The Pool Cleaner
Our pool is ~48'x24' but irregular shape. I live in NY state and have lots of trees around the pool. Would the Dolphin be suitable for this size & geography?
We just had the pool resurfaced and notice some debris that seems to end up in the pool regularly and leaves stains. Most stains go away in a few days with brushing, but a few have remained. I'm not keen to continue the almost-daily brushing, so hoping the robot would help with this issue!
Welcome to TFP! It is a great site with some awesome people and features.
Your pool would really benefit from a robot, especially their effectiveness in wall climbing/scrubbing, and pool line cleaning. Only concern with the your pool length would be where your cord plug-in is located. These residential robots are all 60ft cable length, with a general limit of 50’ pool length. If your pool is 45’ length, but distance to your GFCI plug is located 15’ from a polar end, and your pools depth as well, it may not accommodate your entire pool. Can you get a plug arranged within 10 feet of pool? And maybe at center width area of pool?
The pool company I used to do the surfacing is suggesting a supply-side cleaner. From what I have read, this would involve additional equipment and hoses, which I'm not very keen on. I'm guessing the pool companies are less familiar with the robot (or less likely to recommend them) because they don't need to be as involved in their setup and maintenance?
It’s hard to tell. IMHO, supply side vacuums can still be very effective. The hoses are a drawback, where a robots cable is very easily removed and placed on the deck or on a proprietary additional storage caddy.
Do you have a dedicated, independently plumbed suction port? A suction port otherwise would have to be arranged in with the skimmer, and if you only have 1 skimmer, it can be a pain. Venerable suction sides like the Kreepy Kraully do well with wall cleaning and small debris, but are just OK with large leaves compared to The Pool Cleaner (which isn’t as strong on fine debris/sand). Also, in my experience, suctions tend to get hung up on everything-main drains, steps, shelves, not to mention the additional purchases (I.e. in-line leaf canisters) are one yucky thing to empty. The Dolphin bots just ?? butter with all those tasks. Suctions also rely on your pump running at high speed, in long intervals, so up goes the electrical bill.
If you have a weekly pool maintenance, I’ve heard they don’t like robots if the smaller (but still fine with S200-300) basket is filling up and designed for more frequent emptying.
I’ve had ‘Boffo’ my Active 20 (same as S200) for a few months and ? it. I never need any manually vacuuming, with my Kreepy and old 1989 Farfegnuggen Pool Cleaner it still needed a good manually vacuum every few weeks/months. I see no point in a pool service needing to manually vacuum the pool (still maybe the spa) ever again with a Dolphin robot!
-Kevin
