Robotic Pool Cleaners are Best for Pool Cleaning

Proper swimming pool maintenance involves three things: ensuring proper circulation; maintaining balanced water chemistry; and regular pool cleaning.

In this article, we will focus on the last of these: namely, pool cleaning. The latter is essential to keep your pool and pool water in good condition so you can enjoy healthy, hygienic and pleasant swimming sessions at all time. Robotic pool cleaners are the best method, but we also look at other options.

So, here we take a look at different pool cleaning systems and what is involved vis-à-vis these different methods. Having a good knowledge of these will help you select the method most suitable for your requirements (this include budget as well as the time you have at your disposal to perform the task).

Method One: Manual Pool Cleaning

For manual cleaning, you will need to invest in a few items: a skimmer net (either a flat or a basket skimmer, according to your preference); a pool brush; a vacuum head and a long enough vacuum hose; and the most important of all, a good, sturdy and extendable telescopic pole.

You will need the telescopic pole to attach your skimmer net, brush, and vacuum head when skimming, brushing and vacuuming respectively. When skimming, make sure to collect all the debris from off and below the surface of the water. Brushing is important to get rid of all the dirt and algae off the pool’s walls and the floor. So, make sure to scrub thoroughly across all these surfaces. Finally, when vacuuming the pool, you’ll need to attach one head of the hose to the vacuum head and the other to the skimmer of your pool’s filtration system.

How often do you need to perform these operations? Well, ideally, skimming should be done daily, brushing twice a week and vacuuming every other day. You must also make sure that you invest in good quality equipment. When choosing your pool brush, you must select a good quality nylon and stainless steel brush if you have an unpainted concrete pool. For fiberglass or painted concrete pools, you’ll need all-nylon brushes.

As you may already have guessed from our description of manual cleaning method above, it requires time and effort on your part. For smaller pools (and if you have enough time), manual cleaning might be alright. However, it is barely feasible if we are talking large pools. Thus we move on to the next method, which is Automatic Cleaning.

Method 2: Automatic Pool Cleaning

With automatic pool cleaning, you have three different choices and all of them work in different ways.

1. Robotic Pool Cleaning

This is the most effective and convenient of all automatic pool cleaning systems. Robotic cleaners come attached with their own vacuum and brushes and will scrub and clean pretty much all areas of your pool—all on their own. What is more, you don’t need to attach the cleaner to your pool’s filtration system and the cleaners also run on extremely low voltage and if they detect any electrical imbalance when operating, they will automatically cut off.
Pretty neat that! However, the only downside (if you can call it that) is robotic cleaners are pretty expensive compared to other automatic systems and require regular maintenance. We suggest you invest in a high-quality product with good warranty attached to it.

2. Suction Side Cleaners

Similar to manual vacuums, suction side cleaners attach to the skimmer of the pool’s filtration. They do a good job of cleaning dirt and debris off the pool’s floor and some suction cleaners can clean the pool walls as well. These systems are relatively inexpensive and also low-maintenance. However, on the downside, they will wear down your filter over time, and in worst cases, may even damage it permanently. So, it is your choice whether you will risk that!

3. Pressure Side Cleaners

This device does not pose any threat to your filter since it actually uses the water coming in from the filter to clean the pool. The device creates a powerful vortex of water to draw in all the dirt and debris inside the pool and push them into a mesh bag. While this is a safer system to use compared to suction devices, keep in mind that it is less effective than robotic vacuums or manual cleaning.

We recommend robotic pool cleaners for the best pool cleaning result.