Cart vs Cordless: Which Pool Vacuum Is Best?

Heavy leaves or fine dust—what’s slowing you down? We break down the real-world tradeoffs between the most popular pool vacuum systems so you can match the right tool to every stop and cut your cleaning time without cutting corners. Drawing on years in the field, we compare Riptide and Hammerhead cart rigs, the updated Power Vac handheld, and the ultra-portable Bottom Feeder and Shrimp. We also spotlight the Vac Daddy’s secret weapon for vacuum-to-waste jobs and explain how bag micron choices and cartridge filtration can completely change your results on dusty routes.

We start with carts and cords, looking at why Riptide’s intake shape delivers massive pull and how its rugged head and locking bags boost durability—while adding weight and tougher bag removal. Hammerhead counters with nimble balance and faster maneuvering thanks to its center wheel and lighter feel. From there, we explore battery options, cord lengths, and mounting solutions like T-bar receivers that let you carry multiple carts and gear without cramming the truck bed.

Then we get practical about portables. Bottom Feeder and Shrimp turn speed into a strategy: flip the switch, drop in, and clean routine pools quickly with no cord management. With the cartridge filter assembly grabbing down to fine dirt, these compact tools can outperform expectations on dusty pools and tight decks. We compare micron ratings across bags, share the sweet spot that balances leaves and silt, and lay out when a cartridge wins over a small-micron bag. Finally, we carve out space for the Vac Daddy, which excels as a lightweight vacuum-to-waste solution that can replace bulkier portable filtration when you need to bypass the filter fast.

• pros and cons of cart vacuums versus portable systems
• riptide power and durability trade-offs
• hammerhead balance and maneuverability
• power vac handheld update and availability
• bottom feeder and shrimp portability and runtime
• cartridge assembly for fine dirt capture
• bag micron choices and performance
• vac daddy use case for vacuum-to

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Chapters

• 0:00 What This Episode Covers
• 2:12 Coaching Program Invitation
• 2:32 Full-Size Cart Vacuums Overview
• 3:50 Riptide vs Hammerhead Carts
• 4:56 Mounting Carts And Power Output
• 5:39 Riptide Strengths And Drawbacks
• 6:19 Hammerhead Maneuverability Edge
• 6:50 Batteries, Weight, And Run Time
• 7:07 Power Vac Handheld Update
• 8:28 Portable Options: Bottom Feeder And Shrimp
• 9:43 Runtime, Batteries, And New Competitors
• 11:38 Micron Performance And Cartridge Add-On
• 12:25 Use Cases: Heavy Leaves vs Fine Dirt
• 13:16 The Vac Daddy’s Niche
• 14:31 Building The Right Two-Tool Setup
• 16:26 Resources, Coaching, And Sign-Off

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:02

Hey, welcome to the Pool Vay Podcast Show. In this episode, I'm going to go over the different vacuum systems that are available out there. Also touch on if you need a vacuum system for your pool route. And I'm kind of going to compare and contrast the different vacuum systems out there for you so you can make an educated decision based on your needs out there in the field. Are you a pool service pro looking to take your business to the next level? Join the pool guy coaching program. Get expert advice, business tips, exclusive content, and get direct support from me. I'm a 35-year veteran in the industry. Whether you're starting out or scaling up, I've got the tools to help you succeed. Learn more at swimmingpoollearning.com. So I've owned and used every vacuum system that's been on the market. Everything except for the hammerhead Remora, but I've used a standard hammerhead with the cart. And the new power vac, I have not used that yet. But that one I think is having some stock issues. I haven't seen it in the stores. It's basically a redesigned power vac. But of course, the Riptide SL, I have one of those. The Bottom Feder and Shrimp, I have those as well. And I also have the VAC Daddy, which I'll touch on. Not your traditional vacuum system, but it fits that category in a lot of respects. So I'll throw that one in there also for you here. All these systems have pros and cons. So there's no perfect system out there that I can that I can speak of. And the pros and cons you have to see what outweighs what you need on your pool route. So I'll start with the hammerhead and riptide. Now these are very similar to each other. They both have service carts. So if you need the service cart, you can definitely you may want to lean towards one of these with the service cart. Although you can actually get a service cart for the bottom feeder at Advantage Manufacturing, they make a service cart for the bottom feeder vacuum. But the pure cart vacuums would be the hammerhead and the riptide. Now the riptide cart is very versatile, you can add a lot of stuff to it, carry a lot of stuff back there. The hammerhead cart is very basic, kind of bare bones, but it's very well balanced. So that there's an advantage to the hammerhead cart being very well balanced, even though you can't carry a lot of stuff back in that cart. It does serve a really good purpose as far as balancing the hammerhead as you bring it back to the pool. The riptide cart, of course, is superior because you can just bring everything on your truck back there, even a bag of salt or two bags of salt with their the little salt connector they have for it. I'm blanking out of what it's called there. And you can, of course, bring a lot of other stuff back with the carts. It's really nice to have the cart. You could probably use it in my area in about 90% of the accounts. There's certain accounts where the cart wouldn't go back there. But the majority of pools in my service area, the cart does come in handy and it's very useful. Now you can also get a T-bar mount from Advantage Manufacturing. And this is a special bar that you'll put into your receiver. They can actually mount two carts on the back of your truck. So one side could be the riptide or hammerhead, the other side can be a standard service cart. So you're not limited to how many carts you can put on your truck if you like the service cart aspect of it. Now the riptide and hammerhead have very similar power output, but I think the riptide has more power based on the shape of the head of the riptide. So it pulls in more debris at a faster pace, even though I think the thrust motors are about the same. And so the most powerful vacuum, the most powerful vacuum system of the bunch I'm talking about here would be the riptide. It just has sheer power. Now, of course, there are some drawbacks of the riptide. And the main drawback you're going to hear out there from surface guys and gals is that the riptide is really heavy. It's a heavy-duty vacuum head. It even has a 10-year warranty, I think, on the vacuum head. It's so well built. So the weight of the riptide, the vacuum itself, is somewhat of a drawback. And then the bags, you may have trouble getting the bags off the riptide, especially in cold weather with wet hands. They're on there really good. So on the plus side, the bag will never blow off the riptide. On the downside, the bags are somewhat hard to get off of the system. You can use off-market bags as well on the riptide as well. The hammerhead, I think, is the most maneuverable of the big vacuum systems because of the extra wheel in the middle. It just has a little more height off the ground of the pool, and it's more maneuverable than the riptide by far. It's much faster and leaner. The riptide is kind of like a big, you know, Ford F1 or Ford F250 truck. And then the hammerhead is maybe like you know a Toyota Tacoma, just move it around the pool a lot easier. Both are great choices for the full-size vacuum system. Both can use the larger 100H battery to give yourself the most power out there, but that also puts weight onto the cart itself, too. So just be aware of that. And if you're looking for a robust vacuum system, those would be a great choice with the cart. Now, I think the power vac used to come with a cart, and of course, they discontinued the cart. They went with just a handheld vacuum. And by the way, you can get a riptide, the XP, without the cart. I really don't think that's their best version. If you're gonna get a riptide, I would go with the the SL cart, and then the hammerhead has hammerhead has the Ramora, which has the battery you can wear on the side of you, and you can use the hammerhead in the pool. All these are corded, by the way, so you can get different cord lengths for the riptide, 40 and 60 feet. Same with the hammerhead, so they are corded vacuums, and I'll go over the bags as well in a minute here, too. Then you have the power vac, which was one of my favorites. They redesigned it. Now you only have the handheld version without the cart, and it comes with a battery box that can hold a lithium nickel battery that will give you three hours of runtime, which is plenty of runtime for a vacuum system. The smaller batteries on the Riptide and Hammerhead will also give you that three-hour runtime as well. The new PowerVac is the PowerVac PV3600, and again it's not a bad choice, it weighs about 13 pounds, and then you have the battery, which probably weighs about 15 pounds or 18 pounds. So it's not a bad choice for a vacuum system. You just may have trouble finding it in stock in different places. Seems to be out of stock quite a bit, but it's definitely a good choice as well. And then, of course, the more portable vacuum system would be the bottom feeder, and even more portable would be the shrimp. The nice thing about the bottom feeder and shrimp is that you have the lithium nickel ion battery on the back of the cleaner, and so it's really portable. You just turn it on and drop it in the pool. No need to worry about cords or anything, and you can vacuum a pool pretty fast with these. Of course, you lose power because they're more portable. So you don't have the you know 35-pound thrust motor of the hammerhead or riptide. I think it's more like a 15 or 18 pound thrust motor, but you don't really notice a huge power drop-off because the propellers on the bottom instead of the top, and you're gonna you're going to have really good power with both the bottom feeder and the shrimp cleaner. And for 90% of the pools, you wouldn't really need the power of the riptide or hammerhead in those cases, anyway. So you don't really lose too much with the bottom feeder and shrimp as far as power. The bottom feeder, you get an hour and a half runtime, but it comes with a a the ability to charge it in your truck in between stops as well. And the shrimp, so that because it's smaller, you get a 2.5 hour runtime with the uh life P04 battery on there. They both share the same battery, and they both share very similar power with the shrimp being a little less powerful, but you don't notice it because it has a five-inch throat. And if you've seen this thing, it's so compact that it's something that I would consider over the larger Kokito vacuum, which has just hit the market, and it's it's something that I think would be a direct competitor of the shrimp cleaner. That new Coquito. Let me just pull up the name here for you. Yeah, so if you go to pool 360 or the pool corp site, you can see it there. It's called the Coquito Vectro Orca O-R-KKA. And this one has two batteries, and it's probably about a similar size to the shrimp cleaner. But as far as power, I think the shrimp, of course, is more powerful. I think it's priced around$800, and the shrimp is at$1180, I believe. So you pay more for the shrimp, but the shrimp is of course stainless steel, and the orca is all plastic. And so if you're looking for a powerful portable vacuum system, I would definitely lean more towards the shrimp versus the coquito. If you're using those little coquito vacuums for you know$300, they actually serve a pretty good purpose. But I think once you start using the shrimp or bottom feeder, you're not going to be using those as much. You know, a lot of people like them because they're portable and quick, and I get it, but the durability is questionable compared to something like the shrimp. And now that the bottom feeder and shrimp have the cartridge filter assembly, if you haven't heard of this yet, it's a 50 square foot cartridge that easily threads on to the top of the bottom feeder and shrimp, allowing you to pick up dirt down to 20 microns. So it definitely makes the shrimp much superior over any coqueto cleaner because of the cartridge adapter, the ability to use that to pick up dirt. Where I think the coquito has the lowest micron bag is 75 micron, and so you're going to be able to pick up dirt with the shrimp. Whereas with the coquito cleaners, it won't do that. It'll pick up just leaf debris. So again, the bottom feeder and shrimp definitely win in the portability department. You don't have cord, you don't really have a cart to bring back there, and it's something that's really easy to use and clean pools with, but you do sacrifice some power, of course, with the bottom feeder and the shrimp for that reason. So, as far as weight and portability, the bottom feeder and shrimp definitely win in that category. And the riptide and hammerhead are power are heavy, and the carts are more than likely necessary in most cases for that, I would say. As far as the size of the cleaning path, of course, the full-size hammerhead and riptide have a larger cleaning path, so for really heavy debris cleanups, those would be really effective. The bottom and feeder, the bottom feeder has a really good size cleaning path, with the shrimp having a smaller cleaning path, but the compact size of the shrimp is why you would purchase it versus having the larger cleaning path. You know, you wouldn't buy the shrimp to necessarily clean giant commercial pools. You would use a larger vacuum system for that, but you can definitely use the bottom feeder to clean large commercial pools, no problem, over, say, the Riptider Hammerhead. As long as the debris is not something like overwhelming and gigantic. It's something that I think again, I mentioned the bottom feeder and shrimp are good for probably for about 90% of the pools on your pool route. Let me talk about the bags for a minute. And there's different bags you can get, of course, off-market bags. You have the clear pool product bags, you have the Mako bags, you have the vac bags. All these bags are somewhat compatible for all the vacuum systems. The manufactured bags of the Riptide are very robust because they're not going to blow off the cleaner. So you may want to just get OEM bags of the Riptide for that reason. They're probably superior because of the fact that they lock on to the head and don't blow off the cleaner. They're also double lined so they are a lot longer lasting. I guess the only drawback of the riptide bags is the fact that you may have trouble getting them off the cleaner. They do make a tool for it that you can actually stick in there and pull the bag off with. And then some pool guys complain about the double lining. You can't really see how much debris is in the bag because you can't see inside the bag. To me, it's not a big deal, but people have complained about it. I like the double lining because it gives the bag more protection and makes it very robust. As far as the hammerhead, they have various bags as well, even their volcanic bag, which I think is a small micron bag, very similar to the Riptide 60 micron bag. And then the bottom feeder has a 57 micron bag and a 100 micron bag. So basically, the microns, the higher the micron, you know, 400, 200, the less dirt it captures. And so if you're using like a 200 micron bag, it's great for leaf debris, but a lot of the finer dirt is going to pass right through it. The sweet spot, in my opinion, is a 75 micron bag, because then you get a good amount of dirt, plus you get all the leaf debris as well. And so 75 microns is a sweet spot, in my opinion, for a debris bag. And my go-to bag for the riptide is their 75 micron bag. The 100 micron bag is fine also. And you should note that the smaller than the micron, the smaller you have to actually move the cleaner in the pool. So if you're using a 57 micron bag on the bottom feeder or shrimp, you're not moving it quite as fast as if you're using a 100 micron bag, if that makes sense. And if you're using the cartridge assembly, you would move it just about as fast as you would move the bottom feeder and shrimp with the 57 micron bag on top. Again, vacuum systems are not designed to pick up the fine dirt in the pool. For that, you're going to need a cartridge assembly, that like the one that comes on the shrimp and bottom feeder. And currently those are the only vacuum systems where you can get the cartridge assembly for. So I think if you have a pool route with a lot of dirt, you definitely would want to lean towards the bottom feeder and the shrimp cleaner with the cartridge assembly. If you have pools that get really trashed by a lot of leaf debris, where it's a tremendous amount where you're filling up trash bags of leaves, then of course the hammerhead rip type would be great for that. I did mention I was going to touch on the Vac Daddy because it kind of fits the category of a vacuum system, but it doesn't exactly look like a vacuum system. I think the Vac Daddy has a purpose in the industry and it fits a really good niche market. If you do a lot of manual vacuuming on your pool route with the vacuum head and the hose, the Vac Daddy will take the place of that because it goes on the back of your pole and the dirt and debris are trapped in bags. But I think where the Vac Daddy excels and where it really has the corner of the market is with the vacuum the waste adapter because the power of this thing connected to the pole, just kind of free-floating in the pool basically, with the pool hose on back when you're vacuuming the waste, makes it super convenient. And if you do a lot of vacuuming the waste in your area, the vac daddy will take the place of a like a portable filtration or portable filter that you would bring out there. And it's very versatile again with the bags and with the fact that there's actually a battery now for it too, so you don't need to worry about plugging it in. So there is some use for the Vac Daddy, and I think the vacuum the waste is where it really excels as a tool in the pool industry. Ultimately, you want to choose the vacuum system that's gonna fit the needs for your area. And I definitely think you should have a vacuum system on your pool route in one configuration or another. I think a lot of pool guys, of course, have two vacuum systems. They'll get a hammerhead and the bottom feeder, or you'll get a riptide and a shrimp. And there's nothing wrong with having two of them. That gives you the most options for whatever situation you run into out there. A pool that got thrashed by the sand of winds in my area, you can just pull out your riptide and use that. During your regular route, you can use the bottom feeder. So there really is not like a need just to have one of these systems, and I wouldn't say that you need to choose one system over another. A combination of a full-size vacuum system like the Riptide or Hammerhead in conjunction with something like the shrimp and the bottom feeder, now that they have the cartridge filter assembly, would be my primary choice. I know it's a big investment to buy two vacuum systems, but that covers you 100%. You don't have to worry about anything with two of them. And a lot of pool companies do gravitate towards having both of these on their pool route at some point. So I wouldn't limit myself to picking one. And if you are gonna just pick one of them, you want to actually choose the one that's best for your area. You know, whatever advice you hear from other people. Heavy leaf debris, tremendous amount of leaf debris all the time, hammerhead riptide, you know, medium leaf debris most of the time, occasionally heavy leaf debris, bottom feeder and shrimp would be my choice, especially if you have dirt also with the cartridge assembly. So choose based on your area. If you need a cart, of course, go with the cart type vacuum systems over the ones you carry back with your hand. And you really can't make a wrong choice, I don't think, with the vacuum systems, in my opinion. They're all really great products, and it's one of those things where you pick what you need based on that, and you may eventually have more than one vacuum system, which is perfectly fine as well. If you're looking for other podcasts, you can find those on my website, swimmingpoollearning.com. Click on the banner, you'll see an icon with a with a podcast there, and there's over 1800 podcasts you're listening to. And if you're interested in the coaching program, you can learn more at poolguycoaching.com. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Have a rest of your week. God bless.