Pool and spa equipment, read on its published figures
A flow rate is a number,
and it means nothing until it is divided into the pool.
Pools, filters, pumps, heat pumps, robots and spas — then the liners, covers, cartridges, sand and glass, tablets, test strips, nets and poles bought every season after. Compared on the lines that decide whether a purchase was worth making: which hose diameter a pump is cut for, what a stated COP was measured at, how many microns of film a solar cover really is, and how much chlorine a salt cell makes in an hour. Priced on the Amazon store in your own country.
- Categories covered
- 46
- Products reviewed
- 135
- Accessories & spares
- 210
Every family, from the pool to the test strip
Pick the job in front of you
16 families bought once and kept for years, 30 that wear out, run out and get bought again. Each hub compares one family and opens with a direct answer to “which one should I buy?”, followed by the published specification most often misread when buying it.
- Frame pools A tube frame, a liner, and a volume that is not the one printed
- Steel wall pools Two thicknesses in tenths of a millimetre decide everything
- Pool domes and roofs Heat kept in, leaves kept out — and wind that has to go somewhere
- Cartridge filter systems The filter you rinse, against the filter you backwash
- Sand filter systems A tank, a media bed, and a valve with six or seven positions
- Pool pumps Litres per hour at zero metres, and what is left at eight
- Drain pumps The last millimetre is the whole specification
- Salt chlorinators Grams of chlorine an hour, and the salt that has to be there first
- Water testers Three ways to read the same water, and only one of them is a number
- Pool robots Minutes of runtime, and the three surfaces they are spent on
- Handheld vacuums A pump you hold, for the corners a robot leaves
- Pool heat pumps A COP is a ratio at a temperature, and the temperature is the point
- Pool heaters Direct heat, priced in kilowatt-hours rather than in COP
- Solar showers A black tank, a hot first minute, and a mixer that decides the rest
- Outdoor spas Seats, jets, and the heater that has to hold against a winter night
- Pool lighting IP68 is a depth and a duration, not a promise
- Replacement liners Four tenths of a millimetre, and a seam that has to match the wall
- Pool ladders A load rating, a step count, and a wall height that has to agree
- Ground cloths The cheapest insurance the liner will ever get
- Pool covers Deniers, eyelets and a cover measured larger than the pool
- Solar covers 120 µm against 400 µm, and the side that faces up
- Winter covers Built for snow load, ice movement and four months of nobody looking
- Winterising products One dose in October, against four months of algae in the dark
- Repair kits Patches that go on wet, and the ones that do not
- Filter glass Recycled glass, a finer cut, and a bed that lasts longer
- Filter sand A grain size, a purity, and a bed that rounds off with time
- Filter cartridges A letter that is a shape, not a quality
- Multiport valves Six positions or seven, and a gasket that is the whole failure mode
- Pool hoses Thirty-two or thirty-eight, and nothing in between
- Skimmers The surface film is the whole job, and the water level sets it
- Inlet fittings Where the filtered water re-enters decides whether the pool mixes
- Chlorine tablets Twenty grams or two hundred, and a stabiliser that accumulates
- Chlorine granules Fast-acting, pre-dissolved, and the tool for a pool that has gone wrong
- Bromine Works hot, smells less, and needs to be started rather than dosed
- Active oxygen No smell, no stabiliser, and a residual that does not last
- Algaecide Three chemistries, and one of them foams
- Flocculant Makes fine particles big enough for a filter that cannot see them
- pH regulators The number that decides whether the chlorine works at all
- Pool salt Purity, grain and the several hundred kilograms a first fill needs
- Dosing floats A vented ball that meters a tablet, and keeps it off the liner
- Test strips Three pads or seven, and a cost per test that decides the habit
- Pool thermometers Surface temperature is not pool temperature
- Leaf nets and brushes A flat net for the floor, a bag net for the surface
- Telescopic poles Inches at the clip, metres at the reach, and a clamp that slips
- Solar mats Square metres of absorber against cubic metres of pool
- Vacuum heads The head the filter pump pulls, for the pool a robot cannot justify
How this site works
The three promises behind every page
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Ranked on the published figures, not on what a sale would pay us
Commission has no say in where anything ranks. When the mid-priced cartridge filter is the sensible buy because its element is stocked everywhere and costs eight euros, the page says so plainly — and when a dearer heat pump earns its cost because the maker publishes its COP with the air and water temperature it was measured at, the page explains exactly that.
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The deciding figure, left in the unit its maker printed
A flow rate reported as the maker’s own statement at zero head, never as what arrives at the pool; a COP kept beside the air and water temperature it was quoted at, because the two mean opposite things at 26 °C and at 15 °C; a stated pool volume kept beside the geometric volume of its own dimensions; a cover given by microns or deniers rather than by adjective. Each appears in the maker’s unit with its source named. A figure no maker published is marked as missing, never filled in.
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Aimed at the Amazon store that will really ship it to you
Press it and the same reference opens on the Amazon store for the country you are browsing from, priced in your own currency. Where a model has no offer there — and heavy equipment is stocked, shipped and priced very differently from one market to the next, because freight decides it — the page says so rather than sending you to a listing that has gone.