Running the robot every day vs every other for longer

Started by Sam Whitaker · · 5 replies
Back to the forum
Reply
#1
Been going back and forth on this all summer, my Seagull 1000 can either do a quick lap every single day or I let debris build a bit and run it every other day for almost twice as long. With three kids doing cannonballs constantly there's always something to pick up so daily short runs feels right, but the battery life probably likes the every other day schedule better. Mine's been fine for four seasons either way honestly so maybe it doesn't matter much, worth it either way. Curious if anyone's actually tracked battery wear doing one method over the other, or if I'm overthinking a chore that takes ten minutes to set up.

5 Replies

#2
I went the daily short run route with my Seagull 600 mostly cause my pool's small enough it doesn't matter, and four seasons in the battery still holds a full cycle fine, so with three kids cannonballing all day I'd just let it pick up the constant mess daily rather than banking on every other day and forgetting.
#3
I run the Escape, not a Seagull, different beast entirely with the battery question since mine's plugged into the caddy between runs, so I can't speak to charge cycles the way you two are tracking it, but three kids doing cannonballs all day sounds like a daily run problem to me regardless of what the battery prefers, my binder's got nothing on wear patterns but common sense says buried debris sitting two days in that kind of traffic just makes for a longer job, not a gentler one.
#4
Can't speak to the robot battery stuff, my cleaning setup is a shop-vac contraption that doesn't care about charge cycles, but Tom's right about buried debris with three kids in there, sitting two days just lets it grind into the liner instead of floating loose. I'd rather do the ten minute daily thing than fight caked-on gunk every other day.
#5
Funny thing, I never actually counted cycles on mine, just noticed the app still shows near full runtime after four seasons of daily short laps, whatever that number actually is. Never bothered writing it down cause it never dropped enough to make me care. Tom's caddy setup sounds like it sidesteps the whole question though, mine just sits in a bucket of pool water between runs which probably isn't doing the contacts any favors long term, no idea honestly.
#6
That bucket of pool water thing Rick mentioned made me wince a little, sitting contacts in water between uses seems like a recipe for corrosion whether it drops your runtime number or not. No idea on the robot side but I leave my shop-vac hose disconnected and drained between uses for that same reason, learned that one after a winter it sat wet in the shed and the fitting seized up on me. Not solving your battery question but figured that detail was worth flagging.