Skim-A-Round Baskets?

[texaggie1994]

Has anyone here had any luck with the Skim-A-Round baskets? I bought one to try, but we have 3 skimmers
and I ended up having to put a rock in it to get it to stay down. I didn't want to buy three more if they aren't
going to stay held down by skimmer suction.

 

[rebman]

Has anyone here had any luck with the Skim-A-Round baskets? I bought one to try, but we have 3 skimmers
and I ended up having to put a rock in it to get it to stay down. I didn't want to buy three more if they aren't
going to stay held down by skimmer suction.

It didn't fit my Pentair S-20 so they sent me another ring....that also didn't fit. My skimmer has little tabs in it that won't allow the rings to seat in the skimmer so it effectively prevents the Skim-A-Round from forming a tight seal.

I threw mine in my shed for a backup and bought a regular skimmer basket that the Skim-A-Round was supposed to replace.

 

[txgunlover]

I bought two... neither worked, both fit, but skimmers didn't have enough suction to make them stay down I guess. Threw them away last year.

 

[BassPlayingDude]

Mine works like a champ. I didn't like it at first and was about to try to return it before I realized that my float valve was preventing it from fully seating and sealing. Once I removed that and put the thing back in it pretty much doubled the inlet flow speed. I tested with some ping pong balls and this thing cleared them all in about 1/2 the time as the old basket and weir alone. I don't like not having the float valve in place, but as long as you are checking the water level daily this might not be a problem. If I am going to be gone for more than a day I just put the old float valve and basket back in. It would be nice if they made different baskets to compensate for the height of the float valve. The key is that the "velocity ring" that goes around the basket has to completely cover the opening. This thing would probably generate even more suction if there were a rubber o-ring or gasket on the bottom of that ring. I am kind of taking a hybrid approach and use this when I am getting a lot of debris from my pine trees and sometimes swap it out for the old one with my float valve in place in order to give my main drain some suction as well. I think the reason that this worked well for me is that I only have a single skimmer, so it gets 100% of the suction from the pump. YMMV.