Automatic Cleaners: Let Robots Maintain Your Pool

Taking a day to relax by your swimming pool is a great way to cool off, but maintaining a pool can be a far less refreshing experience. Fortunately, automatic pool cleaners can keep your pool in great shape while saving you the work of cleaning it on your own. Read on to find out how each type of automatic pool cleaner can help your pool maintenance routine go swimmingly.

Suction-side Automatic Pool Cleaners

Suction-side automatic pool cleaners use suction to move across the sides and bottom of the pool, picking up fine debris while cleaning the pool’s walls and floor. The dirt and debris are then sucked into the pool’s filtration system through an attached hose.

Suction-side pool cleaners are generally less expensive than other types of automatic cleaners, and they’re better at eliminating fine dirt particles that other models might miss. However, they may not pick up bigger things or floating debris that other cleaners are more likely to catch. They also move more water into the pool’s filtration system, which might require some extra time spent maintaining your filter pump.

Pressure-side Automatic Pool Cleaners

A pressure-side automatic pool cleaner uses water pressure to move around the pool independently, absorbing pool debris into an attached bag. Because they use the water in the pool to move, pressure-side cleaners help distribute clean filtered water around your pool as well.

Pressure-side pool cleaners are ideal for picking up bigger debris like leaves and grass, but they don’t clean the pool’s walls the way a suction-side or robotic cleaner will. Since the attached bag of a pressure-side automatic cleaner is not attached to your filter, you won’t have to spend any more time than usual cleaning your filtration system, but you will need to change the bag regularly.

Robotic Pool Cleaners

A robotic pool cleaner contains its own pump and filtration system, running on low-voltage power drawn from a transformer that plugs into an outdoor outlet. Robotic pool cleaners are the most expensive option of the three, but they offer homeowners the widest range of functions by combining the pressure-side cleaner’s ability to circulate clean water around the pool with the suction-side cleaner’s pool-scrubbing capabilities. Robotic cleaners can also remove both large and small pool debris easily. Some models can even be steered from the comfort of a poolside chair.

Since robotic pool cleaners use their own filters, your pool’s filter won’t get dirty as often or have as much work to do, so in addition to saving you the time of cleaning the pool, robotic cleaners can help you cut down on the time you’ll have to spend maintaining your filtration system. Robotic cleaners will need to be cleaned fairly regularly to be as effective as possible, but their wide range of cleaning functions has made robotic cleaners popular among pool owners.

Fun in the sun doesn’t have to lead to hours of tough work. Investing in an automatic pool cleaner can help you spend more time enjoying your pool and less time working on keeping it clean.