The Scoop on Automatic Pool Cleaners

In this video, Ask the Pool Guy addresses pool cleaners and gives his opinion on which he likes best and why. Something that we address on occasion is the types of pool cleaners, what’s the best pool cleaner on the market.

Again, I’m all about the in floor systems just because they take care of themselves, they take care of the pool. If you are going to have an in pool cleaner, there is three basic types.

There is the suction side cleaner that works off of your skimmer, or if you a suction port on the side of the pool. That would be like a creepy crawler or some of those brands that … Those are based on water suction, water being drawn through it and then through the skimmer and then through the pump and filter and heater. They tend to be the least expensive on the market and they … Advantage is price. The disadvantage is that they tend to follow certain patterns and if you have time to play with them, it’s better than not having one, but they tend to not do the entire pool, at least in my opinion. That’s a suction side cleaner.

Then you have what is called the pressure side cleaner. That’s water returning after the heater is then sent through a separate pump. Typically, some of them do not have an additional booster pump, but a lot of them do. That is all pressure side, so it’s using water under pressure to move the unit through the water. That will be a Polaris cleaner, that will be an electro cleaner. There are several different cleaners in the market like that. That’s your mid-range price cleaner. Certainly more effective, they are doing a better job of stirring the water up.

The suction side cleaners are simply drawing water out of the pool. The pressure side cleaners are stirring the water up. Stagnant water is where more problems happen. Moving fresh water makes it better.

The third type of cleaner is the robotic. The portable unit, independent, low volt unit that you throw into the pool and it literally scrubs the pool. Dolphin would be one of the brands there. There is a couple of different, aquabot is another brand. Those are designed to scrub and vacuum the pool in whatever pattern and methodology each one of them has. On top of the brands there is also many different models of all of those. I think each one of them has its place. The robotic cleaners, the third one we talked about, tend to be the most expensive, the pressure side the mid range, and then the suction side tend to be the cheapest. If you look at the three of them, there is probably advantages of each of them. I have most … In the last 10 or 15 years mostly sold the separate vacuum robotic cleaners, just because they are easier to use. You don’t have to worry about laying them out and drying out hoses and all that stuff and hooking them in and out. They tend to vacuum the walls, the floor, the entire pool instead of just stirring it up.

Again, based on where you are at in terms of what you want to do and how you want to do it, the lower end ones just require some more work but once you get them tweaked out they are fine. The higher end ones are just kind of no brainer. You don’t have to learn to do anything but put in the water. Music in the videos: “Bright Wish”, “Cipher”, “Sunshine”, “Sunshine (version 2)”, “Wallpaper” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/