Should a robot clean the whole pool?

May 23, 2012
49
Montreal, Canada
Hi, I just bought a Hayward Aquavac 600. I received it yesterday so thought Id put it in as I havent cleaned the pool since the new liner about 10 days ago.

since the pool only had some debris and leaves at the bottom, I decided to just do a floor pass (90 min). came back a while later and it was stopped.
I emptied and restarted. second pass 2 hours later, same thing.

The thing is, even after 2 floor passes it still had not cleaned sand and debris from a bunch of places. inside corners in shallow, both sides of the slope to the deep end where floor meets wall, 3" around the drain, both deep end corners where 2 walls meet floor as well as a whole bunch of flat liner seams that just had dirt sitting in them.
I tried a third pass with the whole pool setting ( 150 mins ) and the same spots were never touched so I pulled out my pole brush and got to work.

Although this does not excuse why the seams are still dirty, I get the feeling that the robot is too big, as it arrives at a wall at an angle, 1 wheel starts to climb, 2 wheels lift off and with only 2 adjacent wheels touching the liner the center is so far off the ground that it can't suck what's in the crack and by the time it sits down again, it's past the corner/wall.

I can honestly say that my decades old suction side Arneson Poolvac Plus did a better job at cleaning the pool without intervention.
This is my first robotic cleaner, am I doing something wrong, am I expecting too much?

Thanks
 
Dont know about the aqua vac but a robot should clean the whole pool in one pass. Most people here have some form of Maytronics robots and they all work great. I know mine cleans my entire pool in one cycle.
 
I would usually just throw the old unit I had in once a week and it would clean everything. I'm seeing that I now have to clean a bit more often so that what it leaves behind doesn't bother me as much and it'll get it next time.

Not great but not worth stressing over either.

Could my pool be too big for the robot at 18X48ish?
 
I have a 65’ long pool that is 10’ - 16’ wide. With my Warrior SE robot, I run it at least two cycles, each of which is 2 hours, or 4 hours total. It’s also cleaning the walls, although it spends the vast majority of the time on the floor. With two cycles it picks up 95%, which isn’t perfect but still a huge time savings. After a lot of wind or a thunderstorm, I may have to run it 3 times.

To help it, I usually brush the corners, which moves debris into the main part of the floor. I brush the tanning ledge and steps anyways before I run the robot, so it’s not much additional time to do this.

Couple of ideas: Drop the robot into a different part of the pool when you start it. It has a learning pattern that it follows each time, so it might do a better job for your particular pool if you start it in a different area. The other idea is to run it even longer. You don’t have to supervise it, so it’s really just a little electricity involved.
 
Thread Status
Hello , This thread has been inactive for over 60 days. New postings here are unlikely to be seen or responded to by other members. For better visibility, consider Starting A New Thread.