Cleaning of a submerged surface
AssigneeZodiac Pool Care, Inc.
InventorsHendrikus Johannes Van Der Meijden, Michael Edward Moore
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A pressure type pool cleaner includes a head propelled forwardly over a surface. Different portions of water pumped to the head inducts debris into a cleaner system, and is ejected via a thrust nozzle onto a deflector and thence along a thrust line to thrust the head along the line. The deflector is pivotal via a saddle about a longitudinal axis such as to be displaced laterally relative to the thrust nozzle. The deflector includes obliquely opposed deflection surfaces which are respectively aligned with the nozzle in dependence on its relatively laterally displaced position to deflect the water ejected along the line to respectively different oblique directions to adjust the direction of thrust and to effect lateral steering.
Claims20
A method of propelling a pool cleaner of the pressure kind over a surface submerged in a body of water, the method including
- pumping water in a flow stream to a pool cleaner head;
- directing a portion of the pumped flow stream, via a thrust nozzle mounted in fixed orientation on the head, in a thrust jet stream in a predetermined direction;
- deflecting the thrust jet stream, by means of a composite deflector having deflection surfaces at different orientations, into respectively different directions, by moving the composite deflector to present respectively different deflection surfaces to the thrust jet stream.
A pool cleaner of the pressure kind for cleaning a surface submerged in a body of water, which pool cleaner includes
- a cleaner head having at least one roller rotatably mounted to the head about a lateral roller axis;
- a conduit for conducting pumped water under pressure in a flow stream to the head;
- at least one induction nozzle in flow communication with said conduit and arranged to direct a portion of the water of said flow stream in correspondingly at least one induction jet stream such as to induce water immediately above the submerged surface, carrying debris from the submerged surface, to flow into a cleaning and straining section;
- a thrust nozzle mounted in fixed orientation to the cleaner head in flow communication with said conduit and arranged to expel a portion of the water of said flow stream in a thrust jet stream in a predetermined direction into the body of water to generate thrust to propel the cleaner head through the body of water;
- a composite deflector having deflection surfaces at different orientations, the deflector being mounted to the cleaner head for limited movement generally in line with the thrust nozzle to present respectively different deflection surfaces to the thrust jet stream.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.