Clean the pump basket before you buy a new pool cleaner

Before you replace that slow or dead suction cleaner, clean the filter pump basket and check the skimmer weir door—most of the time that fixes it.

Suction cleaners are dumb in the best way: they just crawl around on water flow. If that flow drops, they crawl slower. If it drops enough, they stop dead. The usual culprit isn’t the cleaner itself, it’s a clogged pump basket starving the whole system of suction. So pop that basket out, rinse it off, and see if your cleaner wakes back up.

Also check the weir door in your skimmer. That little flap is supposed to stop debris from floating back out, but it can get stuck closed or jammed with leaves. If it’s closed, it can choke off the flow that feeds the cleaner. Give it a nudge, clear out whatever’s wedged in there, and make sure it swings freely.

Both checks take about five minutes total. Do that before you order a part or haul the cleaner to a repair shop. Nine times out of ten, the cleaner was fine all along.

That’s a five-minute fix that beats a couple