Suction side cleaners

[Dirk]

That is odd. Try leaving different kinds of treats in the shallow end until you find which it likes the best.

OK, just kidding. A few things come to mind to try, if you haven't already.

- The owner manual has specific instructions about how to set the length of the hose. You don't necessarily use all that came with it.

- Try fooling around with the position of the float, to see if that makes a difference.

- The long-shot idea is to open the Rebel and see if you can detect anything wrong with, or stuck in, the gears.

- You are using a leader hose, right? Is it the original? They wear out. Mine developed cracks that affected the suction. It's possible that as the main hose stretches, and stresses the leader hose, it might start drawing water through a tiny crack, which would affect the Rebel's ability to climb out of the deep end. That could be true of the main hose, too, come to think of it. Inspect all the hoses for leaks. And/or try swapping hose sections around. If you end up taking a section out when adjusting the length, try swapping the extra section in and out to see if you can determine which section has the leak (if there is one). You get the idea.

- Or if you aren't using a leader hose, start there.

- Buy and use the flow gauge to confirm you have the correct flow.

 

[sdmark]

I thought the leaves waiting in the shallow end are the treats!!??

The float was 23" from the Rebel. It's supposed to be 25". Terrible! I moved it two inches.

From the manual's troubleshooting section, the idea to check if the right wheel can be turned easily by hand. Yes. Also if the swivel swivels freely. Yes.

Hose is supposed to one length longer than furthest point, plus leader hose. It is, pretty much exactly. And that's all the sections.

This is the original leader hose and as far as I know, only had a couple months of use. I can try to double-check for leaks tomorrow but it seems unlikely. And I haven't heard sucking sounds. The hose was stored coiled up for months, and I've wondered if the curvature is holding it back. But it's been out in the pool for a week or two.

One odd thing is that the hose floats on the surface even in use. I'm used to hoses that dip below the surface when full. Does your hose float?

What's the difference between your deep and shallow ends? I think mine is about 3' to 8' or more (diving board).

I can try higher pump speed. It does take a lot of oomph to get up a slippery fiberglass slope, so if it's pulling itself against the surface, it might help . But the faster it goes, the faster it turns to go off in a different direction, so not sure more power will help.

 

[Dirk]

Does your hose float?

Yes.

What's the difference between your deep and shallow ends?

3.5' to 7.5'

The two main ways our pools our different:
- mine is pebble, so there is plenty of traction
- my pool is smaller, and its suction port is mid-pool, so my hose is much shorter.

There's a term for the shape and/or length of the slope between ends, or maybe it's the ratio of the length of the slope relative to the lengths of the shallow and deep ends, I forget what it is. My deep end does not have a flat area and a distinct start and stop to its transition to the shallow end. The shallow end has a flat area, that then gradually slopes to the deep end, and my deep end is a bowl shape. Put another way, if ever there was a pool shape, with a deep and shallow end, that was easy for a Rebel to negotiate, it would be mine.

I cannot, off the top of my head, suggest a good test for a hose leak. I don't think you could listen for it. A hose leak would be sucking water, not air, so I expect there would be no significant difference to the sound. When my leader hoses failed, it was obvious: the Rebel was draggin' a, and the leader hose developed a split along the corrugation of the hose, which was easy to see.

Wait, check that. You could try this. WARNING: IT'S VERY IMPORTANT TO KEEP FINGERS, SKIN AND CLOTHES WELL AWAY FROM THE REBEL'S SUCTION PORT WHILE YOU TRY THIS!! THIS CAN BE PRETTY DANGEROUS, IN FACT. Start by holding the Rebel very close to the surface, just barely under the surface. And then starting with the leader hose, you lift the entire length of the hose out of the water, a little at a time, and work your way up and down the length of the hose a few times. Flex and bend the section of the hose that you are holding out of the water, and its couplings, back and forth as you go. If there is a leak in the hose, it should suck air when out of the water. That you should be able to hear clearly, and/or see bubbles develop in the hose.

I suspect, because your suction source (skimmer, right?) seems to be in the deep end, and your hose is very long, that your Rebel's tires cannot overcome the combination of the length/weight of the hose, the slope of the transition from deep to shallow, and the lack of traction against the fiberglass finish. This could explain why reducing the RPMs of the tires helps. Maybe slower RPMs allows the tires to grip better, instead of just spinning too fast and slipping.

You could try another experiment. Run the hose out of the skimmer to about mid pool, and tie it up there somehow. In essence changing the origin of the hose from the deep end to mid pool. See what happens. The theory being that the Rebel's hose would be "starting" from mid pool, and so be shorter, so be less drag to pull around.

Few more ideas:

In someway alter the tire traction. It's possible the older style tires would be better on fiberglass. I seem to recall there used to be different types of tires you could buy. You could try a different pair. I think this is the old style (though that might be the old picture, and they just send you the new style tires):

Amazon.com

Or maybe a non-Pentair third-party tire would work better. There are quite a few knockoffs on Amazon. Some would be pretty cheap to try out. Here's one:

Amazon.com

Or perhaps alter the traction of the existing set: rough it up with sand paper? Or coat it with something, like a silicon caulk (pretty drastic, I suppose). Or glue a strap of something to the tires. Something with a type of rubber or silicone that would be "stickier" to the fiberglass (I'll have to ponder exactly what that might be). Kinda like a big, soft rubber band, that you could cut to length and then glue to itself and just slip over the tire (without gluing to the tire, at least for now) just to see if it would make a difference. Heck, you could try large rubber bands. You get the idea, just experiment, somehow, with various ways to increase the traction.

Here's some things to get your search juices flowing:

Amazon.com

Amazon.com

I realize some of these ideas are pretty hair-brained. Just thinkin' outside the box.

And finally, perhaps the Rebel is just not the right vac head for your pool.

 

[sdmark]

@Dirk, thanks for al your time and thoughts.

Modifying the wheels could help. I think it was the local pool store guy who mentioned, talking about a different cleaner, that I'd need the cork modification for it to work on fiberglass--maybe referring to Hayward cork shoes, though I thought he was talking about a wheeled cleaner.

With the hose floating on the surface, I think a hose leak would be pretty easy to hear if it was sucking air. And I've pulled the Rebel up to just below the surface many times to count tire rotations. The fact that I can get it up to 16 tire turns per minute tells me it's getting enough suction.

As another test, I've ordered a maintenance kit for my old Kreepy and will replace its seal, wings, and foot pad. It's all aftermarket stuff, which may or may not bring the Kreepy back to good function, but I'm curious to compare it to the Rebel.

Well I wrote all that and then looked at the video from last night. To my surprise, at 2000rpm with the float 2 inches higher, it did get up to the shallow end a couple times! Huh. It doesn't seem to have trouble getting out of the deep end, but it does slip when trying to climb walls. (It does better at that at higher rpm = more suction to grab the wall.) I may try raising the float a couple more inches.

One hour time-lapse and four minutes of real time in the shallow end:

 

[Dirk]

Didn't watch your videos yet. I usually only watch instant-karma YouTubes. If a cop pulls your Rebel over, then post that!

I think you're supposed to count wheel rotations while the Rebel is working, not while you're holding it mid-water. There would be forces at work while it's working that would not be present while the Rebel is just suspended (friction and drag primarily, due to the suction pulling the Rebel down to the surface and the drag of the hose). It might not make much difference, but maybe it would. You might need some swim goggles and a snorkel to watch your Rebel wheels when the Rebel is actually crawling the fiberglass. I piece of tape on the side of the wheel might help you count better?

I tried to count rotations once, and couldn't. So I get why you were holding it up. It's why I will continue to recommend you get a proper flow gauge. That said, I regulate how high on the walls my Rebel goes by adjusting my VS pump RPMs, so messing with RPMs might be all you need to do.

With the hose floating on the surface, I think a hose leak would be pretty easy to hear if it was sucking air. And I've pulled the Rebel up to just below the surface many times to count tire rotations. The fact that I can get it up to 16 tire turns per minute tells me it's getting enough suction.

This might also be misinterpreting on your part. If the leaky hose is rotated just so, even the floating sections could still be leaking, just under water. You wouldn't hear that. Also, a lot of the hose is underwater all the time. I suggested you pull the entire length of the hose, a little bit at a time, out of the water and tweak it around to confirm it is not leaking. Your conclusion of "16 tire turns per minute tells me it's getting enough suction" might be faulty, as described above, and also because your leak might be intermittent, depending on how the hose is oriented as you inspected it.

These are long-shot theories, but I'm just walking you through how to absolutely eliminate some possibilities, however remote.

 

[sdmark]

I am not a good enough swimmer to chase that thing around while it's working lol. Fortunately the instructions say to count revolutions while holding it just below the surface. I'll see if I can do a more thorough leak check. Thinking about the flow check thing.

 

[sdmark]

Hose-out-of-water test along entire length yielded no sucking sounds. Moved the float even further up (36" from cleaner) and it did not go into the shallow end as much, so put it back at 25". My Craigslist seller found the 41200-0212 flow gauge and some other pieces in "a bag of parts we couldn't identify." I'll pick that up tomorrow.

 

[sdmark]

Testing with the flow gauge pretty much confirms the wheel-revolution method of setting pump speed, The flow gauge is a little more permissive than the wheel test, which says to aim for 16-18 rpm.

• 2000 rpm on pump shows "minimum" on flow gauge with clean skimmer, about 14 rpm on Rebel.
• 2200 rpm shows above "minimum" on flow gauge, about 15 rpm.
• 2300 rpm shows halfway between "minimum" and "maximum" on flow gauge, 15.8 rpm.

These are the numbers through the skimmer regulator and skimmer. Interesting that if the skimmer has some leaves in in, flow rate increases, like it's sucking harder, even though pump rpm is constant.