Robotic Swimming Pool Cleaners, Nitro and Polaris

With Red Baron Pool Supplies I am noticing a growing surge in popularity towards electric robotic swimming pool cleaners.

It's good to see because they really are great machines!

A normal random type suction pool cleaner is very prone to getting stuck on any obstacle, if there is any nook or corner where there is a chance for them to get caught you can be guaranteed they'll find it somehow.

Geared suction cleaners don't suffer the problems of getting stuck but their more moving parts quite often mean more break downs over their life. Their random cleaning pattern often means even after several hours cleaning you will come out to find patches on your pool floor still dirty.

Robotic pool cleaners have a degree of intelligence to their cleaning pattern to ensure in their cleaning cycle they dont miss anything. Most robotic pool cleaners have completed their cleaning cycle and switch off after 3 hours.

Normal pool cleaners will scuttle along and vacuum, but very few have any scrubbing action, robotic pool cleaners scrub as well as vacuum.

The two robotic pool cleaners I sell most frequently are the Nitro Wall Scrubber and Polaris 9300. Both very similar, the Nitro has scrubbers front and back while and Polaris only has 1 set of scrubbers. The Nitro has a vertical jet discharge for its water, the Polaris rear discharge jet. The rear jet of the Polaris can blast dirt out of hard to reach places. The vertical discharge of the Nitro is good too because anything too fine for the 10 micron bag will be blasted out the top and give the skimmer box a chance at catching extremely fine particles. Both cleaners are great units and it would be hard to choose between the two.

Most people know pressure cleaners are far superior than suction cleaners but pressure cleaners require the additional cost of a booster pump in order to function. Booster pumps consume almost as much electricity as a normal pool pump. Robotic pool cleaners are energy efficient and run on as little as 150 Watts which is less than half the energy consumption of an average LCD TV .

Robotic cleaners are similar to pressure cleaners in that they have their own self contained debris bags, however robotic pool cleaners scrub as well as vacuum. In my opinion pressure pool cleaners are great but no better than robotic and for the price of the pressure cleaner + the booster pump, you are normally looking at the same price as a robotic pool cleaner anyway.

Another advantage of robotic cleaners is that your pools skimmer box can still run whilst the cleaner is running, a normal suction cleaner blocks off a skimmer box while it is in action.

I have experience with the wall climbing models of robotic pool cleaner and I would highly recommend these models over their slightly cheaper non-wall scrubbing robotic counterparts. A wall scrubbing robotic pool cleaner will climb a vertical pool wall regardless of how smooth it is and scrub for algae and other build ups whilst still being delicate enough to be suitable for vinyl liner pools.

A warning to fellow Australians and non-Americans, beware of buying cheaper robotic pool cleaners from U.S/Canada, although much cheaper often they will not work on your countries electricity if it is the U.S version. I'm not sure about the Polaris but I know for certain the U.S Nitro robotic pool cleaner does not work on electricity that isn't 110V. For Australian 240V they put a new motor as well as a new transformer, buying the cheaper U.S version and putting a new transformer is not enough for it to work. Also overseas purchase = no warranty.

For those in the U.S check prices with Amazon, online will always beat the prices of the poor old pool shop.

I encourage any questions in the comments box below, and check out my other swimming pool related hubs!

Thanks for reading!!

You may also be interested in my hub on the most energy efficient swimming pool pumps.

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