Editorial Review

In the interest of aquatic harmony around the summer pool, swimmers by a wide majority express a preference for it to be clean. Murky is in popular decline. In order to maintain such stringent hygienic standards, it often becomes necessary to restrict that which ends up in the water. Sand, dirt clods, un-diapered babies, and dogs can all take a toll on socially acceptable ratios of clean wetness. This will doubtless raise the hackles of many dog owners who allow their hairy sires free reign around the swimming hole. But creatures that sniff butts by way of greeting and roll in their own filth for fun are not inherently the cleanest of creatures. Coupled with the fact that swimming occurs at the same time dogs shed – when it’s hot -- it is clear to see the potential for calumny.

This is exactly the reason poolbots were invented -- compensation for unwarranted filth. Which is fine until your compensatory device proves to be a dog itself. Some automated sweepers, like the Water Tech Blue Diamond RC, boast impressive capacity in the business of clarifying solutions, with radio control among its watery tricks. The Maytronics Dolphin Triton takes about 3 hours to give the pool the once-over and is as easy to use as plugging it into an outlet and dropping it into the water. The 4-wheeled clean-up car, Aquabot Turbo T-Jet, will clean 5000 gallons in about an hour.

The Aquafirst Super Rover is exclusively a bottom-feeder owing to its expressed disinterest in climbing the walls. Another of the 4-wheeled car variety, it is cheap and stripped-down, with its only function of note being how much it sucks. Advertised ratios of 8 to 80 gallons a minute and 8000 gallons an hour would confirm this as its most impressive feature. It has no scrubber tracks or knobby rollers to disrupt things affixed to the bottom, so it rolls forward and reverses every 5 to 20 seconds to make sure it didn’t miss anything. Rover’s filtration system is a two-bagger with a double box screened by nylon mesh.