t’s that time of year. After eight months of looking at a dreary gray safety cover, our backyard pool opened last week. I live in Canada, so swimming pool season is short... And with the kickoff to pool season comes a reminder that if you have a pool you can avoid the majority of the most dreaded part of pool ownership–the daily maintenance–by investing in a robotic pool cleaner. You can save hours every week, giving you more time to enjoy using your pool. And you may even save a little money as well.

Regain Hours Lost to Maintenance

When we first had our in-ground pool installed, I was prepared for the effort and cost involved in keeping the water chemistry balanced. What I wasn’t prepared for was the amount of daily maintenance required just to keep it clean. I had the picture in my head of doing a few passes across the surface with a net and that would be it. I wasn’t expecting to have to be vacuuming the pool daily to remove the collection of pinecones, leaves, dead bugs and dirt that would magically appear on the bottom every morning. The whole ritual of connecting the hose and vacuum head to the skimmer basket, doing the actual vacuuming, then cleaning the equipment off and putting it away could easily take an hour.

After trying out my first pool robot, I was hooked. Charge it up and drop it in the water. No hoses, no monitoring required. It just runs around on the bottom of the pool vacuuming up everything and most will also scrub the waterline. Some models also have a cycle where they float across the water surface and skim any floating leaves or bugs.

The closest thing in effort required is hooking the robot when it’s done, emptying out its filter basket and putting it back on the charger. It turns daily pool cleaning into a five-minute job.

Cost: Not the Factor It Once Was

In the early days, a robotic pool cleaner could have been seen as an expensive luxury. You still don’t have to try hard to spend $1,500 or more for one with all the bells and whistles, but check online and you’ll find many models with advanced features like extended runtime, ultra-fine filtration, wall scrubbing capability, powerful suction and Wi-Fi app control in the $500 range.

I bought an entry level model from a reputable brand (one whose pool robots I have tested and recommended in the past) on sale for $129 last year.

Vacuuming to waste bypasses the pool’s filter, sending the water and gunk straight out the drain hose. After the dreaded opening, most pool owners I know don’t need to regularly vacuum to waste. However, there are liable to be a few situations (often after a windstorm) where it is necessary due to the sheer volume of gunk on the bottom of your pool.

Every time you vacuum to waste (or backwash the filter if you are vacuuming to the filter on a daily basis) lowers your pool’s water level. That means having to top up the pool with fresh water, measure and possibly add chemicals, then heat the freshly added water. And that means cost. Having a pool robot do the cleaning instead minimizes these events, so you have less money going out.

Do this enough times in a season and after a few years, investing in an entry level robotic pool cleaner may actually pay for itself in dollars as well as time saved.

At This Point, A Robotic Pool Cleaner Just Makes Sense

Only a few years ago, my pool maintenance guy used to marvel over the robotic pool cleaners I was testing. Nowadays, so many people have them that they’re just another piece of standard pool equipment to him–like a heater. I was an instant convert to pool robots and from my perspective, they have reached the point of maturity as a product–with established brands, core features + an expanding list of extra capabilities, and models available in a wide range of prices–that they are a no-brainer purchase for any outdoor pool owner.

Summer and pool season are already too short for many of us. Just think of what you could do with those hours of pool cleaning a robot will help you to avoid.