Automatic Cleaners

Pop Up In-Floor Systems

Prior to the introduction in the Phoenix area of automated swimming pool cleaners, the only mechanism that provided an actual cleaning assist for swimming pools was an in-floor pop up system developed by Paddock Pools, or the turbo head in-floor system utilized by Master Pools later to be called Shasta Pools. Other pool construction companies used their own proprietary systems or those provided by manufacturers or wholesalers.

The Master Pool's in-floor system worked with a water valve that supplied clean, filtered water to the turbo heads. The Master Pool water valve operated by way of plastic gearing, not unlike the gearing within a mechanical clock. The water upon entering the valve, spun a small fan like turbine that drove the rest of the mechanism. The clockwork took the high rpm output of the turbine and gradually geared the movement down to a rate that was very slow and usable. The mechanism at that point would slowly open, one by one, six different valves over a period of say 15 minutes or so. Each valve would in turn shoot a stream of water through it's own separate pipe down to beneath the floor of the pool, activating a couple of turbo heads simultaneously, causing a jet of water to shoot out from each individual turbo head and thereby stir up the dirt or debris in it's way. As each turbo head repeated this cycle, the head would come to rest in a slightly different position in it's base whereby the jet of water would issue out in a slightly different direction during it's next cycle.

The Master Pool system was quite good at doing it's job. A certain amount of dirt and debris would become suspended in the pool water and leave the pool by way of the main drain or skimmer. But not all of the dirt. The remaining dirt usually accumulated on the love seat or step area and in dead spots on the pool floor, and when the filter approached being plugged, the walls collected some dirt too, all of which were annoyances to the pool owner or service professional. But most of these problems were understood to be a residue of the turbo heads frenetic activity and were easily solved by backwashing the filter and then brushing off the steps or dead spots or vacuuming once in a while.

Just by luck, I met and was able to talk to an individual who claimed to have originally designed and marketed the water valve used by Master Pool, he said that he had originally designed it to be an irrigation valve. He said that the problem with it was that the individual valves could not be adjusted to run within a variable time frame, and with areas of landscaping having different watering needs, the device failed to perform it's intended use. So it was adapted to swimming pool cleaning needs.

Almost all of the swimming pools that were built by Master Pool did not have an alternative way for the filtered water to return to the pool. The turbo heads were in operation whenever the pump was turned on, whether or not the pool was dirty. This tacked on additional wear to the turbo heads and the water valve's internal parts that supplied the water to the heads. Yet this system's individual parts would last for years before replacement was necessary.

The pools built by Master Pool really did need to have a parallel inlet jet system that could have been turned on by hand, or turned on by a electric actuating valve. This would have enabled the in-floor turbo system to be turned off when the pool was clean, and yet let the skimmer to continue to clean the surface of the pool. As it was back then, the turbos action actually made the surface activity of the pool chaotic, and prevented some debris from even getting near the skimmer. This as you may know from an earlier post of mine, this is not optimal surface action – we want to have a whirlpool action on the surface.

The Master Pool system of turbo heads even with the additional wear could last for years before a replacement was needed, and when needed, the turbo head was modular so often all you needed to buy was one small replacement part.

After Shasta Pools either bought Master Pool or perhaps just changed names, Shasta began to install inlet jets in the new pools that they built. This was an improvement. However, Shasta Pools replaced the turbo head system in their new pools with an inferior in-floor pop up product that did not approach the durability of the old Master Pool system. The new pop ups were fragile and tended to get stuck in the up or down position quite easily by becoming worn out, or by debris or a small rock fragment becoming lodged between the moving parts. This occurred because unlike the turbo head which had a low profile, the entire pop up head came up out of its casing for it's job to be done, and any small nearby rock or debris that was not in the way of the jet stream was liable to be ensnared in the pop up when it quickly went back down. This situation also caused the pop ups to wear very easily. The turbo head in contrast did not pop up above the pool's floor, it stayed semi-sealed within it's protective casing and seldom jammed up.

This situation was annoyingly worsened by Shasta Pools when they began to pressure customers who owned the Master Pool turbo system to replace that system with the new pop up system. I have talked to customers of mine who were unhappy with the result of the switch over. Shasta even made it difficult for me and Master Pool owners by restricting the availability of the replacement turbo heads in order to motivate customers to switch. Perhaps they still do.

Paddock Pool's in floor system has many similar deficiencies. But in addition to the problems that were similar to Shasta Pool's system's difficulties, for some reason Paddock liked to divert unfiltered water straight from the pump to drive some of their systems. This caused accelerated wear to the water valve and the in-floor pop ups, and made the “cleaning system” put dirt back into the pool! Wow! Whats' up with that? I had a “discussion” with a long time Paddock Pool technician over this situation, the best answer he could come up with was: “We've done it like this for thirty years!” Great. I suppose by diverting water before it gets filtered, they obtained an increased gallons per minute flow rate through their “cleaning system”. But I wouldn't let a mangy dog swim in that pool.


Pressure Side Cleaners (to be continued)