POOL BLASTER Leaf Vac Cordless Hoseless Pool Leaf Vacuum & Skimmer, Battery-Powered Swimming Pool Leaf Catcher with Heavy Duty Mesh Bag, for Inground and Above Ground Pools, by Water Tech

Our trusty, tried and true hydo powered leaf vac broke at the hose connection last month. We replaced it with a similar hydro powered unit that ended up being terrible and made more of a mess than helped. I came across this battery powered unit and was willing to give it a try. Most of the cons are more suggestions for a second generation development than actually issues with the current unit. pros: -Easy to use and maneuver -No adding extra water to the pool this throwing your PH OUT OF BALANCE, then costing more in chemicals to rebalance. -no water hose to wind up, or unwind, or moving patio furniture . -Works really well with smaller leaves -This unit picks up a decent amount of leaves before having to be emptied. Cons: -the plastic seems a little inferior to our old hydro unit and I fear that it may not stand up to rugged use over time. -I hate where the power button is, as the handle tends to get in the way of turning it off when emptying the bag. -I would rather have two replaceable and rechargeable battery packs as this takes 8 double AA batteries. I can see how batteries could get expensive over time, would recommend. Buying rechargeable AA from Amazon basic. -When vacuuming up large oak leaves or leaves with longer stems they tend to get caught on the blue plastic stabilizers that hold the yellow motor in place. This then limits the amount of leaves that can be picked up. In a traditional hydro powered unit there is nothing in the center and the water being shot up creates the Venturi effect to keep leaves pushed up in the bag. I would suggest that when they do the next generation that they make rolers covering these blue plastic stabilizers so that the rollers can turn and the leaves could then unclog since it is not stationary creating a leaf jam. -I would prefer that the unit have a multi positional pole holder kind of like a Dyson stick vac to where the unit will remain flat, but depending on your position you can move it easier with outputting too much lateral pressure on the plastic connector to your extension pole. I feel this will be a week link. -Suction power is pretty decent, our hydro powered unit would suck up an acorn or acorn cap, but this will not provide the needed power to do that. Our regular Polaris will end up picking it up though.

This is without a doubt one of the best pool products I've ever used! The Pool Blaster attached easily to the poles I already had for my other pool equipment and worked amazingly well - it truly is great at collecting leaves and other larger debris from the pool's bottom (though you can use it to scoop up leaves floating on the surface of the water too)! It may look like a kid's pool toy but don't be fooled, it works like a charm and in my opinion is worth every penny. I've had the Blaster for two pool seasons now and my only complaint is that the plastic piece that attaches to your pole isn't the sturdiest material. It piece cracked while using it on season two, but was easily reinforced with some waterproof tape and is still working well. Even if I end up having to buy a new one in a year or two I still think it's a great product for the price and efficacy!

This is a fabulous pool device for picking up debris like leaves, acorns, small sticks, etc. I say this even though many have complained about this device leaking and failing. It does leak. You can count on the motor compartment and the battery compartment leaking. This makes the device require some basic maintenance procedures after each use: 1. Remove and disconnect the battery pack after each use. Spray the batter pack and the interior battery compartment with wd-40. Wipe off the excess wd-40. 2. Open the motor compartment, turn the unit upside down and drain any water from the motor compartment. Spray wd-40 into the motor compartment and all over the motor. Turn the unit upside down and drain the excess wd-40 out of the motor compartment. 3 Get out your swimming pool O-ring lube. Lubricate the motor compartment gasket and the battery compartment gasket with the lube to minimize water incursion into these areas. The lube will not eliminate it but it will minimize it, especially into the battery compartment. As someone else pointed out, its possible that the motor compartment may be leaking through the shaft. This is fine as long as you drain it and treat it with wd-40 after every use. I have had my pool blaster for going on 3 seasons now. I learned by experience that nothing will stop this thing from leaking. But it works so good that it is worth it to adapt and apply the procedures above to keep it working. My motor stopped working completely early on with the first leak (it sat in its compartment for over a month completely immersed in pool water). After literally filling the motor compartment with wd-40 and letting it soak for a week, the motor fired right up and has been working great ever since. I relish the ease with which this device can be run around the pool picking up the debris in no time at all. I would miss it dearly at this point. If this manufacturer would make it a little more leak proof, that would be great. However, it works so good that I will keep applying wd-40 for as long as it takes. Also, if your battery leads and connector clip should rot out due to the chlorine contamination prior to applying wd-40 (which eliminates this problem), you can find a bag of 9 volt battery clips just like the one that attaches to the battery pack right here on Amazon. When you replace this, I found that the heat activated insulators work best to seal up the solder connections.

Wow I should have listened to all the other reviews but no I just had to try it. Sadly when it works it works really well and is so easy to use. Considering it requires 8 AA batteries, who would have thought that this lil vacuum could suck up so much dirt and leaves. I was stumped how well it picked up all the dirt in debris in my 22,000 inground pool. Thought I made a wise investment until I used it for the second time and it would no longer turn on. I opened it up and bam batteries were all corroded as well as the battery compartment. 2nd use and it was useless. I contacted VMInnovations and they immediately responded and offered to replace it for me but could not guarantee that the replacement unit would be leak proof so I opted for a refund instead. I am still waiting for the refund but other than that their customer service is pretty quick in responding via Amazon. I do not suggest calling them at their business location. Keep it safe and make all communications through Amazon. Edit 07-31-2014: I have to say that VMInnovations has pretty good customer service. I contacted them and told them that the unit broke after one use and they sent out a replacement pretty quickly. That was a week and a half ago. The replacement unit worked much better than the old first unit since the battery compartment sealer was much more secure. Sadly with it's 4th use, the motor burnt out and I have shared pics to show what that looks like. Started to smoke after a few seconds then it burnt out. So the batteries stayed dry this time but water leaked into the motor and short circuited the unit to its death. At least this time I got 4 uses out of it, if they would just fix the sealer mistakes then this little device would be great. I noticed VMInnovations will do whatever they can to avoid refunding but this time I requested (sternly) that I do not want a replacement but a full refund otherwise it's an a-z complaint.

EDIT 3/20/2021 - I've used the vacuum all last season and it's still working, but battery compartment is corroded, and that is with me taking out the battery pack, taking out the batteries, and blowing everything dry with a compressor EVERY time I use it! Just know that if you buy this, you can't just use it and toss it to the side and expect it to work next time. You have to take out the battery pack and dry everything out every use. I would be surprised if I get one more season out of this. I suppose 2 years of life = $45 per year, and since it is a really useful tool maybe that's not so bad. I spend that much on a container or two of chemicals. Again, the vac works great, no issues with that at all. As long as you are okay with completely drying it out with an air compressor each time you use it, you should get at least a couple years out of it. This is a review that’s hard to write. The idea behind this is brilliant. Battery powered fan sucks the bugs, worms, leaves, and dirt into the bag with ease. This saves so much time and is very satisfying to use! The issue is with the quality and construction of the vacuum. It looks like a cheap Chinese made toy. Something that will work for a while but then break in a month or two or way before it should. Of this was better built, and felt higher quality, it would easily rate 5 stars. But man, I can’t see this thing lasting more than a season or two. I use it about once a week. Always take the battery pack out, and blow out the battery compartment and the entire unit with compressed air to dry it out. By keeping it clean and dry I’m hoping to get a couple seasons out of it. I’ll probably buy another one when this dies. That’s how easy and useful it is. It gets all the nasty stuff and leaves in about 10-15 minutes of cleaning. Much better than I can do with a leaf and bug skimmer. By the way, it uses 8 AA batteries and I get 2 uses of about 10 minutes out of a set. Not bad. I could ge5 more time, but by then the fan is turning slower, not working as efficient so I just replace the batteries every 2 uses.

I had read many reviews AFTER I purchased, as I looked at the complaints, I became quite concerned. Happily after I recieved it, I went straight out and used it, and happily those negative reviews only told me, folks were more oblivious to proper steps and use of this product. 1st, if you look at the battery secure pocket, the seal is not really suitable for under water, so after installing batteries, it's only common sense to me to then take a sandwich sized zip lock and carefully wrap and seal the unit, then carefully insert battery pack into pocket, it fits tight and sealed battery pack famously, then replace the pocket's cover, not one part of my pack got wet, not even a little. Common sense! 2nd, this unit is being used against the force of water, so if you are impatient and try to force this unit to hurry up and clean, well when it breaks, that's on you, you cannot and should not man-handle it, again common sense! 3rd, I noticed that the deeper the unit went, and my inground pool is 8 foot, the deeper it went, the slower the fan seemed to have spun, which in turn spends the batteries faster as I'm guessing the depth of the pool made the unit work harder, but the unit with patients worked perfectly, it picked up leaves, twigs, bugs, dust, we had it covered for the mississippi winter, the tarp we used collapsed when we took it out a couple months ago, thus dropping alot of debris into pool, with continuous, unsuccessful attempts with the pool net and even our pool robot vacuum, the effort we put into cleaning it up took a toll. This bad boy cleaned it completely up in no time at all, Thank you God!! Lastly, as this is a unit I absolutely plan to use regularly once I get the pool set for summer use, I went ahead a bought rechargeable batteries with the charging unit, this will save you a bunch of time and money, as the seller stated you get on average about 3 hours out of these batteries, I got maybe 2. On the whole, and as you have to make a determination yourself, but the horror stories I found in these reviews were none of what I experienced, not even close, I absolutely would encourage you to give this product a try, thankyou for reading my review.

So far, this relatively inexpensive leaf vacuum is outperforming my much more expensive Pool Blaster CG Lithium. I also purchased rechargeable lithium batteries, and the battery compartment has stayed dry so far (knock on wood). This vac does a much better, and much faster, job picking up leaves and larger debris from the pool bottom compared to the Blaster CG. I haven't touched my other Pool Blaster once since buying this, wish I had purchased this from the beginning! Although the fan appears to spin slowly, it must generate strong suction because leaves are pulled into the collection bag on the first pass. It may not have the power or fine filtration needed for sand or silt, but my Dolphin M600 handles that part of the job. Overall, this has been one of my better pool-cleaning purchases, especially for the price.

Works great, picks up leaves, small sticks and acorn shells no problem. I got about 10 bags of stuff out of my inground pool after the water leaked this winter and the cover broke from sagging too much with snow. This thing works just as well as a Hammerhead Pool Vacuum that costs thousands of dollars.

Funziona veramente bene.

It works great for leaves and much easier and faster to use instead of a net or pool vacuum.

It's awesome works great

Parfait, super pratique et efficace

Lo compré con pocas espectativas de que funcionara y al utilizarlo en mi piscina el resultado es increíble,funciona perfectamente bien y hace su función incluso en una piscina grande y con mucha suciedad.lo recomiendo 100%!!