From our friends at locally-owned Solar Pool Technologies – a great way to keep your pool looking gorgeous with little to no effort!
Phoenix AZ inventors, Terry Maaske and Denis Ruzsa were sitting by the pool a few years ago trying to figure out the logistics of a solar powered bottom cleaner when it hit them. Why wait until the debris is on the pool’s floor?
This traditional approach to pool cleaning is inefficient and uses a lot of expensive energy. Next to the air conditioner, the pool pump represents the second largest consumer of electricity for an average household, particularly in the Sunbelt where pools are open year round. Algae can grow in water that isn’t warm enough to swim, so you still need to circulate and sanitize the water during the winter months. Producing the electricity required to clean one average pool for a year consumes three tons of coal and produces six tons of carbon dioxide emissions. These figures are startling, especially when considering approximately 7 million homes in the United States have swimming pools.
Cleaning a pool from the top is a very new concept to the swimming pool industry, but one that logically makes sense. The buoyancy of water keeps leaves and dirt at the pool surface for several hours. It’s much easier to remove the debris at this time than after it sinks. Denis and Terry did the math on how much electricity could be saved by reducing pool pump usage by two thirds. It was obviously going to be worth it so they invented Solar-Breeze, the world’s first and only solar-powered robotic pool skimmer/cleaner.
During the day, Solar-Breeze uses the sun’s energy to run the motors that drive the cleaner across the water. Surplus power is used to charge its battery. Just before dusk, the unit switches to battery power and continues to operate a few hours into the night. Pool owners can let Solar-Breeze operate without supervision because of the unit’s embedded PC technology that detects when the unit is stuck and causes it to back up and turn. This technology also allows Solar-Breeze to randomly reverse direction and gravitate toward areas with more debris, ensuring that the unit will collect any floating items including dust particles.
With debris under control and off the bottom, pool water still needs to be sanitized. Denis and Terry built a chemical dispenser right into the skimmer unit. Solar-Breeze moves around the surface of the pool under power, so it delivers sanitizing chemicals to every part of the pool several times a day. This results in very efficient use of chemicals and sparkling clean water.
Solar Pool Technologies Inc was incorporated in 2008 by Denis Ruzsa and Scottsdale resident, Paul Sim. This local company acquired the IP to the Solar-Breeze robotic pool skimmer. The goal of the company is to introduce the products and technology that will make it possible to remove swimming pools from the electrical grid. Solar-Breeze is distributed through a network of pool and solar dealers and is available on the company website, www.solar-breeze.com Denis and Terry are still working on the solar-powered bottom cleaner and a number of other inventions to meet this objective.
More and more individuals worldwide are taking a proactive approach to making their homes and backyards as eco-friendly as possible. Not only is the solar-powered robotic pool skimmer a part of the green solution, it also makes your pool sparkle.
