Robotic pool cleaners vs built-in cleaning systems

There are four ways to keep the floor and walls of a pool clean without dragging a vacuum around every week.

• Suction cleaners connect to the skimmer or a dedicated suction port and wander the pool on the pull of the main pump. Debris goes to the pump basket and filter.
• Pressure cleaners connect to a return line and are pushed by water pressure, usually from a separate booster pump. Most carry their own debris bag.
• Robotic cleaners are self-contained. They plug into a low-voltage power supply by the pool, drive themselves on their own motor and catch debris in an onboard filter.
• In-floor systems are built into the pool. Pop-up heads in the floor spray water in sequence to push debris toward the main drain, where it is caught in a canister.

Every Ohio State Pools package includes a cleaning kit for the manual jobs, like skimming and brushing. The question is what automatic cleaning you add on top.

Suction and pressure cleaners do not have motors of their own. They borrow the pool's pump, and they need it running at a fairly high speed to move. A pressure cleaner usually adds a booster pump on top of that. A robot runs on its own small motor while the main pump idles at a low filtration speed or stays off.

The numbers are not close. ENERGY STAR points to a Pacific Gas and Electric study that found a robotic cleaner used only 197 kWh per year. The same study, as reported in the trade press, put cleaners powered by the filtration pump at about 1,675 kWh a year and booster-pump pressure cleaners at about 2,989 kWh. Those figures came from California assumptions about run time. An Ohio season is shorter, so the totals here would be smaller, but the ratio holds.

That fits the way we build. Our packages come with a Pentair variable-speed pump, which saves the most when it spends most of the day at low speed. A robot lets it stay there. A suction or pressure cleaner forces it back up to high speed for hours every day.

A good robot does more than vacuum. Most climb the walls and scrub the waterline with brushes, which a suction cleaner rarely manages. They map or systematically cover the floor, so they do not miss the same corner every time. Because debris goes into the robot's own filter, fine dirt is caught before it reaches your pool filter, which means fewer backwashes.

Fiberglass pools suit robots well. The smooth gelcoat surface gives little for algae or dirt to grab onto, and the molded steps, benches and tanning ledges are gentle curves, not sharp corners. Robots do not clean the steps and ledges perfectly, and that is where a quick brush once a week still helps.

The routine for the owner is short: drop the robot in, let it run its cycle, lift it out by the handle or cable and rinse the filter basket. Most people run it a few times a week, more during pollen season.

This is where every cleaner struggles. Northeast Ohio's wooded lots dump a lot of leaves in October, often on pools that are still open, and oaks can hold leaves into November. A robot's filter basket holds a limited volume of debris. In a heavy leaf drop it may fill in the first hour and then push leaves around instead of collecting them. Pressure cleaners with large debris bags handle big leaves better, which is one of the few cases where they still make sense on a pool that already has one.

The better answer is to keep leaves out of the water. A leaf net or cover during the drop, a skimmer basket emptied daily and a leaf rake for the big days handle most of it. Spring is its own version of this: maple seeds, oak flowers and pollen. A robot handles pollen and fine debris well, especially if you rinse its filter often. Our guide on trees and pollen covers the rest.

An in-floor system is plumbed into the pool floor and steps during construction. A valve at the equipment pad sends water to one zone of pop-up heads at a time. The heads rise, spray along the floor and retract, and the sequence pushes dirt toward the main drain, where a debris canister catches it. When they are not running, the heads sit flush with the floor and you do not see a cleaner in the pool at all.

The appeal is obvious: no hoses, no robot to lift, a clean-looking pool at all times. The trade-offs are just as clear. The system has to be designed in before the pool is built. It adds plumbing, a valve and often a dedicated pump, which raises the cost of the pool. Pop-up heads and the valve are moving parts that wear and need servicing. And they do not scrub walls or the waterline, so you still brush.

In Ohio there is one more consideration: every one of those lines has to be cleared of water at closing. More lines means a longer, more careful winterization. That is manageable, but it is real work every fall.

It depends on the shell. The heads need ports built into the floor and steps, and those have to line up with the shell's design and structure. Some fiberglass shells can accept them and some cannot. If an in-floor system matters to you, raise it at the design stage so we can confirm what the model you like allows. ICF concrete pools, which are built on site, have the most freedom for in-floor plumbing because the floor is formed around it.

For most fiberglass owners, a good robot gets them most of the way there for a fraction of the cost, with nothing to winterize except the robot itself.

With a robot, a typical July week goes like this. Run it three or four times, each time lifting it out afterward and rinsing its basket, which takes a couple of minutes. Empty the skimmer and pump baskets. Brush the steps and ledges once. Test the water. The main pump stays on its low-speed schedule nearly the whole time.

With a suction cleaner, the cleaner runs daily on the pump's higher speed, the pump basket and filter catch everything it picks up, and you clean the filter more often as a result. You also deal with a long hose floating in the pool, which many families pull out every time guests swim.

With a pressure cleaner, the booster pump runs a few hours a day, you empty the cleaner's bag, and the tail sweep and wheels need replacing now and then. With an in-floor system, the heads run on their schedule, you empty the debris canister at the pad, and you still brush walls.

None of these is hard. The robot week simply uses the least electricity and puts the least load on the rest of the equipment.

Bring it inside. Maytronics, which makes Dolphin robots, advises draining the robot of water, coiling the cable without kinks and storing it somewhere shielded from sunlight, rain and frost. A garage shelf or basement corner is fine. Freezing water trapped inside a robot can damage it, so a robot left in a shed over a Northeast Ohio January is taking a chance.

Clean and dry the filter baskets before storing them, check the brushes and tracks for wear, and replace worn parts over the winter so it is ready at opening.

For a new fiberglass or vinyl pool in Northeast Ohio, we usually recommend a robotic cleaner. It uses the least energy, cleans walls as well as floors, works with a variable-speed pump instead of against it and has nothing to winterize except itself.

Consider an in-floor system if you want the cleanest look with no visible cleaner, you are building an ICF concrete pool or a compatible shell, and you are comfortable with the higher up-front cost and extra winterizing. Keep an existing pressure cleaner on an older pool if it has a booster pump in good shape and you fight heavy leaves, but plan on a robot when the booster fails.

And if you would rather not do any of it, our weekly pool service includes cleaning, water testing and chemical balancing, plus openings and closings.