Bottom Feeder Cartridge: Dirt Gone in Minutes!

0:00This episode is brought to you by Hasa. Liquid is clearly better. Liquid chlorine is the highest purity, works immediately, has no added signaric acid or calcium, and it will leave your pool safe, clean, and clear. And by the bottom feeder professional grade battery-powered vacuum system, it sucks to clean pools, so cleaning pools sucks less. Get $100 off with code DVB100. This episode is brought to you by Schimmer, the number one pool service software in North America. With Schimmer, you can streamline your schedule, grow your revenue, and keep your customers coming back with five-star service. Whether you're a one-person operation or an established team, Schimmer is your partner in success. Visit getschimmer.com slash pool guy to try Schimmer for free for 30 days. Hey, welcome to the pool game podcast show. If this episode I'm going to follow up

1:06on a product that I featured here in January, and that is the bottom feeder and shrimp cartridge filter adapter, and this is something that has revolutionized the vacuum system market in particular if you own the bottom feeder or shrimp cleaner, and I'll go over some details of it, and of course, how it is after about three months of usage here. Are you a pool service pro looking to take your business to the next level? Join the pool guy coaching program, get expert advice, business tips, exclusive content, and get direct support. For me, I'm a 35-year veteran in the industry, whether you're starting out or scaling up, I've got the tools to help you succeed. There are more as we pull learning.com. So whatever new product comes out, there's always skepticism about the reality of it if it actually works, and is it really effective? And of course, with anything, if there was a predecessor to it that kind of didn't work as well as it should have, then something new is always assumed to be just as bad as the predecessor product. So the bottom

2:14feeder did have a cartridge assembly prior to this one that came out several years ago, and I actually reviewed it. There were a few issues with this particular cartridge adapter, the original one. It was a larger cartridge filter. I believe it was 80 square feet. I remember correctly. And it kind of just, you kind of just push it on to the throat or top of the bottom feeder, and you just stay there and place basically with a strap that you would put on it. And the top of it also had like a piece of metal or aluminum, I should say, that would keep the dirt from going back out. So it wasn't extremely effective, and so it sourd a lot of people that tried it. I thought it was effective enough if you needed to use it to get dirt off the bottom, but it wasn't an everyday tool to get dirt out of a pool. And so it wasn't that popular, and it kind of just kind of disappeared on the market, and it promoted. I didn't really promote it because it wasn't that

3:15effective. But this new one actually is highly effective, and the feedback from people using it has been incredibly positive. You know, the fact that you can actually have a vacuum system now with the cartridge on top, they can actually pick up dirt down to 10 or 20 microns, which is kind of the holy grail of the vacuum system, because we know that the bags, even the small microns, bags like the Riptide 60 micron, they actually have a 25 micron as well, that fills up with air pretty quickly. They have a low micron hammerhead bag, and then of course if you're a powerback user like myself in the old days, you had that yellow 60 micron bag that powerback had. Have a funny story. I was cleaning a water feature with it. It was a brand new build, and they had put like a little pond water feature, and so I had my my power back, and I had this brand new yellow 60 micron bag to get some of that silt and dirt out of there. So I'm just using it,

4:19and you know, going back and forth in there, and then I feel like something snagged it, or I hit the bottom feeder on something, or the power back, I should say, this is parts of the bottom feeder, and it actually tore the bag, you know, the whole length of the bag was torn about 10 inches up, making it totally useless, brand new bag wasted, because it is a much fragile fragile fragile, and much easier material to tear, because it's a little microns, and so when it starts filling up with the air, and the dirt coats it, if you rub it against anything sharp, it'll definitely tear open like nothing, and it didn't last very long either, because the smaller micron bags tend to wear out faster, because of the material, being much finer, then say it, you know, 100 micron bag or 200 micron bag, and so the bottom feeder does have a 57 micron bag as well, which is pretty good for most situations, but any dirt that's going to be, you know, smaller than 57 microns will go right through the bag, which is a lot of the dirt, basically,

5:23finer dirt will pass right through these vacuum system bags, so having the ability to have a cartridge on top that will filter dirt out of the pool, is something that everyone's been wanting for their vacuum system, because why would you ever want to manually vacuum a pool again, if you have a vacuum system, it's so convenient to drop it in there, and then use that to get all the debris out, and dirt down to a certain micron, but now if you can get dirt as well as leaf debris out of the pool, which is one vacuum system, I think this is what makes it so amazing, because with the fact that you can use the bag as well, and then switch it to a cartridge, and I'll go over that in a second how fast it is to do this, but just the fact that you can use the bag when you need to, and then have the cartridge available that is actually very effective, when you need it, makes this a very versatile, and it makes it a all-in-one type device for most pool pros in your, depending on your area, in your situation, if you're in an area where you

6:28have a lot of dirt in the pools, as well as some leaf debris, this would be perfect for you, now if you're in an area where you just get tons of leaf debris, and you're not really concerned about the dirt, of course you could just go with the bottom of the heater with the bag, or you can go with a larger vacuum system like the hammer at a rip tide, no problem there because there are certain situations where the full size vacuum system isn't necessity in those areas, but I would argue that about 90% of the areas that have pool servers can't get away with just having the bottom feeder or the new shrimp cleaner as the primary vacuum system, and there's really no need for the full size vacuum system with the cart, and especially with this cartridge now, and I'm going to just touch on how easy it is to go between bag and cartridge, there's a patent pending on this thing, because it is pretty unique in the industry, the halo that's on the bottom feeder or shrimp is the little black part that the bags go onto, they call it the halo, so the bags kind of, if you're using the back bag that comes with it,

7:32you just kind of clip it on there, using another bag like the clear pool products bag, the bungee cord goes over it, and that's what holds the bag on, but with the new threaded halo, the actual cartridge assembly has a threaded part on the bottom, so the threaded halo is the male part that runs on it, the cartridge assembly has a female threaded part on the bottom, and you simply thread in the cartridge in about 10 seconds, you can go between the cartridge assembly and a bag making this a very versatile cleaner, there's no need to take off a clumsy adapter, unclip it, and then put the bag on, you just simply unscrew the cartridge, and then put the bag on top, or take the bag off and screw on the cartridge, and that's that easy to go from one to the other seamlessly, currently the cartridge adapter is only available on the bottom feeder and shrimp cleaner, and surprisingly, it works really great

8:34on the shrimp, now the shrimp is kind of like the bottom feeder, and it has the sides cut off, and this little smaller has a five inch throat versus the six inch throat of the bottom feeder, so it's much smaller and compact, it even has a smaller battery, so it is a much smaller compact vacuum, and with the cartridge on top it actually works really well, in fact I think it works just as good as the bottom feeder, if not better because of the smaller throat, it really pulls that dirt in really, you know, in an accelerated fashion, and the nice thing about this cartridge is that it's actually a 50 square foot cartridge that's not too bulky and too cumbersome, and actually it's really well balanced on the back of the bottom feeder and shrimp, now there is a battery hack that you can do, and I show that in the video where I filmed the extension kit, which I'll cover a little bit as well here, and that is to take the battery off of the portability kit that comes with it, it's a small little piece of pool pool, just take the battery, turn it upside down, take

9:36a clamp that they would get, the bottom feeder will give you, and then clamp the battery about 18 inches above where the cartridge sits, and that way when you're in an area where the battery may hit the cartridge, it's not going to hit it because you move the battery up 18 inches on the back of it, hard to describe here on the podcast, but basically you're just turning the battery upside down and moving it up 18 inches so that's not going to hit the cartridge, to me it's not a big deal, writing it with the battery on the back of it, it's not super inconvenient, and there's only certain points where you may hit it with the battery on the back, this cartridge again is a 50 square foot cartridge, and so you're going to have the ability, in my testing, to pick up about one or two pounds of dirt, which is a significant amount of dirt, now it's not an infinite capacity, so a lot of people are going to use this, and they're going to clean a pool that has, you know, five or six pounds of dirt, or dead algae or DE in there, and just note that just like a cartridge filter that can get overloaded, this can also get overloaded, and so you want to just be logical about

10:38it, and one or two pounds of dirt is actually a lot of dirt by the way, it can also pick up leaf debris, I would say a handful of leaf debris is the capacity, this is not made to pick up, you know, a pool that's full of leaves, you want to use the bag for that, but if you have a handful of leaves, you know, a handful is a pretty good amount of leaves, this will be fine, it's not going to cause any problems with it, just be aware that when you take out of the pool the leaves are going to just fall right, back down the throat onto the ground, so just put it somewhere where you know it's going to, you can clean up the leaf debris quickly and easily, now the clean the filter is very simple, you're just again unscrew it from the threaded fitting, turn it upside down and you can use a high power nozzle to hose the inside of it off, you don't even have to take the lid off to clean it, you can take the lid off to get it a thorough cleaning, but after every use you should get the hose and stick it in there, and the hose off as much dirt as possible, so it's ready for the next pool.

11:46And the Pool Guy podcast show has teamed up with UPA to bring you affordable, reliable, liability insurance starting at just $64 a month, get up to $2 million in coverage, and the members of my coaching group get an even lower rate, protect your business and your piece of mind, sign up with UPA today by clicking the link in the podcast description. I did mention that I show this battery hack in this, the extension video, now there are some pool pros that were saying that there was a lot of pools with you know three or four pounds of dirt, they had to maybe take the cleaner out, clean off the cartridge, put it back again to get the rest of the pool, some pool pros actually carry spare cartridges, and I can give you which cartridges it is too, so that if you do have one, you can find a replacement cartridge, it does work on other cartridges besides the unicell cartridges that comes with it that I should back up and say that it comes shipped with a unicell 50 square foot cartridge filter, if that's the unicell C9 405 50 square foot filter, there's also off brand ones you can buy

12:54on Amazon, a pleaco actually makes one, the PAP 54 that's the unicell C905 or the Philber FCO684, and this is also one, there's also a bunch of other ones you can use this on, if you wanted to have two cartridges and you can switch them out with the heavy debris pools, but the extension kit actually will expand the cartridge and make it a 100 square foot cartridge filter, it has a 500 mm rod and then you just double stack the cartridges on top each other, it's surprisingly it's not super unbalanced because of the way that it screws on to the threaded halo, the cartridge actually stays on there firmly and it doesn't really move around a lot, so even with a 100 square foot cartridge filter with the extension kit, the cleaner is really very mobile on the pool and it doesn't really cause mobility issues at all in my testing, so you can easily expand the cartridge again from my 50 square foot capacity to 100 square foot

13:56capacity, now the way it's designed and I've had questions about this also, you know, the dirt actually goes inside the cartridge and not outside the cartridge because of course if we went outside the cartridge, you go right back into the pool and it's actually reversing from a cartridge filter, a normal cartridge filter, the clean water goes down the center core and out the cartridges, the pleats on the cartridge should say and all the dirt stays on the outside of the cartridge contained cartridge filter, that's how it works but since there is no actual filter top on top of this thing, the dirt actually goes inside the cartridge, the top keeps the dirt from coming out of it and so all the dirt is contained inside of the cartridge itself and it's a self-contained unit where the clean water passes through, ironically I feel like you don't see a lot of power drop when you're using the cartridge assembly or the cartridge filter on top of it because the fact that

15:00the bags, when the bags start to get filled up with smaller particles and some dirt, let's say you're using a 75 micron bag or a 90 micron bag, basically that dirt will actually coat the bag and prevent some of the water from going back through the bag, causing the cleaner or the vacuum system to lose some power and then some extreme cases, if you don't empty the bag out you'll actually see the vacuum system floating up and water coming out the bottom of it because the water can't penetrate the bag at that point because there's so much stuff coating it and it starts filling up with air as well but since you're using a 50 square foot cartridge filter on top, the actual flow is pretty amazing so the clean water can flow through the pleats really easily, the dirt leaves get trapped inside the core of the cartridge and you don't really see any drop off again in power as you're picking up the dirt so by the time you finish vacuuming up one pound of dirt from the bottom of the pool, there's like zero drop off

16:02in power and there's no water coming out the bottom of the cleaner because of the extra flow that the cartridge creates allowing the clean water to pass through again, trapping all the dirt down to 10 to 20 microns inside the cartridge itself so if you go to the bottom feeder site just go to the bottomfeeder.com, click on the shop button and there's a couple of ways actually by the cartridge assembly you can buy it as a complete unit with the bottom feeder and shrimp so you can see that in the shop area the shrimp and bottom feeder with the cartridge assembly with the cleaner if you don't have a bottom feeder you can buy it all that together as one complete unit or you can buy the cartridge assembly if you already have a bottom feeder or shrimp you can buy the cartridge assembly separately you also have the extension kit for sale there and you also have an extra cartridge for sale on their site now so you can buy the unicel cartridge directly from the bottom feeder you can buy the bottom feeder assembly kit with the bottom

17:03feeder shrimp or buy it separately if you have a bottom feeder or shrimp already and I would say that again for most people this would be the only vacuum system you're going to need going forward because not only will it pick up leaf debris but now you can vacuum out dirt down to 10 to 20 microns which means that essentially you'll never get a need to use your manual vacuum and hose again in a pool you don't even need to carry it on your truck a lot of people that get this cartridge filter assembly leave their pool hose and vacuum head at home well the vacuum head might come in handy if you have suction side cleaners and you want to use the cleaner hose as the vacuum of pool but as far as carrying the cleaner hose or the pool hose with you you don't need the 50 foot pool hose any longer you have this cartridge adapter that will get the dirt out of the pool get the dirt out of the spa and it doesn't really matter if you use the bottom feeder or shrimp I think both cleaners with the cartridge on top work really effectively now if you're using the bottom feeder one last note you want to keep that thrust ring in the throat so that you're

18:05creating a little bit tighter area for the propeller and the area where the dirt gets sucked up it'll create more suction that way but the shrimp there's no need for that because it has a five inch throat and the propeller is actually right there at the edge of the opening and again it works really effectively for both cleaners and if you're looking for a tool to get dirt out of a pool and make your life easier and you're in the market for a vacuum system I definitely would look into getting the shrimp or bottom feeder with the cartridge filter assembly on top of it and it's something that's going to save you time energy and ultimately pay for itself with the time saving out there on your route looking for other podcasts you can find those on my website click on the podcast icon there'll be over 1800 podcasts you'll listen to there and if you're just in the coaching program they offer you can learn more at fullguycoaching.com thanks for listening to this podcast every next year week god bless this episode is brought to you by Hasa providing products that deliver clean healthy water for every

19:10aspect of everyday life the bottom feeder battery powered vacuum system portable powerful and only weighs 12 pounds and skimmer gets skimmer america's number one pool service software podcast listeners can try skimmer for free at get skimmer.com backslash pool guy