I love my intex 18' frame pool, this is our second season with it. This year I wrote to intexcorpdotcom and bought the vacume attachment. It works! Its a bit of a pain to get started, but I set it up and ran it twice already. I think it was worth the $70 or so we spent extra for it. Had the vac that ataches to a hose, that was a royal pain in the butt and just messed with my h20chemistry. In order to get suction you need to have water from the yard hose adding water to your pool. That might be ok if your kids spash a lot.
We have an outside plug on the side of our garage. We plug the pool filter into that and have a timmer that runs the filter. Buy a fake grass rug for the kids to wipe their feet on before getting into the pool and it will keep the dirt off and the bees away. Do the BBB's and you will be fine..( I'm blonde too :-)and our pool is my own prodject. And our water has been great! ) If you go with the frame pool buy extra filters when you see them because the go very fast in the stores. Kim