Are pool vacuums worth it, assuming (of course) you own a pool?
To answer that question, I’ll go through my own story of pool ownership, as I’ve now gone one year without and another year with a robot pool vacuum. I can tell you from that experience, the difference is absolutely night and day.
Let me share my story.
I was astonished at the job it did.
My Experience with a Pool Vacuum
My wife and I bought a Dolphin Premier robot pool cleaner from a neighbor, who was selling it on Facebook classifieds for about $700. This is normally a $1400 pool cleaner robot, which you can browse here on Amazon.
Initially I was skeptical about the purchase, because even $700 is a lot of money for what I deemed to be a poor man’s Roomba for my pool.
But I was astonished at the job it did.
It scraped up every bit of grime and dirt that I could see. It even climbed the sides of the pool and cleaned those areas. Bugs, dirt, grime, leaves, and anything visible to the naked eye was gone within an hour.
I couldn’t believe how clean my pool was.
What’s even nicer, is that I just had to turn it on and toss the unit into the pool. It has a cord, but there’s plenty of length and it easily handled the length of my pool which is about 40-50 feet long.
It just did a far better job than I ever could have done by hand, using the hose and suction vacuum method. The robot vacuum was far superior, both in ease of use and in quality of the job it did.
My Experience without the Pool Vacuum
The year before we got our robot pool vacuum still required cleaning the pool, but we had to do it by hand. We had a brush, sort of shaped like a triangle, which fastened to the end of a long pole.
The brush then hooked up to a hose that pulled water in through the filter.
It did an okay job, but it wasn’t until we got the Dolphin vacuum that we realized how poor and inefficient the brush method actually was.
The brush/hose method was also labor intensive and time-consuming.
All of this to say:
The robot vacuum was absolutely worth the $700 we paid for it. And if I had to do it again, I would pay full price for the Dolphin Premier at $1200-$1400.
Read more: How much does the Dolphin Premier Robot Pool Cleaner cost?
Other Benefits
We also noticed that as we used the pool vacuum more and more, our chemicals got easier to maintain.
PH and chlorine levels would check out more often and we didn’t have to treat the water as much.
This was a small, yet unexpected benefit of getting the pool vacuum.
It also meant we could clear out some of the space-consuming gear we were using to do the brush vacuum method.
Are pool vacuums worth it in an above-ground pool?
Yes, even in an above ground pool, I would argue that pool vacuums – particularly the robot vacuums – are worth it.
Remember I was saying that it cleans the sides? Well, this is especially helpful in an above-ground pool where sides can sometimes be higher and hard to reach unless you’re in the pool.
Cleaning the sides is a royal pain, unless you have the robot vacuum just doing it for you.
For any pool owner, of any pool type, I’d recommend investing in a vacuum cleaner robot.
Absolutely Worth It
To conclude, my wife and I (especially my wife) would argue that the robot pool vacuum was absolutely worth it, especially given the fact we got a crazy-good bargain at $700.
But again, even if I had to pay full price, I would.
If you have questions about robot pool cleaners, or if you’re still questioning whether or not pool vacuums are worth it, feel free to drop a line in the comments section below. While this site is small, my wife and I do stay active online writing about pools and helping people, so we’ll definitely answer.
Hopefully we can be of some help.
See you there.