From Robot to Suction Side Cleaner

[Zezrum]

Question: Is there a recommendation for a good suction side cleaner that climbs and scrubs walls?

Backstory: We're moving into the third season of our fiberglass pool and loving it. We run the pool year round here in Southern Utah. Season one there was a lot of construction going on around us with lots of sand/dust in the air and our automatic cover was backordered for several months so we had a lot of sand in the pool. To remedy this and to keep the sand out of my filter, I quickly invested in a robot (Polairs VRX IQ+) and it has been great. No complaints, it does a brilliant job keeping the cool clean and it climbs the walls and givens them a nice little scrub including the tile line. All is well, except the cover needs to be open to run the robot.

Season two, enter a new puppy dog that LOVES to swim. That means the cover is closed when we're not using the pool (otherwise wet dog all day long). With the cover closed, I can't really run the robot. It's a story of opening the pool, putting the robot in, keeping the dog inside, and giving the robot time to do its job. The pool is pretty clean, only a little but of dirt gets in when the cover is closed, but I like the wall scrubbing ability of the robot to keep the walls clean.

Now we are entering season three and I'm thinking I'd like to go back to a suction side cleaner that can run while the cover is closed so the pool is ready to swim when we open the cover, but I really want something that can climb and scrub walls. Any good recommendations?

Thanks! My two main swimmers:

 

[JoyfulNoise]

None of them really climb the walls and you don’t want that anyway because if they do they suck air into the pool pump and you’ll lose head.

Do you have a wall port for suction or do you plan to use the skimmer with a skimmer plate?

The only suction side cleaner I have experience with is the Pentair Kreepy Krauly Sandshark. It worked fine all the years I owned it. In fact, my 5 year old Dolphin robot has died and so I’m switching back to a suction cleaner because the cost of repairs on the robot plus shortages is just ridiculous.

I’ve not heard good things about the Pentair Rebel. There’s the Zodiac line of suction cleaners that people seem to like. Hayward makes the Navigator and a wheeled cleaner but I’ve not heard much from those.

 

[Cena_sea]

So cute! We got the Quattro sport and cleaning wise we have no complaints. We leave it in the pool (builder advised us to) and let it run on schedule.

The only thing is it likes to climb the walls a lot so I manually adjusted to keep it down in the pool more. Someone posted a thread on it because of this and covers.

 

[cowboycasey]

Why can you not run the robot with the cover on? I run mine with the cover on with no issue.. I leave mine in for a week, pull it out, clean the filters and throw it back in... I only run every other day so no issue with the filter filling up..

You could also run the morning before you use the pool, open the cover and pull it out.. When your done swimming throw it back in and close the cover..