Doheny's Discovery, S200, Active20, Triton owners club

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bbrock said:
I have been subscribed and following this thread for some time. I currently have a Polaris 280, for which I have a love/hate relationship. I am intrigued and what I read regarding how well this Doheny robot cleans, but I am quite hesitant of switching from the convenience of my live-in-the-pool Polaris 280. I never have to take it out, but with the Doheny I would. Am I missing something? Why would I trade super convenience for more work of dragging the Doheny in/out? Not to mention, even though the Doheny sounds like it can shut off after a cycle, it still requires the user to activate it. My other plus for my Polaris is that it is set on a timer.
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So theres a weekly timer that lets you run it a few times a week. At the end of the week (after you start it) the timer stops. This implies that the Dolphin is going to stay in the water for the week. At that time, if not sooner, you should clean it and free up chord if needed.

I had the 280, and while my 280 ran every day, the Dolphin does a much better job running 3x a week. Also, there's nothing on the Dolphin to mess with, wheras the 280 needs adjusting here and there.

One other perk is that the Dolphin isn't as obvious in the water when swimming. If you leave it in.

What do you hate about the 280?
 
Yep, mine is set to run daily for a week. I take it out at the end of the week, clean the basket and detangle the cord. If you never take your cleaner out of the pool how do you empty it? :)
 
Well, that is taking what I said very literal. Of course I do take my Polaris out to empty the debris. Probably every two weeks.

Pros: just leave the Polaris in the water all the time. It's light and easy to take out or put back in water. Can quickly disconnect from the wall if needed. Once I get it dialed in with the thrust yet, it does well in the pool. It works well under my solar blanket.

Cons: on the flipside, sometimes it actually will climb the wall and get caught on its line at the universal wall fitting and get caught up in the solar blanket (infrequent but can still occur), you have to play with the thruster jet every so often to get it dialed in so that it's cleaning the whole pool, it will miss things even if I run it daily for one hour 15 minutes, must run my pool pump at a higher RPM (I suppose the Doheny would use less energy), parts fail but I'm not sure if it's any more frequent than the Doheney ( knock on wood, I have not had to replace any parts for quite some time; may just get a new extra leaf bag), doesn't do especially well in the shallow side where my cake steps start.
 
pooldv said:
Yep, mine is set to run daily for a week. I take it out at the end of the week, clean the basket and detangle the cord. If you never take your cleaner out of the pool how do you empty it? :)
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How flexible is the timer -- can you put it in and say "run at 10am every day for a week", or is it just "run now, and at the same time each of the next 6 days"? While I guess it doesn't matter as much because the main pump doesn't need to be running, and presumably the robot isn't very loud, I prefer to have the cleaner run mid morning, so the pool is completely clean before we go in for the afternoon. And I'm often not available/won't remember/too lazy to go out and start it; I like just dumping it back in the pool when we're done for the night and knowing it will run at the right time.

Another Polaris 280 with a mostly-love relationship -- our "Splash" works without complaint year round, in water from 42 degrees to 90+ (even when the hoses are so cold and stiff that the tail doesn't swing, he still does his job). All he asks is that I help by scooping out the main blobs of leaves 2-3 times in the winter when he's overwhelmed. But he's loud and obnoxious (spraying us), uses a lot of electricity, refuses to brush (!), and probably doesn't clean as well as a real robot does.
 
For those Doheny owners who leave it in the pool and take it out once a week to empty the debris and detangle the cord, how well does it work towards the end of the week when the cord has gotten tangled?

I'm trying to understand or picture how tangled the cord gets and if it is still able to get to all of the parts of the pool with a tangled cord. Also, how long is the cord? Aren't you going to need an extension cord but there in lies the problem because you can't have that going in the water.
 
It works fine, it is a non-issue. My cord gets fairly tangled up but it doesn't impact the movement of the bot. The cord unwinds enough for it to make it across the pool. The cord from the bot to the power supply is a low voltage cord and is 60' long. There are pics of my tangled cord in my pool thread, link in sig.
 
On cord length, here's the math. I have a rectangle pool 18 x 38. The cord enters the pool at the middle of the long side. So the farthest my cord needs to go is to one of the far corners. That is ~26' (using A2 + B2 = C2 so 18 x 18 = 324, 19 x 19 = 361, 324+361=685, SQ RT of 685 = 26). And another 2' covers that fact that it needs to go down to 8.5' deep in my pool at the far deep corner (math not shown for 2' but trust me). Then your Power Center should be 10' from the pool edge, so add 10' + 26' + 2'= 38'. So 38' of cord will do a 38' long rectangle pool given the above point of entry. The Power Center cord is probably 6' long, so as long as you have an outlet within a 16' radius (10' out of pool plus 6' power cord) from the cord's point of entry into the pool, even a 40' cord would cover a 40', more or less. Though you'd want a foot or two of wiggle room.
 
My cord enters the pool with about 25' of pool to cover at the farthest point, plus 4' of water depth. The point where it enters the water is close to 20' from the power supply. So, I've got about 12'ish of cord to spare for tangling up. But, as I said, cord tangle is no issue at all.
 
Been following this thread for a while and pulled the trigger on a Doheny Discovery priced at 699. A few questions for the gurus:

- I have a vinyl liner pool. Hopefully that is okay with these brushes?
- I'm a little confused by the coarse-filter/fine-filter discussion. Will I get everything I need with the order, or do I need to buy something else separately? After the pool opening, I've had a layer of fine silt-like matter on the pool floor so I need the finest filter I can get.
- For all the owners without a caddy (I didn't get one either), do you just store it upside down? Or on the side as I saw in one posted pic? Any clever DIY ideas for storage to avoid the flattening issue are welcome :)
 

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I store mine on the side. I did upside down once and it was much easier to do the side. Some folks have cut a couple of 2x4s for it to sit on. I've got a shop full scrap lumber but haven't bothered to work on that yet. :)

My Discovery came with a set of pleated fine filters and a set of coarse mesh filters. You can install one set or the other. I've never installed the pleated set because the mesh filter catches sand and sediment just fine and it is easy to hose out. It seems like the pleated filters would be a fair bit more involved to hose out. Although, a few folks have encouraged me to give the fine filters a try and that they are great. I haven't tried them yet.
 
pooldv said:
... Although, a few folks have encouraged me to give the fine filters a try and that they are great. I haven't tried them yet.
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You don't know what you're missing....you'll be amazed at the gunk that washes off of them!

And they are very easy to clean....
 
LOL! Dude, the mesh filters are sooo amazing. I can hose them off in less than a minute. :)


Dude, they take like 4 secs to pop into place...it's really not that big a lift....
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We must budget our time wisely. I can answer several posts in 4 seconds. :-D
 
If you use a solar blanket/cover, then this question is suited for you. How does it perform under your solar blanket? Do you leave it in the pool as well?

As for all, what do you do with the plugged in power cord now running across your pool deck? No unsightly or unsafe (as far as tripping) power cords across the deck with my Polaris.
 
My robot stays in under the solar cover. It works fine under the cover. My deck doesn't go all the wwy around the pool and the cord is in a spot with no deck. But, most of the time when we're swimming, especially, with extra people we uptake the cleaner out, robot or old school.
 
Is it ok to leave the controller out when it rains? I don't leave it out on purpose but sometime it will start to rain once I start the cycle.
 

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