My House came with a pool and the pool came with an old Hayward Pool Vac. It worked reasonably well for the past year, but the only way to keep it from getting stuck on the main drain was to divert almost all of the suction away from the drain and to the pool vac. A few weeks ago it started behaving poorly and it's pretty clear to me that it's ready to be rebuilt. My choices are to rebuild it with standard parts, upgrade it to the new Hayward VFlex technology, or replace it with something different.
I have a small, kidney shaped pool and most of the debris is pine needles and bugs: the old Pool Vac has no problem with that stuff and only clogged once in the past year when a big chunk of tree bark fell into the pool. It did have a tendency to get stuck for a while near the steps into the pool, but aside from that and the need to pretty much shut off the main drain, it worked well. I like the simplicity of the vac over the alternative of a robot, but I'd like it better if I could give more supply to the pump by opening up the main drain.
Would the VFlex upgrade help it overcome the drain suction? Or is there a better Vac design that I should be considering instead of paying for a rebuild/upgrade kit?
I have a small, kidney shaped pool and most of the debris is pine needles and bugs: the old Pool Vac has no problem with that stuff and only clogged once in the past year when a big chunk of tree bark fell into the pool. It did have a tendency to get stuck for a while near the steps into the pool, but aside from that and the need to pretty much shut off the main drain, it worked well. I like the simplicity of the vac over the alternative of a robot, but I'd like it better if I could give more supply to the pump by opening up the main drain.
Would the VFlex upgrade help it overcome the drain suction? Or is there a better Vac design that I should be considering instead of paying for a rebuild/upgrade kit?
