Stone's 225 Carbonate Factory

[Stones]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

Did you compare the Vectra against the Avast unit at all? I'm curious, I'd like to try one someday as well and the two seem similarly priced.

One idea I had if I ever get ambitious and energetic enough was to put a cleaner head on my skimmer and see if I could also attach a mist nozzle attached to a pump on the RO/DI reservoir doing the top up. Get a wipe AND a spray-down kind of thing .. but maybe the squeegee does a good enough job on its own?

I didn't really look into the Avast unit Tony but I did know that they made a similar product. I've been quite happy with every Vertex product I've owned so I didn't have 2nd thoughts on pulling the trigger on this purchase come black friday.

Thats a pretty slick idea using a spray nozzle and pump to help aid the cleaning process. When I first heard of these neck cleaners, I assumed they would have had hardware in place to do just what you described so I was a bit dissapointed that they were simply a motorized squeegee.

The trick to pulling off such a design would be running the hose to the spray nozzle if it were mounted on the wiper blade arm. You'd have to figure out how to get around the hose getting wrapped up as the wiper arm rotates. You could just mount the spray nozzle protruding just below the inner lid of collection cup so that it sprays the entire skimmer neck I guess but this wouldn't be as effective.

However, I'm not sure that a spray down would be necessary or even help the cleaning process at all. It seems the foam head inside of the skimmer neck keeps the surface of the neck continuously wet. When the wiper blade makes its rounds, it removes most of the grime on the surface and after each pass, the rising foam column cleans off any loosened gunk that the wiper blade may have missed. If the foam head were to collapse shortly after the wiper blade started moving, then I could definately see a mist of freshwater aiding the cleaning process but this is not the case.

I'm also running the wiper blade for 1 minute intervals twice a day so the wiper blade goes around 6 or 7 times per cycle. After each run cycle, the skimmer neck appears just as clean as if I had gone over it with a scrubber so I'm happy enough with how this unit performs without the use of an added fresh water mist.