Well, I finally decided to crack open the wallet and get the Blue Diamond to replace the Polaris Raptor, which came with the new pool and totally sucked. Seems like a few folks out here had decent experiences with the BD.
I took advantage of a great offer now going on at Frontgate at 15% off. Frontgate sells the Blue Diamond as "their" brand. The cost, with $29 shipping, was $1044 - much lower than you can buy it anywhere else. So, I jumped at this great deal. Those of you interested - it's still going on for a few more weeks.
It arrived yesterday. Some other folks thought it was cheaply put together. However, I thought it was decently constructed.
I put it in the pool today and it immediately went to work. Looked good! I expected it to run about an hour, so I was watching it run from a distance while I went back in the house. After about an hour, I came out to investigate. It only cleaned about 5% of the steps in the pool. I have steps in my shallow and deep end - the unit just made one pass (about a 2 foot swath on just one of the steps in the shallow end.) and did not touch the deep end steps. It had about 85% of the bottom cleaned, but did not seem to be venturing to the other 15% of the pool it missed. Most of the missed sections were in my deep end around the perimeter, but not all. There were spots just about in every section of the entire pool. Well, the unit ran for another 35 minutes and shut off, completing its cycle. During this time, it hit a few areas it missed, but very few. I was very disappointed. They market this machine as being a one hour pool cleaner that cleans steps. My 6' IG 16x33 fiberglass pool is basically an oval shape - no ladders.
Well, I ran it for another cycle, and again, it hit a few missed areas, but many dirty spots remained. I turned it off after 45 minutes. The unit clearly does not work for my pool, as it just would not hit certain areas, and continuously cleaned the already cleaned areas. I could not figure out why, either, the unit was avoiding certain areas of the pool - mainly around the perimeter, but there were spots in the center that were undone. The unit seemed random enough, changing direction and turning randomly, so I'm a bit puzzled. I'm sure if I ran this thing for 3-4 cycles, it might get the entire pool, but this is inconvenient to continously go out and keep turning the unit back on.
I really wanted to love this unit and was impressed with the speed, climbing abilities, and vacuuming power as it worked. No issues with the cord, either. By the way, I called Watertech and Aquatron today and received some great tips/advice from nice folks before I ran the unit. I just wanted to see what customer service would be like. It was good. But, it's going back. I could definitely live without the step cleaning and even a 2 hour cycle - but feel $1000+ is too expensive to leave a lot of spots in the pool. I'm glad I purchased from Frontgate - I only get stuck for the $29 shipping charge - they are going to pick up the unit tomorrow.
Back to the drawing board for me. My lessons learned are: Purchase the unit from someone who will take it back. Also, I'll probably not purchase another robot without a remote. I could have probably directed the unit to clean the rest of the pool in about 5 minutes. Perhaps I would have even kept the unit if it had a remote. Frontgate does not sell the remote unit.
I'm sure the Blue Diamond will work in some pools, but it's performance in mine was unacceptable. CarlD claimed he was told the BD only is good in a rectangular pool. The good folks at Watertech (and Frontgate) indicated the unit would work in ANY pool. Perhaps the information CarlD got was correct.
