YT Pool Questions: Cleaner Stuck, Priming Speed & CircuPool

Your pool equipment is probably not “broken” the setup is. We dig into the kind of questions that hit my inbox all the time and give the field-tested fixes that actually save you hours: why a Phoenix 4X or Hayward Aquanaut suction side cleaner keeps going sideways, what that says about balance and hose length, and the one adjustment that usually stops the problem immediately.

Then we get into variable speed pump quality-of-life upgrades. If your VS pump screams at full RPM every morning during priming, you can often lower the priming speed and shorten the priming duration without losing reliability. I walk through the logic behind choosing a quieter priming RPM, why five minutes at max speed is often overkill, and how this simple change can cut noise and wasted energy for both homeowners and pool service pros.

We also talk saltwater chlorine generator choices beyond the usual big names. If you’re replacing an older AquaRite salt system and keep hearing “never heard of that brand,” I share why Circuit Pool salt systems are worth a serious look, how retrofit options can make the swap easier, and why ORP and pH automation with acid feeding can push your pool closer to truly hands-off water care. We wrap with suction plumbing tips around main drains, anti-vortex drain hangups, Polaris Atlas and Polaris Max cleaner fit, and vacuum bag upgrades for Bottom Feeder, Shrimp, and Riptide setups.

•Adding one or two hose sections to stop Phoenix 4X and Aquanaut cleaners from tipping sideways
•Why the four-wheel handle design can make a cleaner feel top heavy
•Changing variable speed pump priming speed and priming time to reduce noise and wasted energy
•Circuit Pool salt system pros, warranty value, and AquaRite retrofit compatibility
•Why diverting suction to the skimmer helps suction side cleaner performance
•Which cleaners get stuck on anti-vortex main drains and why Polaris Atlas and Max tend to avoid it
•Choosing longer-lasting vacuum bags, smarter micron sizes, and cartridge filtration alternatives
•Bottom Feeder or Shrimp portability vs Riptide cart

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Transcript

Welcome And Question Roundup

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Hey, welcome to the Pool Guy Podcast Show. In this episode, I'm going to answer and expand on some questions I get on YouTube. And of course, I cover a number of topics when I do these podcasts where I expand on the comments. And I think you're going to find a lot of helpful information as I kind of unpack these questions and offer more detailed responses. 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. Here's one that you may run into in the field as well. And this one is white is my four-wheeled Phoenix 4X cleaner. My Phoenix 4X cleaner goes sideways most of the time. This is the same thing with the Hayward Aquanaut as well. It doesn't really happen very often with the actual Hayward pool cleaner. Now let me explain, I'll back up a little bit. Hayward acquired the Poolvernougan cleaner from Poolvernoughen. And so they have three versions of it. One is called the Pool Cleaner, one is called the Phoenix, and one is called the Aquanaut. They have a two and a four-wheel version, with a lot of people preferring the four-wheeled version. Now one thing about the four-wheel version that happens, that doesn't happen to the two two-wheeled version, is that it can tilt over on its side and then not write itself. I really think it has a lot to do with the added handle, the weight of the handle on top, making the cleaner a little bit unbalanced compared to the pool cleaner, which is the exact pool vanugan model basically, with kind of an inset handle underneath. And so what happens is that if you don't have the proper hose length, and this is the solution by the way, the proper hose length, when it gets to a certain point in the pool, let's say it's going to the deep end, and you notice it tips over and then stays on the side, and it's kind of moving on the side of its body with kind of like the wheels spinning, and it's not actually on the ground, if that makes sense. That's because you need one or two more hose length to prevent that from happening. Again, it doesn't really happen with the Haywood pool cleaner in my experience, but only the Haywood Aquanaut or Phoenix because of the handle on top that makes this cleaner slightly unbalanced, in my opinion. And if you don't have the proper hose length or too short of a hose length, you can have it tip over sideways in the pool. And the cleaner has no way of writing itself, really. There's no way it's going to write itself until it finally gets to an area in the pool, maybe where it hits a corner or slope and can write itself. So simply add one or two more hose sections to the cleaner will do the trick. Sometimes moving the float up or down on the first hose helps a little bit as well. But I find that the main solution is just adding one or two more hose sections so that it has more area to turn out and won't turn over and fall on the side. Something Hayward probably didn't think about when they added the handle on the back. And probably the original owner didn't know that this would happen either, but it does make it a little bit lopsided or top heavy. And if it does get on the side, it doesn't write itself. And it only falls on the side again if it has not enough hose section to stay upright. The question here is will this work on the whisper flow? And this was from a video on the superflow where I set the priming speed down to something decent. Now, if you have a variable speed pump and this does work on a whisper flow, I'll answer that question. It works on all the VS pumps, you just have to find out how to exactly to do this in the menu. The superflow is the easiest one to program, but you go into the menu and you can change the priming speed and the priming duration as well. Why this matters? Well, let's say you have a pool and you don't really need it to prime at 3450 RPMs for five minutes. It's really unnecessary. It's a waste of energy, it's a waste of time, and it's really a noise-inducing thing. And this is especially true if the VS pump comes on early in the morning and it's right next to maybe a bedroom or a neighbor's house, and that three to five minute annoying full power burst from the VS pump is jarring and it's unnecessary. So you could actually go in there and change the priming speed down. I would suggest you do this to your VS pump because it doesn't really need to prime at that speed, honestly. Especially if you're running your available speed pump at pretty low RPMs or percentages. For example, I'll run mine at a low speed for most of the day, 1800 RPMs, and then I'll have it at a medium speed of 26 rpms for the rest of the day or the rest of the runtime. So why do I need it to prime at 30 3450 RPMs, you know, and have it prime and then drop back down to 1800? It doesn't make any sense. So basically you can prime it at 2800. I think at 2600 you're still pretty good. 2800 seems to be a pretty good sweet spot for most pool pumps, and the noise level is acceptable. It's not too loud, it's probably a little louder than, of course, the low speed or medium speed, but not much more than the medium speed. And it primes up the pool fine. It's just that if there's any air in there, maybe some air got in there overnight or whatever. Priming it for three minutes at 2800 RPMs is sufficient. You can go to 3100 if you want to or 3000 rpms, but essentially, unless the pool is like 40,000 gallons and the pump is really far from the skimmer and has to pull a lot of water, I would say priming it for five minutes at 3450 rpms is really unnecessary. And if you have a VS pump and you don't want it to prime at the full speed, just go into the menu of the pump and you can find where you can reset it or actually set it down to a lower priming speed and set it down for a lower priming time. And again, three minutes seems to be the sweet spot in my opinion. Here's one that I get a lot, and this one is I'm gonna market to replace my assault system. It's a 10-year-old aqua right, and I've talked to three different local pool people, and no one has heard of Circuit Pool. Now, Circuit Pool has been around for a long time, but I would say that unless you actually actively search for it, you can go on Amazon, you can find a lot of the circuit pool models listed there. It's gonna be hard to find this particular model in a lot of backyards, especially if you're in an area where Pentair dominates or Hayward dominates. And if you wanted to switch out to the circuit pool cell, I really recommend doing that because it is a very robust salt system with a very long eight-year prorated warranty. The cells are really well made, and they have retrofit kits for some of the models for the Hayward Aqua Rate system, so that the salt cell will sit right into where the aqua rate system is. They have some that fit exactly into the Aqua Rate unions. Why go with an off-brand or another brand salt cell? I just recently did a podcast on quote generic salt cells, but there are some that have been around just as long as the major name brands like Aquapilot, those have been around for a long time. And so the circuit pool cell is a great choice. It's a robust cell, it's got a long lifespan, and it's a much better cell, in my opinion, than most of the salt cells out there. Now, I also am pretty partial to the Jandy True Clear cell. I like that one. And I mentioned in that podcast where I talked about different cells. I like the fact that the Jandy cell is pretty inexpensive to replace after wears out after three or four years, but the circuit pool cells are also very inexpensive to replace over time. So I wouldn't hesitate to buy a circuit pool system. And the new core control system that came out recently would be a top choice. This one has an ORP and pH sensor that you can put into the housing of the cell, and then you can monitor the ORP and pH, and you can get a pH pump also, so that the system actually adds acid to the pool. It's basically a totally hands-off system. You have you have your app, and then you have everything controlling it the ORP, the salt cell output, the pH injection or the acid injection with the pH control. So really it's a really revolutionary system, and I would highly recommend that one over maybe a Pentair or a Hayward system if you're looking to upgrade and change your system entirely. There really aren't too many salt systems I would recommend outside of Pentare, Jandy, and Hayward. But the Circuit Pool, the autopilot, these are ones that I would definitely recommend because they're really their own branded product. But they are a great robust salt water system with really good reviews. If you look online, these circuit pool systems get stellar reviews, and I have some installed on my pools here in Southern California, and they work really well. The customer really has no complaints at all. It's a really robust salt system, really well-made product. You can see right away that it's well manufactured when you get the product in your hand. Here's a question related again to the Hayward Aquanaut, and this one is well waiting to purchase this one. Question Do I need a valve? Do I need to turn the valve off for the floor drains to divert all the pressure to the skimmer? And I'm switching from a pressure cleaner to this, and I want to have only my various speed pump running and not the booster pump. And will this get stuck on the main drain? So this is an important question to ask about a suction side cleaner. And yes, I think it's really smart if you can divert or turn off the main drain. You wouldn't need that per se with the suction side cleaner working in there. The cleaner wouldn't technically get stuck on the main drain if there was still suction coming from it. Those are mainly the balancing type cleaners like the creepy crawly or the Zodiac G3. Those tend to get stuck on the main drain if the main drain is operational and active because the counter suction kind of sucks the plate, the rubber plate onto the drain. But for the gear type cleaners like the navigator and the pool cleaner, the MX8, the the Atlas or Max Cleaner, they don't really have that problem getting stuck on the main drain. There's suction coming from it. But with that said, it's much better to have all the suction going to the skimmer anyway, because what you're going to do is divert some of that suction to the cleaner. So you would want the skimmer to work as well as it can, and with the main drain on, it was it's not going to pull the water as well into the skimmer. And since you're diverting some of that suction to the automatic cleaner, you would want the skimmer to have as much power as possible, and the main drain really serves no logical purpose with the automatic cleaner running in the pool. Now, as far as it getting stuck on the drain, this is something that can happen to most suction side cleaners, especially with the new anti-vortex main drains. And these drains they look like a vegetable strainer on the bottom of the pool, they're like gigantic. And most of the cleaners do have trouble in a new pool build, especially the Hayward Navigator and Aquanut Phoenix pool cleaner, because they just don't have a wide enough path to get off the main drain, and they can get hung up on there and stuck on there. So I would suggest if you do have one of these anti-vortex main drains, that the only cleaner that I would recommend in that case would be the Polaris Max or Polaris Atlas cleaner because they definitely have a much wider body on these cleaners, and to to this date, you don't really see these getting stuck on the anti-vortex main drains. So cleaners can get stuck on them. A bunch of them will get stuck on the anti-vortex main drain types, but the ones that don't really have a problem would be the Polaris Max and Atlas Cleaner. And I think I did suggest that to the person to go with the Polaris Atlas Cleaner or Max Cleaner to avoid it getting stuck on the main drain. I don't know if his pool was a newer one with an anti-vortex main drain, but it's a smarter idea to go with those if you do have that. Now, if you just have a regular drain in the bottom of the pool, all the cleaners will be fine. Just make sure you turn the suction off to it to maximize the skimmer and to prevent any potential and the potentiality of the cleaner getting stuck on stuck on there with the counter suction of that main drain. This one here comes from the shrimp posting. It says, What bag do you recommend for the shrimp cleaner? It's by the bottom feeder. I've gotten their bags and the they they rip after one month. Do you also recommend having a cart vacuum and a portable one? So this is like a twofold question. The first one is the bags that he gets ripped. And if he's using the 57 micron, there's a chance that that is going to rip within a month because it's thinner, it's for a lower micron. And I would really not recommend those bags unless you really need to use them to get dirt off the bottom. Just get the regular 100 micron bag, those are better. But if you really wanted to check for aftermarket bags that are really robust, I think there are two companies that make really good bags. One is from Clear Pool Products, the Clear Pool Bag. If you go to Clearpoolproducts.com, you're gonna see a bunch of different micron bags. They have anywhere from you know a 90 micron up to a 200 and a 400. Great choice there. And then my buddy Reggie, he he's from Mako bags, he's in Florida. He makes a really good vacuum system bag as well. And those two are what I would consider the best two aftermarket bags you can get: the clear pool products bag and the Mako bag. Those are really good bags that are gonna last much more than one month. And if you do have the shrimp or bottom feeder, and if you want to get dirt out of the pool, I would suggest moving away from the smaller micron bags and getting the cartridge filter assembly. This will get dirt down to 10 to 20 microns and it's not going to tear on you or rip like a bag would. And it's something that I would suggest doing if you have, you know, a bottom feeder or shrimp. Now, the second part of the question, would you recommend having a cart vacuum and a portable vacuum? That's really up to your budget, up to your service area, but I see no reason not to have both a bottom feeder and a riptide on your truck. The riptide would be great for those instances where you really need the extra power. It's also a really showy item. I mean, let's just admit it, you can't really tell if you have a bottom feeder or shrimp in your truck unless you like put it on the hood of your truck or something, or put it on, tie it to the tail of your truck, which I don't recommend because someone's gonna steal it. But the riptide definitely is visually attractive to customers, like this guy has a system on the back of the truck. Yes, I think the riptide does show well, it works really well, but there is definitely a trade-off because it's bigger, it's on a cart. You can put a lot of stuff in the cart and bring it back there, don't get me wrong. But the bottom feeder definitely is portable, the shrimp, you just have that with no cords on it, drop into the pool and then start vacuuming. And of course, the riptide has more power than the bottom feeder and shrimp, but it's a trade-off basically power versus versatility and speed. I think, of course, the bottom feeder and shrimp went in that latter category. And the riptide definitely is powerful, and it can be convenient because you have a cart where you can put everything in it. So if your budget allows for it, I really think you should have both the riptide and the bottom feeder. I see no problem with you having two different vacuum systems. One is going to be utilized for quick vacuuming, and the other one's gonna be utilized maybe to bring stuff back to your stop. You'll have the vacuum system with you, plus you'll have you know room to put everything there. So it's kind of a win-win to have both of them, but it's not a necessity to have two vacuum systems, and it's really ultimately up to you which vacuum system to choose. If you're gonna go with one, the cart with the riptide, or if you want a portable one without any cord or cart, then the bottom feeder shrimp would be my top choice in that category. If you're looking for other podcasts, you can find those by going to my website, swimmingpolearning.com, and clicking on the podcast icon on the banner. That'll take you to a drop down menu with over 1900 podcasts there for you to listen to. And if you're interested in a coaching program that I offer, you can learn more at pullguycoaching.com. Thanks for listening to this podcast. Have a good rest of your week and God bless.