The Simple Pool Cleaner That Just Keeps Working
Robotic pool cleaners get all the hype, but hype does not keep a pool clean on Tuesday morning when the wind kicks up and dirt drops to the floor. We walk through why the suction side pool cleaner is still the number one choice for a lot of pools and a lot of pool service pros, especially when you care about total cost, repairability, and how often the cleaner truly runs without anyone “remembering” to use it.
I break down the real world reasons suction wins: a lower price point than most pressure cleaners and almost every quality robotic pool cleaner, no booster pump energy penalty, and fewer complicated parts when something wears out. Then we get specific on the models that matter and why: Polaris Atlas and Polaris Maxx for avoiding hang ups on modern anti vortex main drains and for strong wall climbing without that loud waterline air-sucking behavior, plus the Hayward Aquanaut for long wear life and simple refresh kits, and the Hayward TracVac as another solid option. For vinyl liner and fiberglass pools, we also talk about diaphragm style cleaners like the Zodiac G3 and Ranger and why they can be a better fit.
We also keep it honest about drawbacks, like hoses in the water and how leaf piles, twigs, or rocks can stop a suction cleaner. Finally, I share my favorite “best of both worlds” strategy: keep the suction cleaner in all week for consistent daily pool maintenance, then use a robotic pool cleaner when you want that party day polish and a hose-free look.
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We make the case that suction side pool cleaners are still the most practical automatic cleaners, even with today’s cordless robotic pool cleaners everywhere. We share the specific models we trust, the trade-offs we see on real pools, and why “always running” beats “sometimes used” for most owners and pool service routes.
• Pentair discontinuations and why competition reshapes cleaner choices
• a short list of suction side cleaners worth knowing instead of ten options
• Polaris Atlas and Maxx performance on anti vortex main drains and wall climbing
• Hayward Aquanaut as a long life low maintenance workhorse
• Hayward TracVac as a strong third option with tracked design
• Zodiac diaphragm cleaners for vinyl and fiberglass pools
• suction cleaner advantages on price point energy use and simple repairs
• real limitations with leaf piles twigs and rocks
• hose aesthetics complaints plus the reality that most people get used to them
• spot vacuuming an attached spa using the existing hose setup
• why robotic cleaners fail on routes when customers do not put them in
• the best combo plan suction during the week plus robot for party day polish
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1 SPEAKER_00: And welcome to the Pool Game Podcast show.
In this episode, I'm going to talk to you about automatic
cleaners and why I think the suction side cleaner is still
the number one cleaner type that you can get even in this era of
coilless robotic pool cleaners.
I still think suction side cleaners are the best cleaner
for your pool, and I'll go over some reasons why here.
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Now you probably wouldn't think suction side cleaners are still
effective.
Because Penter eliminated a lot of their cleaners, I'm not
exactly sure why they did this.
I think maybe their sales were suffering.
They really never developed any robotic pool cleaners.
They have the Penter Prowler, but that's just a repurposed
dolphin cleaner, basically.
And their marketing behind getting rid of their cleaners, I
don't know.
I I don't think their sales were robust enough to have so many
cleaners out there.
But I really don't like the choice of some of the ones they
discontinued and some that they kept.
They have the Penta Rebel, of course, which is a solid cleaner
for sure.
And they kept the creepy crawley cruiser, which I never liked
that cleaner, even though it had a silent kind of operational
thing.
They did, however, get rid of their kind of trademark cleaner,
I guess.
Everyone calls the automatic cleaners creepy crawlies, and
they got rid of the creepy crawley cleaner, which I thought
was highly effective.
It did a good job with acorns and pine needles, and it was a
really effective cleaner, but they got rid of that, they got
rid of the Great White, they got rid of the Sand Shark, they got
rid of the Little Rebel, which is sad because the Little Rebel
was great for smaller pools, and it was highly effective and
affordable.
And the creepy crawly warrior, that was a cleaner I think made
for Leslie's pool supply specifically.
So those are all gone, but there are still a lot of great suction
cleaners out there on the market made by Florida or Zodiac, and
also by Hayward.
And I think they were feeling the pinch from Hayward.
Hayward had bought the pool Vernugan cleaner decade ago or
so and really converted that and made that they had the number
one and number two cleaner now in the pool cleaner, Aquanaut,
and the Hayward Navigator that they've always had around
forever.
These this is the one, two top cleaners on the market were
those two, and I believe they still are the top two cleaners
on the market.
So if you dominate the market, the competition can't sell the
cleaners as well.
And of course, discontinuing them is probably logical.
I say all this because there's only a few suction cleaners that
you actually need to know about, and that I would recommend you
choose for the pools on your route.
I don't think you really need to choose between 10 different
suction cleaners.
There are just three cleaners in my wheelhouse, maybe four
cleaners in my wheelhouse, and they're made by Hayward and also
made by Zodiac or Polaris.
The first one would be the Polaris Atlas or Max Cleaner.
I think this is a top cleaner, even though it is a little
pricey, over 500.
And it does have a lot of wear parts that are, of course, are
modulars, you can change them.
But there are two things that are going for this cleaner that
I think makes it the top cleaner, and that's the fact
that it doesn't get stuck on the new anti-vortex main drains that
are in a lot of new builds.
So a lot of builds have these giant main drains that look like
gigantic, you know, vegetable strainers.
They're just big, you know, they're uh take up a large part
of the real estate on the bottom, and the other cleaners
tend to get stuck on them.
The pool cleaner by Hayward.
I'm not sure if the track vac actually gets stuck on them.
I have to double check that.
Uh, that's on my list of really good cleaners as well.
And so I like this because if you have a newer pool, you're
not gonna have to worry about it getting stuck on the main drain.
And it climbs the walls really effectively in most pools, and
so I think those two things are great.
Even though most of the dirt is on the bottom, the fact that it
climbs the wall to the water line and doesn't suck air.
This is a problem with the Penta Rebel where it comes up to the
surface and it'll suck some air and make a really loud noise you
can hear like around the block.
It's so loud.
The Hayward Pool Cleaner Aquanut doesn't really do that.
Before it was sold to Hayward, the designer put these little
kind of wedges in there or ridges that keep it from coming
all the way out of the pool to the water line.
It doesn't climb nearly as well as the old version, but if you
have a Penta Rebel, you know what I'm talking about.
It'll come out and suck air and cause that noise and fall back
down and cause the pump to lose prime.
But since I don't know if it was by design or by accident, the
Polaris Atlas and Max Cleaner are based on the MX8 cleaner,
and the throat is directly in the center of that cleaner, so
it never really sucks air.
It'll come up, it'll actually come out of the pool waterline
and then go back down without sucking air.
So that makes it superior, in my opinion.
Although the parts you have to change them more often than the
Hayward Aquanaut pool cleaner, it's definitely a trade-off
because it does such a great job cleaning the pool.
The second choice would be of course the Hayward Aquanut pool
cleaner because of the fact that you don't have to change parts
in this thing probably for five or six years.
And if you ever do need to do any major overhaul, they have a
bottom conversion kit that has all the parts in it.
You just take the top off, put that on, and then it just makes
it a brand new cleaner.
So I like this cleaner because you don't have to change parts
hardly ever, and it's highly effective.
Doesn't climb the walls as nearly as well as the Polaris
Max or Atlas cleaner, and it can't get stuck in the main
drains, but it is really a robust cleaner that I highly
recommend.
The next one that I would recommend would be the Hayward
Track Vac.
It's like an MX8 clone, but a smaller body.
It has a lot of the pool cleaner Aqua Nut technology in there,
but it has the track, so it is a really good cleaner.
I think the first generation there was a few glitches, but
they worked that out, and so it's a really great suction side
cleaner.
I would say that would be the third choice over the other two
that I mentioned.
And then a fourth choice, if you need a bouncing type cleaner, I
would go with any of the Zodiac cleaners, the G3, the Ranger
cleaner.
These are really good for pools like a vinyl or fiberglass pool,
where the gear type cleaners like the MX, the MX8, the Atlas
or Max may not quite be as effective, and the pool cleaner
is not going to be as effective in those, also the Aquanaut
won't be as effective.
But the bouncing cleaners are really good in vinyl and
fiberglass pools, in my opinion.
And I really like the Zodiac ones with the diaphragm.
Easy to change.
There's plenty of generic diaphragms available for you
online affordably, and they work really effectively by bouncing
around the pool, knocking down dirt.
So wire suction cleaner is still the number one cleaner.
I'll give you a few points to go off of here, and you can be the
judge yourself.
I think the price point, of course, is number one.
They're a lot less expensive than a pressure cleaner or a
robotic pool cleaner cordless or or corded.
The suction cleaner is still going to be at least half the
price, or maybe even a third of the price of a robotic pool
cleaner.
So for affordability, the suction side cleaner wins out
for sure.
You're not going to find a robotic pool cleaner for$400
that works effectively.
You'll have to pay, I would say, for a good robotic pool cleaner,
anywhere from$900 to$1,500 for something robust.
Pressure cleaners are always going to be a little more
expensive than suction cleaners as well.
And maybe not much more expensive, but they will be
more.
And then you have the booster pump that needs replacing over
time.
It also uses more energy because not only are you running the
main pump, but you're also running a booster pump where the
suction cleaner works off of basically just the pool suction
itself.
And when the pool is on, the suction cleaner turns on.
When the pool turns off, it turns off, and there's no
secondary pump running the power of the suction style cleaner.
So that's another advantage there.
The ease of repair is another huge advantage of the suction
style cleaner over robotic and pressure cleaners.
Although pressure cleaners you can repair, there are more parts
in there, more things to change and kind of work with.
It's more complicated.
Suction cleaners, there's really not a lot that can go wrong with
them.
There's just little details and parts that wear, and those are
usually really easy to change, and it's something that you can
do on the pool side while you're at the at the stop changing
parts out.
It's pretty easy and simple.
And there's rebuild kits for like I mentioned, the pool
cleaner Aquanaut.
That's really easy to fix and upgrade.
So that gives you an advantage there.
The Atlas and Max cleaners, yes, they have more wear parts, but
they're really easy to change parts in.
Now I didn't mention the Hayward Navigator or Pool Vac.
I do like those.
I use those a lot as spare cleaners and as demo cleaners or
not demo cleaners, loner cleaners for customers that
don't want to buy a cleaner.
I'll put them in there.
And I should say this also that your pool route should have all
the pools that are automatic cleaners.
It just makes your day a lot easier and makes life easier.
So try to sell customers cleaners.
Suction side cleaners, of course, would be the first
choice, but you can sell them pressure cleaners or robotic
pool cleaners.
It doesn't matter to me.
I think suction cleaners are still easy to sell because of
the price point.
And if they don't want to pay for one, I'll just repurpose a
Hayward Navigator or a pool vac, put it in the pool, and just
call it a day at that point.
You'll get a lot of these over the years.
At one point I had like 30 of them in my garage, and I was
being told very nicely to clean out the garage and get rid of
some of them, so I gave them away.
And I still have a few in the backyard that I can repurpose if
I need to.
They're just great for they're great workhorses and they do
work effectively, but there are better cleaners than them, and
that's why I don't necessarily sell those as the primary
suction cleaner when I when I'm selling them to customers,
they're like a secondary cleaner or a used cleaner.
I'll I'll use a Hayward Navigator pool vac in that in
that case or that category.
But as far as repairing and changing parts, suction cleaners
are really simple and easy to work with, and there's not a lot
that can go wrong with them.
And the parts are affordable and readily available.
So if your robotic pool cleaner breaks down, you have to send it
into the shop.
It may take two or three weeks to get back, maybe even longer.
You can't really take it apart and fix things, maybe change the
belts on the tracks or something.
But other than that, there's not much you can do to it except
send it in for repair, and then you don't have a cleaner for
three weeks or a month.
So big drawback if that happens, if it breaks down.
That's why suction cleaners are still superior.
The other thing about suction cleaners that I like is that
they're in the pool all the time.
Rarely will the customer take them out only when they have a
party or something.
And so they're always vacuuming the pool, and they're really
great with dirt.
In my area, dirt is a problem.
You know, it's Southern California, it gets windy,
there's still a lot of dirt everywhere, and so dirt gets in
the pool.
And suction cleaners just do a great job with dirt, probably
more so than pressure cleaners, and I think in most cases just
as well as robotic pool cleaners are better depending on which
one you have, because the dirt goes into the filter, and it
just is just like basically standing there all day with your
manual vacuum head and hose and vacuuming the pool all day.
So the pool is swim ready every day.
It picks up the dirt, it'll pick up anything that may stain the
pool, leaves, or anything like that.
And so it's a real workhorse that's in the pool running as
the pool is running.
Now, with variable speed pumps, of course, they don't run as
long as they used to.
If you had a single speed pump, it's gonna run eight or ten
hours while the pump is running.
But with variable speed pumps, a lot of times on lower speeds,
like you know, 1800 RPMs or 2000 RPMs, the cleaner is kind of
just sitting there and they're really not moving really well.
And it's one of those things where you have a shorter runtime
than prior, but it's still plenty of runtime because three
or four hours is all you need really for the cleaner to clean
the entire pool.
They do pretty good with leaf debris.
Any large leaf debris or piles of leaf debris are a problem for
suction side cleaners because the throat is pretty small.
Think about the size of a quarter or a little bit bigger
than the quarter as the opening, maybe a half dollar, or maybe
not quite the size of a half dollar.
I would say more like a Susan B.
Anthony.
I don't know if you guys know what those are, but the Susan B.
Anthony dollars are about the size of the opening of a suction
cleaner.
And so a pile of leaves will stop it.
So there are drawbacks, of course.
I mean, even though I like them the most, they do have some
downside to them.
One is that a pile of debris will stop them.
A large twig will stop a cleaner usually.
A pretty good sized rock will stop it.
So these are all normal things that are going to stop the
cleaner.
It won't stop a pressure cleaner, and certainly it won't
stop a robotic pool cleaner.
But if your pool has light debris and dirt, suction
cleaners are just superior for all the reasons I mentioned.
Another negative would be the hoses that are in the pool.
And a lot of people don't like the hoses that use their pool
and they see the hoses or they look out drinking their coffee
in the morning and see these pool hoses floating in their
$200,000 pool.
I get it, but you know, besides those kind of minor things, you
get used to it.
You really kind of ignore the hoses in the cleaner after some
time.
It just becomes part of the pool, in my opinion.
And if if you're not obsessing over the look of it, it's really
effective.
And I like also the fact that you can spot vacuum any attached
spa with the automatic cleaner.
Just take take the head off the of the hoses, attach your manual
vacuum, drop it in the spa, and vacuum it.
So it does have the benefit of you being able to vacuum with
the hoses already in the pool and not needing to bring your
pool hose, and you can spot vacuum any areas that the
cleaner may have missed on your service day.
So there's that advantage also.
You couldn't do that with a pressure cleaner, or certainly
not with a robotic pool cleaner.
So spot vacuuming is another advantage that the suction side
cleaners have over it.
And the last one is the fact that you're not relying on the
customer to actually put the cleaner in the pool.
And this is the disadvantage of robotic pool cleaners on your
pool route because you're not there to put it in.
They have to put it in.
I'll put it in on my service day if I'm there.
But really, with the suction cleaner, it's in there all the
time, and there's really nothing that you have to worry about.
You know, the cleaner is going to be working, customer doesn't
have to do anything.
Pressure cleaners, they don't have to actually do that either.
They'll come out with the booster pump.
Robotic pool cleaners do have that drawback that it does need
some hands-on from the customer.
And as you know, the customer is not always the best in putting
it in there.
So you may show up on your service day in the pool, maybe
really dirty because they didn't put the cleaner in during the
week.
Now you can run the some of the corded ones on a weekly cycle,
just like a suction cleaner.
Those are good and acceptable.
Like the um Polaris Alpha IQ is a great one.
Some of the dolphins have timers also.
You can leave them in the pool all week and they'll vacuum it
like a suction cleaner.
But in that case, I would say just get a suction cleaner and
call it a day instead of spending$1,500 on a robotic pool
cleaner that has a timer that will clean the pool every day.
It just makes more sense to have a suction cleaner at that point.
I think the perfect combination actually is a suction cleaner
with a robotic pool cleaner.
Have the suction cleaner in there all week.
When you're having a party, take the suction cleaner out a day or
two ahead of time, drop in a robotic pool cleaner the day of
the party, have it polish the pool, take it out, and then
after the party, put the suction cleaner back in.
It's probably a much more expensive way to operate your
pool, but I find that to be the best combination.
Suction cleaner during the week, robotic pool cleaner when you
have a party and you're gonna take it out.
And to me, that's a win-win.
I really think Polaris should like box the MX, the MX8, the
Polaris Atlas and a robotic pool cleaner in one box and send it
out as like a combo set.
And I think it'll be really popular.
You have the suction cleaner during the week, and then the
robotic pool cleaner you can use.
And it'll by the way last a very long time.
If you're using a robotic pool cleaner, maybe once a month,
you're probably gonna have that cleaner for like six or seven
years or ten years with no problem.
I think if you run a robotic poop cleaner every day or
weekly, that's when you really wear it out.
So for the best combination, my opinion, suction cleaner during
the week, robotic pool cleaner when you need it, and you'll
have a super clean pool for your customers out there.
And you know, if you do your pool yourself, it's a great
combination as well.
But really, the suction cleaners have all these advantages and
more probably that I didn't mention here, over the other
cleaner types.
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Thanks for listening to this podcast.
Have the rest of your week.
God bless.