New Active 20 - a few questions

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Grendel2000

Member
Jun 9, 2022
15
Maryland, USA
I just received a new Active 20 I bought from Marina and have a few questions:

- A card insert in the literature mentions removing a film from the "climbing wheels". Mine doesn't appear to have any. is it safe to assume this card is for a different model?
- I ran it through a cleaning cycle and it seemed to do pretty well. I didn't watch it the whole time, but over the 45min or so that I did it climbed the wall several times but never seemed to traverse a whole wall/waterline at once. It only ever did about 5 feet at once at the most, often only doing one spot. It also seemed to do the same sections over a gain and I never saw it do others at all. What's the deal with that?

Overall it doesn't seem very smart. Any thoughts or tips?
 
They’re not smart; but they are more thorough than you might expect. I think you what you’ve described is normal.
What might surprise you is how much sand/silt/dirt the fine filters can pull out of the pool over a week. It’s pretty astounding.
 
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Sometimes they will have packing material in various places inside the bot & tracks so just be sure to look thoroughly.
They don’t have the ability to be “smart” as far as mapping the pool or going in a specific pattern like a roomba. I have a 33’ round pool - my nautilus cc (a grade below your Active 20) generally covers the whole pool in a 2 hour cycle. If it misses something I just run it again or leave it for tomorrow. It doesn’t climb every inch of the wall every time but it gets enough during each cycle that it stays clean. As with a roomba - don’t watch it- it’ll drive you crazy 🤣
If your water temp is really cold it can affect the bot’s climbing abilities.
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The brushes & tracks can deform if they dry when they are smashed.
You can just sit bricks, wood blocks, pvc pipes or something under its belly so they aren’t touching the ground.
I store mine on its side because it fits my box better that way.
 

DIY Pool Caddy

Just bought a new Active 20 from Marina Pool and Spa and decided to build my own caddy versus paying $150+ My analysis... 1) Don't need wheels and the $150 Dolphin's caddy's wheels are not that robust anyways 2) Don't want to leave power supply outside based on how many posts I've read...
www.troublefreepool.com www.troublefreepool.com
 
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Mdragger88 said:
Sometimes they will have packing material in various places inside the bot & tracks so just be sure to look thoroughly.
They don’t have the ability to be “smart” as far as mapping the pool or going in a specific pattern like a roomba. I have a 33’ round pool - my nautilus cc (a grade below your Active 20) generally covers the whole pool in a 2 hour cycle. If it misses something I just run it again or leave it for tomorrow. It doesn’t climb every inch of the wall every time but it gets enough during each cycle that it stays clean. As with a roomba - don’t watch it- it’ll drive you crazy 🤣
If your water temp is really cold it can affect the bot’s climbing abilities.
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The water is quite cold - my thermometer isn't in it, but it's cold. I'll take it out and check it over again for any non-removed packing materials, but it seemed functional.
 
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Grendel2000 said:
- A card insert in the literature mentions removing a film from the "climbing wheels". Mine doesn't appear to have any. is it safe to assume this card is for a different model?
Click to expand...

Yes, safe to assume.

Grendel2000 said:
Overall it doesn't seem very smart. Any thoughts or tips?
Click to expand...

The behavior you described matches what mine does. Its cleaning "pattern" is basically random, but at least in my simple freeform pool, that works fine.
 
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@Grendel2000 - I too just purchased an Active 20 from Marina a couple days ago. My robot didn't have the film either. I'm also in Maryland and dropped mine into the dirty pool after opening this week and cleaned up most of the debris from the winter. Super happy with it so far
 
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Grendel2000 said:
The water is quite cold - my thermometer isn't in it, but it's cold. I'll take it out and check it over again for any non-removed packing materials, but it seemed functional.
Click to expand...
I use my S200 equivalent year-round. I don't think I can tell a difference at 40ºF or 90ºF
 
UPDATE: All in all I'm satisfied. My pool is looking great, although it has definitely taken more cleaning cycles than I'd hoped for to get there. To be fair, it's spring still more or less - the trees around and above my pool are still shedding quite a bit of crud so it may very well be less a case of "Ace" (that's my robot's name - his companion, my Betta 2 is named "Gary") missing things and more a case of additional stuff falling in after he's done with his cleaning.

The DEFINITE improvement is in the near total absence of pollen that ordinarily collects in little quarter-sized deposits all over the bottom. I put the finest filters in right away upon arrival and they've done a good job taking care of that!

I'm interested to see if the stray bits go away once the trees & whatnot are done doing their "spring thing"...

I DO wish I'd bought a bot that has remote control. It drives me bananas when it drives around for two hours as I can see one obvious patch of debris that it drives right past 10 or 12 times...
 
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You really can't watch these things; despite the marketing that implies they're doing some super computer controlled thing, they really are just randomly moving and turning. I used to watch our Polaris 280 keep driving past a leaf or something for 10 minutes. Then I'd go away and let it do its job, and come back and it was gone (the leaf not the Polaris!) and the pool clean.

I'll echo that I don't see any difference in the climbing or cleaning of ours whether the water is 45 or 90.
 
Grendel2000 said:
I DO wish I'd bought a bot that has remote control. It drives me bananas when it drives around for two hours as I can see one obvious patch of debris that it drives right past 10 or 12 times...
Click to expand...
The remote control is neat once. Then it is just a futile effort to get the robot to go where you want it. I've used the remote function the first day I had it, and then maybe one other time.

If the bot misses a spot during it's cycle, I either run another cycle, or pull the bot out and try again next time.

--Jeff
 
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If theres a spot I know I want it to get I either put it down in that area from the beginning or catch it when its near the area during the cycle & give it a little nudge with the broom. I do the same with my roomba except I use my foot . My roomba is really old & has no brain at all 😁
 
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