I can't say if I love it yet, though I hope to. Our pool should finish this week here in Massachusetts. We paid $4,300 for the PCC 2000 system. We were told that not only would it make cleaning easier but would circulate the water to allow heat to be better distributed. I'll let you know once we get water about its effectiveness!

Kim

There are 3 groups of people that may respond.
1. People that LOVE it
2. People that HATE it
3. People that have only "heard" about it but have no expereince.

We have the A&A Quick Clean Max. We love it - worth every dime! Let me first tell you why we love it. Aside from the initial brushing that is needed after start up, we have brushed our pool only a couple times in 2 years. Any debris that lands in the pool is quickly diverted to the skimmers due to the powerful venturi skimmers. These skimmers practically have what I will refer to as "toilet bowl" suction where you can literally see the floating debris move toward the skimmers and get sucked in. Any leaves that are heavy and may become waterlogged and sink and sent to the deep end by the pop ups and sucked into the main drain and into the leaf canister that resides at the equipment pad. Our system has a lifetime warranty, even on the pop up heads. Other brand pop up heads could run $80-120 each.

I strongly feel that infloor is only as good as the installation. In our case, A&A Manufacturing received pool plans from our builder and they engineered the perfect placement of each head - and then the builder followed those plans to plumb the system. We do not have any dead spots like some may report. These are areas that accumulate dirt and debris... we have been so lucky that our infloor performs flawlessly.

Some infloor systems can be sold over the counter and be installed by anyone... beware of these. You want a trained, licensed professional installing your infloor using plans engineered for your specific pool otherwise it may not be worth your money.

I feel like a walking advertisement for A&A, but is it only because I believe in it and it works great! Oh ya, we paid $4000.

Whew... that is all. Good luck!

It's only been a week, but our Polaris Caretaker system is working great. We had a lot of concrete dust settle in the bottom of the pool after the sawcuts and the Caretaker did a great job.

Our PB also had our cleaning system custom designed by a Polaris technician using CAD. That means even cleaning specifically designed for our pool. The chemicals and heat are distributed more evenly with infloor cleaning systems.

The cost for ours was $4800. We paid an extra $700 for the in-deck Leaf Trapper system that traps larger debris before it enters the pool's filter system.

I have the same Polaris Caretaker system and am not thrilled with it. It works well in some areas, but in other areas it leaves big swathes of dust. There are also a couple of dead spots where stuff really piles up. The CAD guy must have really screwed up on the day they designed my pool. They have a 99% clean guarantee in their literature, but when I called to complain (three times - twice to my builder and once to Polaris directly) all they did was replace some heads which didn't accomplish much.

I recommend getting a suction port for a regular cleaner in addition to the in-floor system; you can keep the port closed off but you'll have it just in case you need additional cleaning power.

We had an in-floor system in SoCal with the same problems as Chief N; large areas that weren't cleaned except by manually brushing them. Our pool in Havasu has a Hayward UltraVac that works very well. I'm not sure why "chemicals and heat are distributed more evenly with infloor cleaning systems"; any cleaner will pull cold water & chemicals off the bottom (JMHO). I'd definitely have the suction line installed as a back-up.

Steve

Any cleaner will pull cold water and chemicals off the bottom, but only while they are running which usually isn't continually throughout the day like the in floor systems. When you've got water circulating from the bottom you are less likely to get cold spots and thus increases the effiency of the heater. Chemicals also get even distribution.

I have never had very good luck with the automatic pool cleaners. They always seemed to break down and while the areas they hit were clean, they always seemed to miss spots. I also did not like the hose in the pool.

In-floor cleaners return water evenly across the bottom of the pool. If you have a vacuum-type cleaner the water gets returned via jets at the top of the pool, around the edges.

Here are some more entries on the subject: (see below)

I think the key is "When Installed Correctly........."

Steve

Here is a link that might be useful: In-Floor Systems