We have an in floor cleaning system (pcc2000) that seems to work ok with larger debris. Just seems to push the dirt around though. The skimmer inlet does not go to the filter but to a pump and to the pcc2000. I want to use a skimmer adapter and manual vacuum to get the dirt that settles. Will a skimmer sock handle the filtering of the dirt? I have thought of a small filter housing similar to a leaf catcher that goes in-line with the hose but have not seen anything like that. (hey, new invention). I may try fabricating an above ground pump/filter to do this. Any ideas? Thanks!
In hose filter for manual vac.
- Thread starter ntrsandman
- Start date
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Way back I had a portable pump, with pump pot attached, that was wired so that I could plug it in at the deck and use it to vacuum the really bad spring time gunk. The water just went out the back and down the hill. That way I didn't have to go down the hill to the pumping station to empty the pump pot (pump strainer basket), which is pretty far away, each time the pot needed emptying.... about every 5 minutes. I'm talking major boo-koos of fall/winter leaves and other debris. I got the idea from a pool guy, who was out here once, with one. I had a shop put one together for me using used parts. Think it cost me about $100.
Instead of discarding the water, like I did, you could attach a hose to the discharge and then put a "SlimeBag" on the end of hose and back into pool. This would catch the fine debris that got through the pump pot. I don't remember what hp the pump was but I wouldn't imagine it would have to be much.
I had forgotten about that little guy until I read your post.
Or you could put a stocking inside the (in-line leaf catcher). It would have to be pretty thick hosiery to catch the finest stuff.
Another option would be a Pool Blaster (Buster), battery powered, that you could attach to the end of a regular pool pole. I have one and love it. I use it with a women's heavy tight, as bag liner, to get the finest silt out of my shallow end. This is the quickest, easiest way to get up fine debris. The finest silt goes right through the sand/silt bag for my Polaris. With my "Aquabot" the silt bag fills too quickly so that it can't make it up the slope from deep end.
A lot of people complain about the long term life span of the batteries in the Pool Buster. I think it is because there is no charge controller in either the PB or the power brick so if you leave it on the charger for much longer than needed for full charge you are shortening the life of the batteries.
gg=alice
Instead of discarding the water, like I did, you could attach a hose to the discharge and then put a "SlimeBag" on the end of hose and back into pool. This would catch the fine debris that got through the pump pot. I don't remember what hp the pump was but I wouldn't imagine it would have to be much.
I had forgotten about that little guy until I read your post.
Or you could put a stocking inside the (in-line leaf catcher). It would have to be pretty thick hosiery to catch the finest stuff.
Another option would be a Pool Blaster (Buster), battery powered, that you could attach to the end of a regular pool pole. I have one and love it. I use it with a women's heavy tight, as bag liner, to get the finest silt out of my shallow end. This is the quickest, easiest way to get up fine debris. The finest silt goes right through the sand/silt bag for my Polaris. With my "Aquabot" the silt bag fills too quickly so that it can't make it up the slope from deep end.
A lot of people complain about the long term life span of the batteries in the Pool Buster. I think it is because there is no charge controller in either the PB or the power brick so if you leave it on the charger for much longer than needed for full charge you are shortening the life of the batteries.
gg=alice
- Jul 1, 2009
- 101
Another option would be a Pool Blaster (Buster), battery powered, that you could attach to the end of a regular pool pole. I have one and love it. I use it with a women's heavy tight, as bag liner, to get the finest silt out of my shallow end. This is the quickest, easiest way to get up fine debris. The finest silt goes right through the sand/silt bag for my Polaris. With my "Aquabot" the silt bag fills too quickly so that it can't make it up the slope from deep end.
The Pool Blaster looks like what I may need. My pool's plumbing really leaves no options.
How long have you had your PB? I have read that they have some battery life/charger issues. Mostly after the first season.
Unknown if the failures are do to lack of maintenance etc. Would be a large pill to swallow if I dropped $200+ to clean my pool for one season.
The Pool Blaster looks like what I may need. My pool's plumbing really leaves no options.
How long have you had your PB? I have read that they have some battery life/charger issues. Mostly after the first season.
Unknown if the failures are do to lack of maintenance etc. Would be a large pill to swallow if I dropped $200+ to clean my pool for one season.
ntrsandman said:Another option would be a Pool Blaster (Buster), battery powered, that you could attach to the end of a regular pool pole. I have one and love it. I use it with a women's heavy tight, as bag liner, to get the finest silt out of my shallow end. This is the quickest, easiest way to get up fine debris. The finest silt goes right through the sand/silt bag for my Polaris. With my "Aquabot" the silt bag fills too quickly so that it can't make it up the slope from deep end.
The Pool Blaster looks like what I may need. My pool's plumbing really leaves no options.
How long have you had your PB? I have read that they have some battery life/charger issues. Mostly after the first season.
Unknown if the failures are do to lack of maintenance etc. Would be a large pill to swallow if I dropped $200+ to clean my pool for one season.
Sorry I didn't reply to this earlier. Many battery chargers and/or battery chargers, in devices, do not have a charge controller; i.e., the batteries can/will be fried if the device is left charging too long. This was a common issue, for example, in the early iRobot Scoobas (floor washing vac) that came with an external battery charging unit that had no cut off controller (and still doesn't have, I think, a controller of any kind to switch to trickle charge when the battery nears full charge). The batteries, that normally last over a year, with once or twice weekly charge/discharge cycles were being killed (fried) in as little as a few weeks. This was partially remedied by iRobot by, 1) The most costly way - ship out new battery when product was in mafc. warranty period - virtually few questions asked - I'm sure they shipped out 10s of thousands of replacement batteries and multiple batteries to the same persons, This was for the first unit #5900 2) Improve internal battery charging in the next model of the Scooba, #5800, and not include the external battery charger with the 'bot, 3) Send out free OSMOs (a little gadget that you attach to the robot to update firmware, (programming) to update the older #5900s. Many of us over came the issue by putting a timer on the external charger to have it turn off after a certain period (I have three external chargers, all connected to a timer and never charge the batteries over 3 hours, but usually less, as I don't regularly deplete the charge all the way down (bad for battery). Every month or so I deplete the battery to refresh it. Then a couple of inventive people started making Li-ion batteries for the Scooba and Roomba. They have many advantages, including, they don't heat up while charging or while being used, i.e., heat is one of the worst enemies for a battery. The Li-ions are much lighter in weight so there is less stress on the robots. And the really good guys, who know what they are doing, put charge limiters inside the battery pack. BTW... Although most, if not all, of the newer model Scoobas don't come with an external charger, you can still purchase the external chargers for the Scooba. The last one I purchased, last summer, still didn't have any battery charging instructions, pertaining to over charging and killing a battery, in the manual.
Anyway, I think this may be one of the biggest issues with the Pool Buster (blaster); no charging control to protect the battery. I charge mine for a few hours when it is running low, and then don't put it back on charger until it needs charging. My PB with its original battery are, I'm guessing, at least 6 months old, and it has had a whole bunch of charge/recharge cycles as I use it a lot. It is still giving the same run time as it did when it was new. I read about the battery problems before I purchased the PB. I'm a battery gadget addict so I have a lot of user experience with the ins and outs of rechargeable batteries and I do frequent forums where this is discussed regularly. I don't remember the manual containing any instruction for proper charging when I purchased the PB. I, recently, checked the latest online manual, and it does caution to charge and then remove from charger for storage. The big problem with this, as I see it, is that the charging light, on the PB never changes color, say from red to green when the battery is fully charged. Maybe this has been changed but mine is not that old and is of current production date when I purchased it.
I use very heavy tights to line the bag. That is the only thing that will catch my very fine silt, of course, picking up virtually all of the sand. Running mine, in the shallow end, after puppy swim time, and letting the silt settle out some to bottom, the tight clogs with silt about every 5 minutes but if it were only sand and other debris you probably wouldn't need the heavy tight (you could go with a support hose instead which catches most things) and you could go much longer without changing out the bag liner.
I love my PB and will continue to take good care of it AND use it "hard".
gg=alice
I'm replacing my working 1.5 hp (SF 1.5), hopefully this week, with a Pentair Intelliflo VF (supposed to be here tomorrow). Several considerations here. For a while now, reading a lot of posts here I've become aware that it might not be a good idea to send so much sand through the pumps impeller when using the vac side Tracker 4X cleaner. This was never a consideration for me as I've always used either a pressure side cleaner or a robotic that has an internal filter bag to catch most of the sand that ends up in the pool. I've only had the vac side cleaner for a few months, and it does do great for the silt but I want to avoid so much sand going through the impeller. I like to use the vac side when the pool is especially filled with silt (almost always). When it is like that, the filter bag on the robotic clogs up in less than an hour with silt (I use the NastyBags that are way less expensive than the Aquabot bags. They are much finer than the regular mesh Abot bag and almost as fine as they Abot sand/silt bags but don't clog up quite as fast as the Abot bag.) And I have not found any liner for the pressure side Polaris that will catch the silt. I just ordered the disposable bags for the Polaris (not the sock type liner that doesn't catch my silt ) and I'm hoping I'll be able to clean and reuse them like I do for the "disposable" Aquabot type bags I love. Otherwise, they will be way too expensive to use regularly use.
At any rate I'm thinking and imagining just what I can do to catch the sand, while using, the vac cleaner. I'm not too concerned about the silt going through the impeller as the sand. So I'm going to be using different materials as a bag liner for the leaf canister that will catch the sand but let the silt go through. If it is too fine it will clog too quickly with the silt requiring several change out of liners per cleaning cycle. Too much hassle. A jury rigged SlimeBag in the canister would probably restrict the flow too much and it would certainly catch the silt to well making cleaning of bag too frequent. Using one of the vac plates for the skimmer so that a skimmer sock can be used would present the same silt clogging problems for me.
I'll update this as I try different things.
Another thing I'm thinking about is using the old pump as a trash pump just like I did before. Again the issues of sand going through the impeller. So I'm probably going to be using whatever I come up with for the vac cleaner, leaf bag liner, when I need to use the trash pump for quick manual vacuum cleanups of the pool when it needs to look great in a short amount of time. And rather than throw the waste water away, I'm getting a Simebag to polish the water going back into pool. That will make the trash pump lean and mean (no attached rigid filter to trash pump).
There have been many times, over the years when I couldn't use the main pump for filtering, circulation, and cleaning, or the main filter, like right now while the pool is partially closed, fearing another Big Freeze. I couldn't keep the pump on because the old filter was needing back washing every 24 hours. Another time was when there was a major leak, we couldn't find, for several months. Keeping the water level up to the skimmer cost several hundred dollars a month. Why not just let the water go through the main drain? Well, there are, usually, too many leaves in the pool that I don't want being sucked into the pump pot that has the potential to get to the impeller. Lots of stuff that makes it to the impeller can slow it down or even clogging it enough to burn up a motor. I let the water go down to the wall light (where I, eventually discovered the leak - where cord goes out the bucket) and used the robot cleaner to clean the pool and do a decent amount of filtering and lots of circulation. This past spring the motor went out on my booster pump for Polaris. It would have been nice to have the trash pump to run the Polaris (see below) until I could get a new motor put in.
Another thing I'm going to try is using the trash pump for running the pressure side Polaris by reversing the hoses. I'll still need to consider filtering particles out of the water before running the water through the impeller and filtering even smaller particles from the pump to the Polaris. Years ago I rigged up the fitting for pressure Polaris to hook to a hose using clean tap water from the outside spigot. It worked great and I didn't have to be concerned with filtering particulates from the feed water. BUT that is a big water waste as you have to keep lowering the water level in pool.
Anyway, I'm mulling the issues over and will be trying some ideas out next week and on. One main consideration is adding head (resistance) for differing needs. The old pump is really powerful. BTW... it, as many pumps are, is dual voltage, so it can be wired for 120v or 220. They usually come pre wired for 220v. I'll be rewiring it (simple procedure) and attaching a heavy cord, with three prong plug. I may just put a GFI in line (as some of my appliances have) or just keep a GFI module with it for when I loan it out to friends, just in case they don't have a GFI protected outlet.
gg=alice
At any rate I'm thinking and imagining just what I can do to catch the sand, while using, the vac cleaner. I'm not too concerned about the silt going through the impeller as the sand. So I'm going to be using different materials as a bag liner for the leaf canister that will catch the sand but let the silt go through. If it is too fine it will clog too quickly with the silt requiring several change out of liners per cleaning cycle. Too much hassle. A jury rigged SlimeBag in the canister would probably restrict the flow too much and it would certainly catch the silt to well making cleaning of bag too frequent. Using one of the vac plates for the skimmer so that a skimmer sock can be used would present the same silt clogging problems for me.
I'll update this as I try different things.
Another thing I'm thinking about is using the old pump as a trash pump just like I did before. Again the issues of sand going through the impeller. So I'm probably going to be using whatever I come up with for the vac cleaner, leaf bag liner, when I need to use the trash pump for quick manual vacuum cleanups of the pool when it needs to look great in a short amount of time. And rather than throw the waste water away, I'm getting a Simebag to polish the water going back into pool. That will make the trash pump lean and mean (no attached rigid filter to trash pump).
There have been many times, over the years when I couldn't use the main pump for filtering, circulation, and cleaning, or the main filter, like right now while the pool is partially closed, fearing another Big Freeze. I couldn't keep the pump on because the old filter was needing back washing every 24 hours. Another time was when there was a major leak, we couldn't find, for several months. Keeping the water level up to the skimmer cost several hundred dollars a month. Why not just let the water go through the main drain? Well, there are, usually, too many leaves in the pool that I don't want being sucked into the pump pot that has the potential to get to the impeller. Lots of stuff that makes it to the impeller can slow it down or even clogging it enough to burn up a motor. I let the water go down to the wall light (where I, eventually discovered the leak - where cord goes out the bucket) and used the robot cleaner to clean the pool and do a decent amount of filtering and lots of circulation. This past spring the motor went out on my booster pump for Polaris. It would have been nice to have the trash pump to run the Polaris (see below) until I could get a new motor put in.
Another thing I'm going to try is using the trash pump for running the pressure side Polaris by reversing the hoses. I'll still need to consider filtering particles out of the water before running the water through the impeller and filtering even smaller particles from the pump to the Polaris. Years ago I rigged up the fitting for pressure Polaris to hook to a hose using clean tap water from the outside spigot. It worked great and I didn't have to be concerned with filtering particulates from the feed water. BUT that is a big water waste as you have to keep lowering the water level in pool.
Anyway, I'm mulling the issues over and will be trying some ideas out next week and on. One main consideration is adding head (resistance) for differing needs. The old pump is really powerful. BTW... it, as many pumps are, is dual voltage, so it can be wired for 120v or 220. They usually come pre wired for 220v. I'll be rewiring it (simple procedure) and attaching a heavy cord, with three prong plug. I may just put a GFI in line (as some of my appliances have) or just keep a GFI module with it for when I loan it out to friends, just in case they don't have a GFI protected outlet.
gg=alice
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