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