Pool Set Automatic Turbine Pool Cleaner

An excellent pool cleaner for a fraction of the price of its competitors – ALDI recently put a wheeled pool cleaner on sale. We've tried their rubber disk (barracuda-style) types before but they always get stuck around the steps so are no good for us. We used to have a Sprinter to keep the pool clean but after about seven years of almost permanent time in the pool it finally gave up the ghost, so this one was of great interest, especially at just $199.

The Turbine Suction Cleaner comes with a metre of hose, various adaptors, a flow regulator, hose floats and a flow meter. The manual is reasonably comprehensive and fairly well detailed on using the cleaner.

Once connected to the hose and skimmer, operating the device is fairly simple. Counting the wheel turns per minute and using the flow meter, it is easy to adjust the water flow with the flow regulator to ensure the pressure is correct for the clearer to work efficiently.

Once operating, the cleaner simply drives around the pool floor, spinning on the spot every so often to change direction. Like most cleaners it essentially works by steering randomly around the pool, climbing up the walls when it reaches them. Most importantly, the steering means it cannot get stuck by the steps, at least not for long.

Each wheel has a large lump on it which causes it to lift up slightly as the wheel rotates, I suspect this is to lift it away from the floor to allow larger pieces of debris to pass under and possibly to make it drop from the wall as it climbs. The documentation doesn't make it clear.

I have to say that on first impressions it has made a pretty good job of cleaning our pool. Was it as good as the Sprinter? It's hard to say but given that it is a quarter the price of a Sprinter I was happy enough with the results.

One point I still need to deal with - when it climbs to the top of the wall it tends to suck in quite a bit of air before falling back which isn't great for the pump in the long term. However, I believe I just need to reduce the suction pressure so the it doesn't cling on so well and that should sort that out.

The instructions say it should not be operated under a pool blanket, though I cannot see why not - our sprinter lasted years operating like that. No problems have been discovered do far, though ours is a thermal blanket, not solar, because it is an indoor pool.

All in all, we are very happy with the cleaner. It is not noisy (some make a thump thump sound when operating) and seems to do a good job, I just need to tweak it to stop it trying to climb out of the pool and it should be great.

Nice one ALDI.