was able to easily fix this by cutting a No. 2 pencil to about 1 inch long, placing it in the hole on the unit where the peg in the cover activates the switch allowing it to wedge itself in place by tilting sideways a little, this misalignment will hold the piece of pencil in place. (I then cut off the peg in the plastic cover with a razor knife) so the peg would not interfere with the 1 inch piece of pencil and the cover would install just fine. Now when a large clump of litter lifted the conveyor cover up as it traveled up and then dropped in the hopper would not turn off the unit , the unit would keep operating and the cover will fall back into place after the clump drops into the hopper and all works just fine. Very happy with this unit. Three years of use out of the old model before failure it very good. I ran the old model for 18 months without a timer so it may of lasted longer than 3 years if I had the timer installed on day one. as with anything it must be cleaned every week or so. All I do is remove the litter bowl and then dump off the litter that may be under the bowl into the bowl and then put it bowel back in place. I have never had to wash the conveyor, and so far with the new design I have had no problem with cat litter getting stuck to the bottom of the bowl like the old design. I do change out the litter completely every 6 weeks to 2 months. I find that after a while, the fine clay in the litter that gets left behind after clumping will build up in the bowl. The ratio of clay and litter beads will not be correct and the clumping action of the litter will not be correct, thus allowing it to break into little pieces that will fall through the conveyor on the way to the hopper. Sometimes they are so small that these little clumps are the size of little beads, they stay on top of the litter and most hand litter scoops won't remove them either because they fall through the holes in the hand scoop as well. At this time it is time to change out the litter with fresh. hope this long winded review helps. I would recommend this product.