Pond-o-Vac 3

We have 5 water garden ponds and love them but have found it very difficult to keep them clean as much as we'd like. I have tried various methods...even bought a shop vac that pumps water out but it's not a continous cycle and occasionally it gets stopped up and it made cleaning the ponds extremely tedious. This Pondvac is wonderful. It was easy to put together and begin using immediately and although I am still working on cleaning my ponds, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I don't think that my Koi have ever been happier. I would buy this product again in a minute and wish that I had known about it before I did all those other things. I think that anyone with a fairly large pond would love it. It works just wonderfully.

The Pondovac 3 is expensive no doubt about it; however, if you can afford it, you are buying a quality product that makes it easier to keep your pond crystal clear. I am impressed with the construction of the vac. It is well designed and sturdy. The suction is powerful. The reach is at least 6 feet deep. I only use 3 of the 5 hose segments for my three foot deep pond. I considered this purchase for three season's. I reviewed several vacuum's on the market. The Pondovac is the most expensive but I decided to take the plunge this year. I am not getting any younger and paying someone to maintain my pond would be very expensive. In the long run, I will be saving a lot of money by continuing to clean the pond myself. I searched numerous sites for the best price and decided that Amazon offered the best price. Don't be fooled by the stated price since the cost of shipping is high relative to other sites but the all in cost was still the best I could find.2013 update: The Pond-o-vac 3 continues to function with no problems; however, I only use it to open up the pond in the spring. I could not be doing the maintenance without it.

I have found this difficult to use and unsatisfactory. The "manual" that comes with it, if you could even call it that, is completely useless and there seems to be nothing on line from the manufacturer either. I don't think my unit is malfunctioning, but I only get good suction about 25% of the time. Supposedly it has two suction chambers to maintain suction all the time, so you don't have to stand and wait for it to empty before you get suction back, which apparently was the case with the prior model, but I get decent suction through only one of the two chambers.I can't even figure out what one of the nozzles that comes with it is supposed to be for. There is nothing that tells you.To the extent that I have managed to get the unit to function a bit better, it has only been through trial and error. It seems like the drain hose needs to run "downhill," so I have taken to setting the vacuum on a chair when I use it. Of course, that means the "in" hose needs to go "uphill" more, partially counteracting the improvement, but I have found that if I do not do it, the unit stops draining all together and stops working. In fact, before I started putting it up on the chair, it just about sounded like it was going to "explode" a couple of times. Perhaps I am doing something wrong, but how would I know? As alluded to above, the "manual" is little more than a parts list and it doesn't even show all the parts!

broke after about a year, but that could just be my ineptitude. Now I just use a large wet-dry vacuum to do the pond.

The biggest problem with this product is that it does not come with anything that even vaguely resembles a user manual and that's the main reason for only three stars. I found a Youtube video that did a fair job explaining how to use it, but mainly had to do a lot of experimenting to get it working properly. It was very effective at sucking muck off the bottom of our two fountains, but there were two things I need to find to make it work better. First, the exhaust hose is only eight feet long and that's way too short for my application. I don't want to put the exhaust water back in my fountains so I need to spread it out over my landscape and the short exhaust hose makes that difficult. Secondly, they need to add a small hose attachment with a brush. The large attachment has a brush and it works well for big surfaces, but for small and irregular spaces something with a brush on it would be nice. I got around that by using a regular brush to stir up the muck before deploying the vacuum. It does appear to be a quality product.

light but powerful. Drags up everything in my pool, sludge, leaves, small branches and acorns. The hoses a plenty long enough. There are all the various tools one could possibly need for all applications. Only fly in the sludge is that it chokes and forces a shutdown of the engine to clear. This is a minor issue that requires patience. It works!

I've used the Oase pond vac twice now and it really gets all the gook out. It is a little sensitive if it's placed to high or low compared to the water level but this can be overcome by moving it to the right spot. It has plenty of suction and I'm pleased with it so far!!