Best handheld pool vacuums according to redditors

I use a large Sear's wet dry because I had it already. It has a hose discharge so I don't have to empty it manually. I just vacuum up the bottom with long hose extensions. When the vacuum is full, I discharge the dirty pond water to my plants and bushes.

There are custom pond vacuums like this [OASE] (https://www.amazon.com/OASE-PondoVac-Classic-Vacuum-Cleaner/dp/B004HIHUTA) which are not expensive and works pretty much the same.

But you can build your own vacuum that works on the same theory as a fish tank one. You build it from PVC pipes and it uses suction from your garden hose to draw out the water. Ask on this [forum] (http://www.gardenpondforum.com). I either saw it there or someone there invented it.

The first and best thing you can do is go to TroubleFreePool.com and read everything in their Pool School section. Make sure you pay extra attention to the sections on the SLAM protocol and the chemical info. Feel free to message me (or post over there) if you have any questions.

Regardless of what people might have told you, pools can be pretty easy to take care of, especially after you get them going. Preventative maintenance is way easier than falling behind. Owning a pool is like having a pet: Even if you don't want to play with it, you still have to feed it. It's also like brushing your teeth: you can spend pennies/day, every day, or not do it for awhile and spend thousands of dollars fixing things.

As for basic equipment:

• A pool pole that you attach everything to.
  
  
• A pool net that attaches to the pole for fishing out stuff (leaves, acorns, things like that -- note this net has an angled/beveled bottom so you can 'scrape' it along the bottom of the pool to lift leaves and stuff off and into the netting)
  
  
• A vacuum head that you attach to the pole, and attach a vacuum hose to, to suck out stuff that you can't get with the net.
  
  
• A vacuum hose that attaches to the vacuum head on one end, and likely to your skimmer on the other end. This uses the suction produced by your pool pump to suck things out of your pool.
  
  
• A pool brush -- I use the "wall whale" model but any of them will work fine. You use this to brush the walls and side of your pool to help keep them clean. If your pool ever goes green, you'll have algae on your walls and bottom and you use this to brush that off the walls and into the water so the chlorine can help kill the algae.
  
  For a testing kit, I highly recommend you avoid testing strips, and splurge a bit for the TF-100 test kit with the SpeedStir, and the XL option. It's expensive, and worth every penny. If you're going to be closing this pool soon for the winter, I'd wait to buy the testing kit in the spring so your testing reagents are as fresh as possible when you open the pool.
  
  If you go the TroubleFreePool route, you'll be a large purchaser of bleach. I buy it about 15-gallons at a time from Wal-Mart -- just plain, unscented bleach. Anything else adds unneeded and unnecessary chemicals to your pool. Pay attention to the date code on the jug ("19250" means it was manufactured in 2019 on the 250th day of the year, newer is better since chlorine degrades over time), and the percentage of chlorine in the bleach -- most generic laundry bleach is 6%, the extra cheap stuff (which you don't want) doesn't even show the percentage so don't buy it! "Pool chlorinating liquid" from Wal-Mart is 10% bleach, and some pool stores sell 12.5% bleach.
  
  My 20k-gallon pool usually takes about a half-gallon/day of regular 6% bleach to keep the chlorine levels stable (sometimes added every day, sometimes added every 2-3 days). Other than initial setup in the spring when I add about $15 worth of chlorine stabilizer, and the occasional small dose of muriatic acid to keep the pH down, I rarely have to add anything else. Maybe a little baking soda when I first open in the spring, but nothing crazy. 99% of the "chemicals" I put in my pool is just plain bleach, and my water stays crystal clear and all chemical levels within range, all the time.

The pond looks lovely!

I'm not a landscaping professional but an environmental engineer and what you basically want to do here is dredging so I feel I can offer you some advice.

If you want to do this more or less for free you'll need a rake and a some sort of boat. You can scoop the leaves out. It will take a lot of man hours, especially if this hasn't happened in the last 30 years. You can use the decaying leaves, by making a compost pile and letting them compost for a while longer before use in your garden. I wouldn't worry about wildlife here too much. Species that life in these types of highly organic, low in oxygen sediments aren't threatened and really don't do much good for the ecological balance in a pond like this. You can leave the leaves at the banks for a couple of days if you want to save the frog population, they'll get out and back into the water.

Alternatively you can buy a pond vacuum cleaner (something like this http://www.amazon.com/OASE-PondoVac-Classic-Vacuum-Cleaner/dp/B004HIHUTA). It will cost you about 200 bucks and you'll still need a boat and plenty of man hours. Your pond is quite large.

And a third alternative: you can hire a company to do it for you. They'll bring professional equipment and get the job done quickly. That will be 500 bucks or more though, depending on where you live.

After you've removed the sediments you're not done though. I'm suprised you mentioned not having algae problems. Have you seen the pond during warm weather yet? In a pond with a big amount of leaves I'd expect some algal blooms or duckweed covers during summer. If you do experience troubles with that you might want to consider putting a layer of 20 cm or so of clean sand to cover up the current sediment. The quality of that sediment won't be very good for aquatic live (very eutrophic with a high oxygen demand). A layer of clean sand will soften the effects.

Also, in the future you do need to prevent a new leave build up. You can prevent the majority of leaves from getting in by putting a net over it in autumn/winter or by cutting down trees close to the pond (a 10 meter perimeter will do).

Would you like to leave the pond as it is or would you like to use it for swimming or for fish? If you'd like to keep fish or clean enough water for humans to swim, you'll need some additional work like trying to develop a healthy vegetation (helps to keep the water clear and oxygenated).

https://www.amazon.com/Pentair-R201276-Residential-Commercial-Vacuums/dp/B003840IV6

this is the vac we use in the commercial world, only the 22 inch version

Water Tech Pool Blaster Catfish Li Pool & Spa Cleaner https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002GT91SK/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_jHXyDbHKNAF2C

Water Tech Pool Blaster Catfish Li Pool and Spa Cleaner https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002GT91SK/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_.AdozbC1MJ81C

This thing is awesome. It ll get sand off the bottom of my Intex pool. My pool is 18ft around and it did the whole thing in a few minutes. Way better than the one you have to hook to a garden hose or the intex pool pump. Those didn't work and had a bunch of tubes attached. This is self contained and works great.

We've used Pentair/Rainbow ProVac heads for years of our service vans. They do a great job, roll easily and steer well due to the swivel handle. Parts are readily available so we get 5+ years of daily use of 10+ vacuums per day before they need to be replaced. For your pool the 14" head would be a good size (R201276). We tried the ProVac 2 and didn't like it as much.

It's worth noting it's designed for 1-1\2" vacuum hoses, so if you have an 1-1\4" hose you'd have to remove the hose swivel and it won't work as well.

Short of the ProVac, I'd just get a cheap concrete pool vac and plan on replacing every couple years. I'd steer clear of liner vacs as they are a pain to vacuum with and have no benefit in your pool.

So when we had the pool opened, the guy from the company pointed out the vacuum port. In addition to 4 standard water returns, we have a 5th that perfectly fits a standard pool hose. He said they used to be the rave, and they're for pool vacuums "but they left you that electric vacuum, so you're not going to need this".

I did some googling, and there are TONS of pressure-style vacuum robots, that run partly or entirely on that piece. But they're all full-automatic, and not the kind of thing I put on a pole.

I get it... Suction's great, and my pool was designed with a hose port under the skimmer, but I used to have one similar to this that was great for larger matter (worms, twigs, etc) that my suction vacuum doesn't handle well... but those use a garden hose to generate their suction, not a pool hose.