Drillbrush Power Scrubber Kit Review 2023: Pros, Cons & Final Verdict

*Use Code HOUSEGRAIL

What Is a Drillbrush Power Scrubber Kit? How Does It Work?

Most of us reading this will hear “brush” and wince, thinking of scrubbing and, well, chores. Not so with “drill”! Drills are fun. More fun than brushes. But what is this “brush on a drill?” It’s why some of us will realize we need a drill and why any of us who ever watched “Home Improvement” or “This Old House” will gleefully buy one to stick on their Milwaukee power drill.

A Drillbrush is just that. A brush that goes on your drill. But there’s not just one Drillbrush; there are dozens. Different sizes. Different shapes. Different bristle strengths for different surfaces.

The Drillbrush Power Scrubber Kit – A Quick Look

Drillbrush Power Scrubber Kit Pricing

Is it worth the money? I am being perfectly honest when I say I believe it’s worth more than it costs. Let me indulge my inner Scot by explaining why I think you should spend money (it’s against my heritage to advise anyone to spend money):

Say you work at a job that pays you $10 an hour. Now say you scrub your toilet and it takes you 10 minutes to really get the bowl clean. A Drillbrush can do that in 5 minutes or less. If you clean your toilet once a week (and you better!) then you will save 5 minutes per toilet per week. Say you have two toilets. That’s 10 minutes a week, 52 weeks a year, or 520 minutes, or more than 8 hours. At $10 an hour, that’s over $80 in time.

In short, it’s a great deal. There’s also the fact that you’ve never actually cleaned your toilet (or other curved/textured/inset surfaces) as well as a Drillbrush can. We’ll get into why.

*Use Code HOUSEGRAIL

What to Expect From the Drillbrush Power Scrubber Kit

Inside the Drillbrush Power Scrubber Kit box, you get the following:

• 4 inch flat brush (best for carpet, hardwood floors, and cushions)
• 2 inch detail brush (best for smaller areas)
• Bullet-shaped original brush (best for curves and contours on furniture)

Drillbrush Power Scrubber Kit Review Contents

Quality

The Drillbrush is exactly what you would expect for a bristled scrubber. As far as toilet brushes go (and I KNOW it’s used for other things, but it’s so darn good at that and shaped like one!), it’s likely the highest quality and best design I’ve ever used.

Variety

This is where I got a little confused initially. There are a lot of Drillbrushes. Small circles, medium circles, toilet brushes, different colors, and some have more than one color on the same brush.

Obviously, the shapes were for different surfaces, but surely the colors aren’t purely aesthetic.

Turns out they aren’t. The colors signify how rigid the bristles are. The more rigid, the harder the bristles and the more aggressive they are. The harder bristled brushes are used for rougher surfaces where you have to scrub harder. The website and included material (and the printing on the outside of the box) do a good job of explaining how it works.

Reach

Unless you get a set with an extension, you quickly find out you can’t really fit a drill in your toilet. Man, that’s a sentence I never thought I’d type.

Similarly, you’ll have a hard time reaching the back of a dog kennel, inside of a chicken coop, or the bottom of a deep sink, and you’ll have to get down on your hands and knees to scrub the floor. Scrubbing on hands and knees started when mankind invented floors in the 15th century, and it should stay there. We’re civilized and deserve to stand when we scrub the tile!

Is the Drillbrush Power Scrubber Kit a Good Value?

It is! The Drillbrush lets you clean many surfaces (I have used it on a kennel I repurposed as a chicken coop, my tile floor, my wood floor, cast iron pans, and obviously a toilet) with power tools. This is much better than cleaning surfaces without power tools. I do not say this only because I am a man that loves power tools, although that is a contributing factor. I say it because scrubbing gunk off of things that need to be clean sucks.

Anything that scrubs for me faster than I can scrub means the part of my life that sucks just got shorter, and the part that doesn’t suck, or at least sucks less, got longer. That’s a good value for half the cost of a movie popcorn.

I should probably mention here that I used different brushes for various surfaces. I did not, for example, use the depooping brush on my cast iron pan.

FAQ

Does it remove pet hair from upholstery or floors?

While Drillbrush does advertise that the bullet-shaped brush removes pet hair, I did not find it that effective. It might be due to the upholstery on my furniture. Or I may have needed to slightly dampen the furniture’s surface with a light spritz of water to help the brush collect the fur.

Where would I use a Drillbrush?

Anywhere you need to scrub something that’s caked on. Cast iron pots (I’m not kidding. This lets you use a drill for doing dishes.), kennels, toilets. Especially toilets. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate how easy this thing makes it to clean a toilet.

What kind of drill works best with the Drillbrush Power Scrubber Kit?

Should you get a Bosch 11264EVS Max Hammer with a 1⅝ drive? Absolutely. But not for the Drillbrush. What you really need is just about any common drill from a big box retailer or local hardware store. I always advise shopping local when possible. I would probably get a rechargeable, and if you want to get fancy, get one with a little light on it. It makes cleaning a bit easier and helps you see what you’re brushing.

What Drillbrush is best for -insert task here-?

If the surface is really sturdy (cast iron, toilet bowl, pool), get a stiff brush. If the surface is finished, or not as robust (wood floors, certain automobile exteriors/interiors), use one that’s softer. The site guides you on which ones are ideal. If the surface is mostly flat (pool, floor), get one of the flat, round brushes that let you cover a lot of surface area. If the surface is curved or has a lot of little niches (some kennel floors/corners, cast iron pans, toilet bowls), use a toilet bowl shaped brush. They’re surprisingly versatile and can get gunk out of most areas pretty well!

*Use Code HOUSEGRAIL

Our Experience With the Drillbrush Power Scrubber Kit

I got three sets of Drillbrushes. After figuring out what each was for, I decided to try them, and found out that they’re much too short and stubby for most jobs without an extension. The two roles I did not prefer an extension for were cleaning cast iron and spots on the hood of my car, where the absence of an extension gave me superior control over the brush.

I did not get an extension from Drillbrush to test, so I cannot speak to it personally.  I attached these to what I already know and love –  a Diablo extension I already had at home. They’re not terribly expensive, but the one extension costs more than a set of Drillbrushes. That said, it worked fantastically well!

The first thing I cleaned (of course) was a toilet. It was…amazing. I won’t say it was a religious experience, but I was stunned. Let me back up: the toilet was at a recently vacated rental property and let’s just say the tenant hadn’t cleaned it in a while. Yuck.

So, the Drillbrush had its work cut out for it, and man, did it work. It loosened, it removed, it scrubbed, and I was so thankful I left my drill on the low speed setting because even with that there was a little splashback. Thankfully not enough to hit me, but it was a near thing, and I’m still planning on discussing it with my therapist.

One more sincere observation on the toilet: this brush gets under the rim around the edge of the bowl where the water comes out. You may think you get under the rim, but you don’t. I also used this brush on a very clean (or so I thought) toilet of my own, and it spun out all kinds of…oh yeah, I can’t use that word here…from under that rim. And it did it fast.

Lastly, those brown marks left in the after photos are hard water stains, not poo. That’s deposited iron and no amount of brushing or scrubbing removes it, only the use of appropriate cleaning chemicals.

I got special permission to include photos of the toilet for this article. Gross? Sure. But the entire point is to help you understand if this is a good product for you, and if you have a toilet, it is!

I used it on my chicken coop and it helped loosen a lot of the crud. I used it on a cast iron pan as well. The Drillbrush almost makes it look like a polished surface!

I’m sincerely considering getting one of my old wired drills and a set of Drillbrushes to keep next to the sink. Who knew Ryobi belongs right next to KitchenAid on my sink counter? Certainly not my wife, who couldn’t be happier with the clean dishes. We’ll stay quiet on what she thinks about the aesthetics of a bright green drill in the kitchen.

Conclusion

The Drillbrush is an innovative concept that is executed well in the real world. It really does make many kinds of cleaning easier. The negatives I’ve seen about it online are the result of applying it to something simply not applicable to its design. Caked on crud that you could scrub off with a hand brush and hot water. That’s the target, and if you hit it with this tool, you’ll save yourself a lot of spent effort and time. It’s a remarkably good value for the price if you already own a drill and the only product I can recall reviewing that has earned multiple places in my home. Get one and use it the way I have. Then come up with some novel uses you have for it. You won’t regret the experience!