Dolphin starts then stops

These “my robot is dead” threads are getting a bit too frequent ….

@mgoblue78 … yeah, it sucks. My “very pricey” S300i died at the 5 year mark and after I tried to revive it but realized that they are not engineered with repair in mind, I’ve sworn off robots forever. Too costly IMHO. Suction side cleaners work just fine in my pool.

mgoblue78 said:

Do you have a suction cleaner you recommend?

Click to expand...

I have a dedicated wall port for connecting a suction hose to. I’ve always used the Pentair Kreepy Krawly Sandshark and it works well in my pool. @Dirk uses the Pentair Rebel wheeled suction cleaner and based on his reviews of it I would like to see how one of those would work in my pool.

But if you’re trying to do a suction cleaner using a skimmer pipe connection, that’s not the greatest setup. Some people have built pools over the years with the idea that they’d just use robots all the time and I think that’s unfortunate because adding a dedicated suction line literally costs nothing in the grand scheme of a pool build and gives flexibility to the pool owner. I, personally, would never build a pool without a dedicated wall port.

JoyfulNoise said:

I have a dedicated wall port for connecting a suction hose to. I’ve always used the Pentair Kreepy Krawly Sandshark and it works well in my pool. @Dirk uses the Pentair Rebel wheeled suction cleaner and based on his reviews of it I would like to see how one of those would work in my pool.

But if you’re trying to do a suction cleaner using a skimmer pipe connection, that’s not the greatest setup. Some people have built pools over the years with the idea that they’d just use robots all the time and I think that’s unfortunate because adding a dedicated suction line literally costs nothing in the grand scheme of a pool build and gives flexibility to the pool owner. I, personally, would never build a pool without a dedicated wall port.

Click to expand...

I wish I could find the post where I said this very thing many years ago. It was when robots were quite the rage and I was quite sure (still am) that I would not be inclined to want to use a robot, and that no one building a pool should assume they would never use a suction port. So I advised in a new pool build thread to add that extra port and home-run it back to the pad, where it could be used for a suction vac or even be converted to a return line should another become unusable for some reason. Like Matt points out, it's just cheap insurance. Adding one after the build is virtually impossible (well, at least financial so).

I just replaced my five-year-old Rebel with Pentair's updated model. I could have rebuilt the old one, but preferred starting fresh (and now I can retain the old one as a back up, just in case, as it still works in a pinch). New one works as good as ever. Not sure if the new model is all that improved, or if the old one was more worn than I realized, but with the same pump RPMs the new one was getting way too close to crawling out of the pool, so I was able to reduce the RPMs by 100. Might be the new style tires, too, but it's definitely improved.

Short version: would still recommend the Rebel.

Sidebar (not to rub it in): the rebuild kit for a Rebel is about 100 bucks. Tires are about $30. The leader hose, which needs replacing periodically, is about $17. And replacing my Rebel meant only replacing the vac head, not the entire system, which was about half the price of new (less than $300 including tax and shipping). So while suction vacs are not impervious from needing repair or replacement, getting them going again is at most in the "few bills" range, not the four-figure range.

My Rebel (after initial purchase) so far is about $50 a year "maintenance fee." That works for me. Oh, and all these "repairs" are dead simple, DIY. No wondering about motors and electronics and making sure you put the thing back together shock-proof (is that a thing, I don't even really know, I just know I don't worry about that). It's actually just a simple mechanical device.