Three Weeks With Swabbie

[Acroholic]

I have been using the Swabbie for three weeks.

No concerns so far. It works very well.

This is not a criticism of Swabbie, but one thing any product of this type will not eliminate the need for is cleaning surfaces inside the cup, with the exception of the inside skimmer neck, where Swabbie does a great job. You will see a slow buildup of crud on the inside of the collection cup, and on the underside of the Swabbie lid, and also on the part of the blade that doesn't contact the skimmer neck. This means that for me, about once every two weeks I pull the Swabbie off and wipe off the crud with paper towels.

But the Swabbie seems to be dependable so far. I would recommend it. You need to skim a bit wetter with it, per the Swabbie instructions, if you don't already. I think the Swabbie helps skimmers maintain a constant rate of foam production, not the declining level you see that accompanies a slow buildup of crud on the inside of the skimmer neck. Swabbie does its job.

 

[ctenophore]

Great to hear, Dave! Thanks for the update and the note on 2 week wiper shaft/lid cleaning. I will update literature to highlight the fact that it still needs cleaned periodically. We've gone about a month between cleanings when testing, but "in the wild" results are probably more important to consider.

Justin

 

[solitude127]

Do you have to put the swabbie on a timer?

 

[ctenophore]

Do you have to put the swabbie on a timer?

I'm currently running mine 24/7 just to see what happens. I think it is best on a timer, as the constantly rotating wiper will disrupt the foam head some. Even with constant rotation, I am still skimming better/more than without a swabbie at all. Also, with a timer the motor will naturally have a longer life since it would be on ~1% duty cycle rather than 100% continuous duty.

 

[Acroholic]

Mine is on a RKL timer and comes on every 6 hours for 1 minute. This is AVAST's recommendations for the minimum time to have it come on. Seems to be working fine for me like this. I don'tt think there is a lot of crud that gets built up in the skimmer neck in 6 hours.

Hopefully, multiple user experiences will gel and the BEST amount/frequency of run time for Swabbie will be determined after a while.

 

[yellojello]

Does the collection cup, underside of lid, and wiper blade getting cruddy affect performance at all? Or only the skimmer neck really affects performance? I have a Warner Marine K2 that I clean once every 1-2 weeks. But it really only gets 1/4-1/3 full each time... so if thats the case, with the Swabbie, I would only need to do skimmer maintainance once a month... or until cup is full?

Or better yet, does the cup get filled faster due to better performance?

Let me know your thoughts or experiences. Thanks.

 

[AVAST Marine]

Our testing has shown that skimmate production is dead on consistent for 2 weeks straight with zero manual cleaning. This means that the skimmer will perform as well as it does on day 1 after a cleaning for two weeks straight. After this period, solids will begin to collect on the lid and reduce performance to approximate a 3 day from cleaned cup (even though the neck is still clean). After 4 weeks you have the equivilent performance of a skimmer that has not been cleaned for 5-6 days (yes, neck still clean). Personally, I clean mine once a month but if you are a super clean neck skimmer type of person, a once every two week cleaning will give you that "cleaned every day" performance.