Vacuuming woes

[KarenT]

Have had this AG Intex pool about 8 years now and have never been happy with vacuuming. I use a standard head bought from Amazon or Home Depot, etc. and the hose is hooked directly to the intake that goes to my pump. The intake has a screen which collects all the trash I vacuum up and when I take off the hose it all gets dumped back into the pool as soon as the suction is off. If I leave the pump on I cannot pull it off the screen; it's sucked halfway in, and anyway a lot of it is too fine to just grab by hand. I have an over the side floating skimmer basket and have tried putting my vacuum hose into that but the junk still gets pulled through it and onto that screen.

Looking through the forum it looks like almost all the vacuum questions are about various robots, etc. Am I really the only person out there without one? I really don't mind DOING the vacuuming, just need to figure a way to actually get the stuff out of the pool correctly! Is an in-the-wall skimmer the answer or is that a waste of time/money?

I should add that most of what is on my pool bottom are 1 inch spruce needles. yes, the tree needs to go but at the moment I can't afford what they are going to charge me to cut it down (it's > 70 years old and huge but is slowly dying from some fungus, causing a lot of needle drop during storms - it's about 10 feet from the pool)

 

[Richard320]

You're not alone. I still manually vacuum.

If you're using a full-sized vacuum hose, how about buying a leaf canister that fits inline? Something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Hayward-W530-Capacity-Canister-Replacement/dp/B001E2D62W

 

[KarenT]

Hmm, I had not seen those before. It looks like most people are using them in conjunction with a robot cleaner but I guess it could work manually. Mixed reviews, though, on that one, lots of breakage and saying it doesn't fit standard hose? Thanks for the idea, though; I'll look around more.

 

[Pv2]

I would echo getting a cheap leaf cannister, and a roll of gorilla tape or just spring for the Intex robot, it works pretty good. I too used to enjoy manually vacuuming my pool (way more than cleaning the house) but had the same issues with the dang inlet screen on the pool wall. I tried the little robot cleaner and have not gone back!

 

[CeltiaK]

I used to have this problem too. Instead of pulling the vacuum apart underwater, I would disconnect the hose from the suction first, then pull the vacuum out of the water to empty it. It was no fun when there was a lot to vacuum up, as each time I emptied, I would have to rinse it out and reprime the hose to reconnect and keep vacuuming.

After 2.5 summers of this, I gave up and bought a Wanda the Whale. Life changing!

 

[domct203]

I had the same issue, and considered cutting out that grate that the debris gets stuck on.

Instead I changed all the wall fittings to standard Hayward fittings. This lets me use a leaf canister when vacuuming.

I also installed a Hayward thru wall skimmer (link in signature), one of the best things I ever did for the pool.

 

[tboy555]

I had the same issue, and considered cutting out that grate that the debris gets stuck on.

Instead I changed all the wall fittings to standard Hayward fittings. This lets me use a leaf canister when vacuuming.

I also installed a Hayward thru wall skimmer (link in signature), one of the best things I ever did for the pool.

Dom, I like the look of your setup. I've been considering doing something similar to my brand new 14' ultra frame. A couple questions, do you support the hard pipe at all? I dont see it but even the 1-1/4 fittings and hoses seem to pull on the liner some and yours look like they do not. Also, what is the "bare" pole for that is coming up out of the ground?

....off to read your link in the sig about the through wall....