Problems with MX-8 Elite - Considering hand vacuum.

[JoshAZ]

I'm a new home/pool owner. The pool did not come with any vacuum.

I purchased an mx-8 elite vacuum and have been running it through the skimmer line (when i can get it to prime w/ the vacuum on which hasn't been lately).

I'm considering trying to sell or return this thing for 2 reasons:

1. I have a beachfront entrance pool and the cleaner crawls out of the water until it sucks air. The skimmer is closer to the shallow-side than the deep side so no way to limit the tube.

2. The past two days I've been unable to get enough suction through the skimmer line when the vacuum is attached. A ton of cavitation in the pump and it's only half full. It has some vent that opens up in the tube and starts sucking in water directly to the pipe as well as a bit through the vacuum.

Any advice?

 

[needsajet]

I think you're saying that the flow adjuster that came with the cleaner is sucking water. That's an intentional part of the design, and allows part of the water to come in through the flow adjuster so that the vacuum has the right amount of suction. It sounds like the cleaner itself is plugged up with debris and needs to be cleaned, and the flow adjuster is not able to let enough water in to satisfy the pump.

With the flow adjuster not letting enough water in, and if the cleaner is not plugged up, you might have, or be able to get, a vacuum plate for your skimmer which has an adjustable relief valve built into it so the pump can't get starved of water. Glad you're correcting this because it's a bad situation for your pump.

As far as climbing up the beach and out of the water, I don't have any ideas. Hopefully someone else does. I have a similar size pool and it used to take me around 20/25 minutes to manually vacuum, vs. 10/15 minutes to put the cleaner in and out of the water each time. I like my cleaner, but I didn't gain as much time as I thought I might.