Who writes this

Jean-Benoit Buisson

Every page on PoolsideVerdict is written and signed by one named person. This page explains where the judgements come from, lists what the author is not, and gives an address for corrections.

How this began

It started with a flow rate. Five digits and a unit, printed on a box, treated by nearly every listing as though it described the pool. It does not. On most of this shelf the figure is measured at zero head — no filter, no hose, no lift — and installed, the pump is working against several metres before it has moved anything. Two pumps quoting 19 200 l/h are not equivalent, and a pump carrying that number has not thereby turned the water over. Once that gap is visible, the same shape turns up across the whole shelf. Pools sold on a stated volume quoted at 90 % of wall height, so that every dose calculated from it is wrong by the freeboard. Heat pumps sold on a COP of 16 that was measured near 26 °C, the week a pool barely needs heating. Solar covers sold by adjective when the figure that decides them is a thickness in microns. And most pages answering these questions look alike: a ranked list, a score, a button, and not one figure a reader could check against the maker's own sheet.

The second problem arrives after the parcel is open. This equipment is bought on a headline and kept or returned on details. A pump with the right flow rate and the wrong hose diameter. A filter whose cartridge type is no longer stocked. A cover sold on the pool measurement that will not reach far enough to be tied. A salt chlorinator that needs 120 kg of salt in the water before it produces anything. A heat pump whose COP of 16 was quoted at 26 °C air, which is the week nobody needs heating. None of that is on the front of the box, and each one decides whether the purchase was worth making.

So the site does the dull part. It reads what manufacturers and standards bodies publish, confirms each product reference market by market, and writes down the line that settles the question — the flow rate next to the head it was measured at rather than a claim about clarity, a COP next to the temperatures it was quoted for, an active chlorine percentage next to the price per kilogram it makes comparable, a hose diameter next to the pumps it will and will not fit — and it says plainly when a figure has not been published at all. That last habit matters more than it sounds: a great deal of the disappointment on this shelf comes from a number nobody printed, or from one printed without the condition that gives it meaning.

Underneath the published pages there is a working file for each family: the single dimension a purchase turns on, every place a manual contradicts its own sales page, which fittings tie an owner to one brand for everything bought afterwards, what a maker means by a figure quoted with no condition beside it, and the particular mistake each shelf invites. The site is that file, sorted and written out, in five languages — because the same questions get asked in French, German, Spanish and Italian, and are answered worse in most of them.

The whole catalogue, built by the compiler

Nobody maintains the list below by hand. It is regenerated from the catalogue on every compile, one line per published page, and it grows or shrinks on its own as a shelf opens or a reference disappears. It records what has been written up — which, said plainly, is not a record of what is standing in anybody’s garden.

Three lessons that cost money to learn

The figure in the biggest type is almost never the one the purchase hangs on. A pool is sold on a stated volume when the liner thickness decides whether it lasts three summers or ten. A filter is sold on a flow rate when the tank diameter decides how long it runs between backwashes. A robot is sold on runtime when the surfaces it climbs decide what that runtime is spent on. A solar cover is sold on size when the film thickness in microns decides whether it survives being dragged over a coping.

What a machine costs to keep going outlives what it cost to bring home. A salt chlorinator whose cell leaves the catalogue after two seasons has a service life set by its spare parts. A multiport valve whose spider gasket is not sold separately is a valve that gets replaced whole. A filter housing takes one cartridge type for its entire life, and that choice sets the running cost of every season after it.

And the thing you finally judge it on is usually nowhere on the specification sheet: how far a pump carries across a quiet garden at seven in the morning, whether a valve handle still turns after a winter outdoors, whether a cover can be dragged over a coping without tearing, and whether the part that goes first will still be listed on the day it goes.

What I am not

I am not a pool installer, a water-treatment chemist, a hydraulics engineer or a certification body. I hold no qualification in any of those fields, I have never worked for a manufacturer, an importer or a dealer, and nothing on this site leans on a professional title. A page here describes a product — its dimensions, its declared figures, any standard it cites — and stops there. In particular, every volume, flow rate, head, COP, hose and fitting diameter, film thickness in microns, fabric denier, grain size, active chlorine content, dose per cubic metre, runtime and quoted noise level on this site is reported from the manufacturer, with its unit as published and its source named, and never derived by me. Where a maker states a figure together with the condition it was taken under, the page credits both to that maker and never separates them, and nothing here is described as cleaner, quieter or safer than anything else on the strength of a specification sheet.

This site is not an assembly manual and not water-treatment advice. For a pump’s electrical protection and the socket it goes into, for a chemical’s dose and the products it must never be mixed with, for the salinity a cell needs, and for the ground a pool may stand on, it points to the maker's instructions, the markings on the product and the standard the listing cites, rather than paraphrasing them. Two statements are repeated rather than assumed. A published figure and the condition it was measured under are different things and stay together, and every page names the figure, the unit and the maker who published it. And no cover, no ladder, no alarm and no chlorinator is described here as making anything safe. What a page carries is the figure a maker published and the condition attached to it; everything past that point is settled by the instructions in the box, by the safety data sheet, and by the garden the pool stands in.

A name at the bottom proves nothing, and nothing here asks to be taken on one. Each judgement carries its grounds inside the page that makes it, and the long version — how a family is put in order — gets a page of its own.

The five rules a page is built under

No figure gets in without its source next to it — a datasheet, a manual, a marking moulded into the product, a named standard, or what owners agree on after a season in the water.
Nothing is ever filled in to look complete. Not a price, not a reference, not a dimension. Where a maker published nothing, the row stays blank and the page states in words that it is blank.
Every reference is checked store by store before the page goes up. Where a model is not sold in that store, the button searches your own store rather than dropping you onto a listing that has gone.
Where the cheaper option is the right one, the page says so — and where the right answer is a spirit level, a stiff brush or an hour on a Saturday rather than any purchase at all, it says that instead.
No family is arranged around a headline number, and where this year’s model is barely distinguishable from the one it replaced, the page says so plainly.

The price of misreading a figure on this shelf

This equipment is sold on numbers that state one thing and get read as another, and the gap usually surfaces only once the pool is full. A stated volume stands where the water a pool holds is assumed. A flow at zero head stands where a turnover is assumed. A COP at 26 °C stands where a heating bill is assumed. Meanwhile the things everybody treats as afterthoughts — a second cartridge, a ground cloth, a jet aimed away from the skimmer, a cover pulled over at dusk — repeatedly decide whether any of it worked.

Much of what matters here costs nothing to know, and comes down to one line: a stated volume records what a maker was willing to print about a shape, and undertakes nothing about the water in your garden. Most of the rest is the same kind of thing. Levelling the ground before the pool goes down. Slipping a cloth under a frame. Rinsing a cartridge so its pleats reopen. Keeping a liner out of direct sun while it is folded. Checking the socket before trusting a pump to it. Sites that exist to shift equipment walk straight past all of that. It is not walked past here.

Sending a correction

Point out a mistake and it is put right, with the date of the correction left on the page for anyone to see. Write to [email protected].

Jean-Benoit Buisson · PoolsideVerdict · Montrollet, France