Misbehaving Robo

Morning all. Hope we get some sun this summer so we can enjoy our pools. Here in Lot et Garonne the weather has been pretty poor.



Pool running nicely though, apart from our bot, which loves to spray us and the house with its tail. Every so often it surfaces and water goes everywhere. My wife is getting tired of cleaning windows so I need to do something.



I have been told that I need to alter the length of the tail to suit the size of our pool which is small at 4m x 8m. The shallow end is around 1m depth and the deep end probably 2.5m. Before I go chopping off lengths of tail, may I have some advice please?



Many thanks



Roly

What do you think about the Poolblaster Aqua Broom and similar equipment. Our robot has come to the end of it's life - maybe around 30 years- but we haven't 1000€ to replace it.

Morning Roland et al.

Glad that helped. The biggest question or one of them regarding pools is why do we do what we do? Who was it who set the wheels in motion on how to run and maintain swimming pools?

On most forums there is a discussion on how long to run pool pumps for, sometimes this revolves around superstition like the temp /2 = the hours the pump should run, why do we even bother with switching the pumps off and letting the water stagnate. No one attempting to answer that question has any idea what so ever on what the actual water flow rate is.

Most of this is down to cost, the industry needs sales so will send people off in a direction that requires more purchases, more add ons, robots, additional pool skimmer devices like the gobbler and other gizzmos.

Sand is probably the most popular filter media, yet sand only filters down to around 20 microns, fine enough so the water can look clear when viewed from the top but maybe not when viewed end to end underwater. So in essence people are paying out good money to circulate dirt.

The pool pump is, in most homes the most expensive piece of electrical kit, electric water heater use more electricity but they are only on for 90mins on average not 10-14 hours constantly. This means that because of the cost people switch off the pool pump when people are either not swimming or just at the end of the day. The thing about nature is it doesn't switch off, it continues to deposit leaves, dirt etc in the pool so in the morning you walk out to look at your pool with coffee in hand and your lovely clean pool once again needs cleaning so bored with this people buy robots, cost of an average robot? €1000 + electricity to run it. I to fell into this trap several years ago, first off with the Polaris and it's booster pump. That made me cringe as I was adding a booster pump but then restricting the water flow with discs???? or as you have done turn down the flow elsewhere, as a hydraulics engineer that really didn't make any sense to me. Surely supplying the correct water flow unrestricted and using a properly sized additional pump would put less strain on the system and save money on electricity, which is only going to increase in price and EDF stated around 3-5% per year. I sold the Polaris and went on to buy the far more economical Aquabot, This was used mainly by my pool person whilst I was not there in France, she reported that although it does a reasonable job it took, she felt almost as much time to setup, clean down and put away as the manual version with vacuum head so we actually timed it. The lovely Karen never a missed a spot which couldn't be said about the robot. Karen was also on average 5 mins quicker.

These factors were behind me going off and researching about pools and asking the first question on this post, Why do we do what we do?

I have asked this question of more pool professionals than I care to remember and over 8 years of looking into the way pools are setup and traveling to other countries to examine what they can do to help have come back and vastly improved the pool setup. Taking the pool flow system as possibly the most wasteful thing in any household I sought out the most efficient way of running a pool and it has beyond any doubt proven itself, and paid for itself.

My, and now other pools are running super efficient flow systems and vastly improved filtration systems to the point that the Aquabot robot was sold two seasons ago and replaced by a Poolblaster just to pick up any stray bits that nature provides. When most people clean their pool the water starts off clear but there is a small dust cloud stirred up in front of the vacuum head especially if they move too quickly, which means by the time they have finished the water isn't as clear as when they started. That doesn't occur in my pool, there is no dust cloud, so where does their dust cloud go? back to the floor usually only to be moved around again next time. Hopefully some swimmers can stir it up and some will go into the skimmers but if the filtration isn't good enough it will pass through and back into the pool and people are paying a lot of electricity for that!

So, improving the filtration and setting up the pool properly by reducing wasted energy the water becomes much clearer and the robot isn't need any more. With the filtration system running 24 hours a day almost every leaf will be skimmed out, virtually all dirt particles and the downside is you have to empty your skimmer basket more frequently.

I am still working on further improvements as I don't believe most manufactures of pool equipment have designers, they have draughtsmen and women who lazily copy other companies ideas but do not actually innovate because R&D cost's money as I well know from the research so far.

Thanks John,

That seems to have done the trick. A lot less pressure required to the tail.

In terms of doing away with the robo all together, can you elaborate?

Roly

To save me from typing a long reply, I nicked this one from YouTube!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dRkWeon05o

Doing away with a pool robot is the best step, save a whole lot of money and provides better cleaner pool on 10-15% of the electricity required for a standard pool.

Sorry John, that might help!

It is a Polaris 280.

Many thanks

Roly

Which make and model are you talking about, may help with replies.

We have a similar problem … fortunately too far from the house to wet the windows but if your drowsing on the sunbeds you can get a very rude awakening.
Looking forward to getting some advice.