Best pool cleaner for above ground?

[QuiltinMom]

Well, for some reason, I was not receiving notifications when people were posting to my thread.

We have still be struggling with Wanda. We have hooked her up with the new hose and she still doesn't move around. We also have a vacuum head that goes on the end of a pole. We tried it last night. Hubby was in the pool with the vacuum and I was outside the pool trying everything we could to get it to work. It had really great suction. If you hold it up off of the floor you can see debris being sucked in to it. When he would put it on the floor then it wanted to get stuck on the floor because ther was so much suction. He would keep it moving along and then all of a sudden we would lose prime on the pump.

Our pump does not have a "vacuum" setting, so we turn it off, hook up the hose, then turn it back on and just put it on filter. Is this correct or are we supposed to use another setting?

I am wondering if this is a problem with Wanda or if is our pump. We get the same issue with the vacuum head as we do with Wanda.

Still looking for suggestions. I am getting really tired of hauling in chlorine and maintaining SLAM level because the water isn't clear. Actually, the water looked really clear the other day, but we can see dirt of some sort on the bottom. I think it is algea. When we get in the pool it stirs up really easily and then the water quickly turns mirky and you can no longer see the bottom.

Please, please, please, any help you can offer would be apprecaited. THANKS!!!

 

[Krispy]

I don't know anything about Wanda, so my advice may be irrelevant, but for my Hayward Navigator suction cleaner they say that the flow rate is paramount - too much suction definitely does not just mean it cleans the pool faster! it is important that it travels at the correct speed. I have a Tee-connector to put on the suction hose (in & under the water) and that has an adjustable screw cap on it which I can use to increase / decrease the amount of water that is sucked through the side arm of the Tee - i.e. adjusting the amount of suction at the cleaner end - so that I can get the rate just right.

I guess you could use that with your vac arrangement, but you would need hose from pump / skimmer etc. to the pool, then the Tee, then a hose to your cleaner / manual vac. It is important that the Tee is under water so it does not suck in air. No idea how you would achieve that? (I have a VAC connection on the side wall of my pool, so I put the Tee directly onto that, and then the hose to the cleaner onto the Tee.)

Because I have a dedicated vac point on my pool wall (it has a separate pipe / valve to the pump) I can also adjust my skimmers to be "slightly on" which reduces the flow to the cleaner. I use that to adjust it from time to time rather than having to fiddle about under the water surface with the Tee. Sounds like you only have the single connect form Vac hose to your pump / filter? Or is there some way you could slightly turn on a skimmer at the same time to devide the flow?

Sorry, I haven;t read the whole thread so apologies if I'm answering completely the wrong question.

P.S. I had a thought: You said you connect your VAC hose directly to the pump / filter. This is presumably instead of the hose to the skimmer / sump? Could you connect both hoses, with a Tee, to your pump / filter instead? That would split the flow ... you would then need a valve on the hose to the skimmer / sump so you could reduce that until the suction to the cleaner is correct.

 

[QuiltinMom]

Thank you for your response. Maybe I mis spoke about how we connect the hose. We have a 40" hose that we have an adapter pipe thing that gets plugged in to the bottom of the skimmer after the skimmer basket is removed. We just got the pipe adapter when we got the new hose because the end of the hose would not fit in to the bottom of the skimmer.

We do have a shut off valve directly under the skimmer that we use to turn off the water to the filter pump when we need to empty the basket in the pump. Wonder if we could try adjusting this valve closed a little bit to reduce the amount of suction. Or is that going to increase the suction power and not allow enough water to flow through? Certainly something we haven't thought about. We can try that and report back.

Or if the pump is losing prime is it not getting enough water flow? Could we drill a small hole in the pipe adapter that is under water and allow a little bit more water to flow through the skimmer and to the pump and filter.

I did some reading last night on our pump and it said to just run the pump on filter for vacuuming or to waste if there was heavy debris. So that question is answered.

THANKS for the suggestion. We will do some more investigating and adjust the valve to see what happens. I know we are both completely frustrated at this point. The pool would be sparkling beautiful if this stuff was off the bottom. This vacuum process is our only major issue. Water temp has even been wonderful at 84*-86*.

 

[QuiltinMom]

I have a Tee-connector to put on the suction hose (in & under the water) and that has an adjustable screw cap on it which I can use to increase / decrease the amount of water that is sucked through the side arm of the Tee - i.e. adjusting the amount of suction at the cleaner end - so that I can get the rate just right.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!!! I think you may have solved our issue. We haven't hooked up Wanda yet, but we closed the valve, slightly, that is directly below our skiimmer. This seems to have made a huge difference. Hubby was able to use the vacuum head for quite a while the other night and we didn't have the problems that we have had before.

I think I am going to purchase a new Wanda type cleaner. A good clean start is probably a good choice now that we have the suction figured out. THANKS again Krispy!!!!! (P.S. My Dad is from Bury, just outside of Manchester!!!)

 

[Ncdamsel]

I have had good luck with Hayward Aqua critter


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