First Robot Purchase Advice

[bryankloos]

Hi All,

I'm hoping some of you with more experience can help guide me with the purchase of a pool robot.

I have a 32x16 vinyl lined oval pool which I have been manually cleaning for the past 3 seasons. Its a pain to vac as my pump is an oversized single speed, and my filter is an undersized cartridge. Too much flow, and/or clogged filters and little flow has made manual vac way too tiresome. I plan to address the pump and filter next year, but would also like to get a robot to hopefully eliminate the need to manually vac.

I'm fairly flexible on budget, but would look towards on-line year end sales.

I've read up on the Polaris, but seems some have issues with build and parts availability.
I'm not familiar with much else.

If it were your money, given the above sized pool, what would you recommend and why?

All help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Bryan

 

[JVTrain]

I have an AquaVac (now Hayward) Tigershark. It does a good job on my pool. Parts are easy to come by as the robot has been made for years and is still made today. It's great for fine dust, bugs, worms and a few leaves. Does not do well with lots of leaves, much like most robot cleaners. It climbs the walls fairly reliably as long as the water is warm. In early spring, late summer/fall when the water cools down it's doesn't climb as well. I run it about 2 times per week, never manually vacuum my pool, just some occasional manual brushing.

I've also heard good reviews here on TFP about the Dolphin Nautilus and Nautilus Plus. The Nautilus has been around for a while and I would GUESS that parts are readily available. The Nautilus Plus is pretty new, not sure on parts.

 

[jsfraga]

Hey bryankloos,

Thanks for your question I actually had the same. I'm a new pool owner about a week into it now. I'm a complete newbie noob to pools taking things one step at a time. I really need to upgrade my pool vac I currently have the polaris 280 which is working great on large items on the bottom (leaves and larger debris) but looking for something that can actually scrub the walls for me. All in all if money isn't an issue it seems from my early research that the Dolphin Premier would be best on market right now as far as home pools would go. I'll leave you some links on the bottom I used to kind of arrive to this decision, so far. Anyone have any advice or experience to share on this bot? Thanks!!

http://www.poolexpress.com/automati...d01kMLpuunOMBbppG39U7v_0-vR-FsIUicaAi4e8P8HAQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOZMebaXztA

 

[Divin Dave]

Hi Bryan,
I have a Nautilus and am very happy with it. It climbs the walls and cleans them very well.

In general, the Dolphins and Tigershark (hayward) cleaners enjoy a good reputation for reliablility and performance.

 

[wayner]

I have one of the simplest and cheapest automatic vacuumers - the Kreepy Krauly. I put it in the pool about 1-2 days a week and it keeps it clean. My pool doesn't get too much debris so I don't know how it handles a really heavy dump of leaves but it is fine for my purposes and is easy, since it just uses the pool skimmer suction line, and cheap.

I never vacuum manually with the pool vacuum on a stick - if the KK is having trouble with one area I dive in and use the hose from the KK to manually suck up the debris.

 

[Isaac-1]

One of the big questions to ask is what sort of debris gets into your pool, small leaves and dust / dirt are fairly easy to deal with, large (tropical) leaves, nuts, acorns, berries, etc. is where the problems tend to be as they can get caught in the tracks and other mechanisms of a robot cleaner.