Thinking of acquiring a Polaris

[dalehileman]

A recent thread regarding the Model 360 you ought to read if you're in the market for a Polaris product. After my own experience of 7 years with the 380, and from the post by participant Lupt it's reasonable to suppose these devices are all poorly made, unreliable, and difficult and outrageously expensive to service, but they do capture debris pretty efficiently with only a couple of caveats I feel compelled to pass along:

The owner of a 360 or 380 be advised that a new bag assembly could cost you $33. Not sure about the 280 but with the former two its base comes apart so you can substitute a bag of your own making for just a few cents' worth of material and a few minutes of sewing. After some experimentation I believe the ideal material is rubberized rug non-slip sewed flat in the shape of the original bag. It comes in a variety of weaves, some better suited to this purpose than others. When assembling it to the base be sure to orient it in the same plane so it doesn't act as a sail causing the sweep to run in circles

Its strange shape with only three wheels and the frame jutting out in front for purposes of style not utility restricts ita ability to climb, especially a curved surface. Also perhaps the device should be a bit narrower to better sweep steps but surely it would climb better if it instead had four wheels, the front ones extending an inch or two ahead of the chassis to better grip the irregular surface

Meantime you might enhance its climb though with some difficulty by the installation on the middle wheel of a second tire though owing to fatigue it might slip off after a few weeks or months requiring your acquisition of an new one

Recently it was suggested in a sister forum that a sweep as efficient as mine need not be run the entire 3 to 8 hours your your pump is at work. Hence to minimize frequency of service you can extend its life by shutting it down early. Depending on your environment and weather you might find the bottom pretty clean after only an hour of sweeping which given the load of your Polaris booster of course accordingly reduces also your electric bill

If you follow this suggestion you may nonetheless be disappointed after each session when the rippling has subsided to note at the bottom an unswept area or two. This condition owes to a lack of randomness, a problem addressed in other sweeps of its kind for instance by a jet slowly rotating so as to continually alter its path, an effect which you can thus emulate by occasional readjustment

Another approach perhaps even easier and more effective is to set the jet as closely as possible to gain a straight-line path but after each session using your long-handled brush to push the debris out of that area where it is more likely to be swept next time

Noting however that for a straight-line tendency the peculiar geometry of your unit requires you to set the jet slightly to the left

As for its vertical setting, when I complained the unit doesn't climb well Polaris suggested setting it in the full upward position. When I did so, however, though climb might have improved somewhat its habit then favored the shallow end leaving huge deposits in the deep

I hope you find my experiences of some value

For the sake of their future I hope Polaris engineers keep abreast by perusing forums such as ours but judging from their designs I'm not sure they can read