Rico Rock now offers a compact, lightweight, cast concrete modular water fountain that is easily mortared together to create a consistently beautiful waterfall for pools. This low-profile waterfall is easily integrated into any pool design using multiple base pieces that even allow for installation on a radius. Unlike real stone that is heavy and can be hard to manipulate into a functional, aesthetically pleasing fountain, this modular fountain package is designed to always look great—without the worries of leaks or awkwardly stacked stones. Shown here with an optional side boulder. Perfect renovation add-on to any existing pool—for added fall revenue.

Rico Rock, Orlando, FL
(888) 717-3100
www.ricorock.com

Partnership adds local sales and factory-authorized service support for two of the industry’s most widely used commercial robotic pool cleaners

Landmark Aquatic, a nationwide provider of commercial aquatic facility design, construction, and maintenance services, has announced a partnership with Maytronics to bring the Dolphin WAVE 100 and WAVE 200 XL robotic pool cleaners to commercial aquatic facilities across the United States.

Under the agreement, select Landmark Aquatic locations will also become official Maytronics service providers, giving aquatic facility managers a local, single-source solution for both equipment and ongoing cleaner maintenance — reducing downtime and eliminating the need to ship units out for repair.

The Dolphin WAVE 100 and Dolphin WAVE 200 XL are proven workhorse cleaners trusted by aquatic facility managers nationwide. Designed for mid-range commercial pools as well as large community and resort pools respectively, the WAVE 100 cleans pool floors, walls while the WAVE 200XL is engineered to handle commercial pools of any shape, up to Olympic sized pools. Because the robots operate independently of a facility’s main circulation pump, they can also help reduce energy consumption and labor demands associated with manual vacuuming. Additionally, these cleaners use Dolphin’s CleverClean™ smart navigation system for complete pool coverage.

“For many years, we have proudly partnered with Maytronics as their commercial pool vacuums deliver outstanding quality, reliability, and performance,” explains Brian Spear, General Manager for Landmark Aquatics in Indiana. “Their commitment to excellence has enabled us to provide a truly unique in-house Maytronics Authorized Service Center that sets Landmark Aquatic apart from the competition. Together, this long-standing partnership has allowed us to exceed customer expectations by combining our experience with premium equipment and personalized service. We value this relationship with Maytronics and look forward to continuing to deliver exceptional results for our customers for years to come.”

Facility managers can learn more about the Dolphin WAVE commercial line at maytronics.com/en-us/robots-commercial-pools.html or contact their local Landmark Aquatic office.

About Landmark
Landmark Aquatic is a nationwide provider of commercial aquatic facility design, construction, and maintenance services, with more than six decades of industry experience. Serving clients across most of the U.S., Landmark delivers construction-led solutions and on-going support through its AquatiCare maintenance team, ensuring excellence “for the life of your pool.” Committed to the full lifecycle of every facility, Landmark prioritizes long-term partnerships while adapting to client needs through exceptional service, operational excellence, and forward-thinking solutions. For more about Landmark Aquatic visit www.landmarkaquatic.com.

About Maytronics
Maytronics is a global leader in the swimming pool industry, specializing in pool water solutions. Maytronics’ Dolphin pool cleaning robots are a highly recognized global brand. Dolphin robotic pool cleaners continuously set new industry standards for innovative technology, design, reliability, service and most important, meeting our brand promise of exceptional pool water experience – bringing a superior level of cleaning to the pool water. Their flagship Dolphin cleaners are renowned for being “plug-and-play” autonomous machines that operate independently from the pool’s main pump, which lowers energy consumption and reduces chemical usage. The robotic cleaners typically feature advanced navigation, multi-directional scrubbing, and smart app capabilities. Learn more about their commercial cleaners at
https://www.maytronics.com/en-us/robots-commercial-pools.html.

Variable-speed pumps are the standard on nearly every pad now, thanks to the DOE efficiency rule that took effect in 2021 (Federal Register, DOE Energy Conservation Standards for Dedicated-Purpose Pool Pump Motors). Most pool professionals already know that story. What gets less attention is a more useful question: once a pump can run at any speed, what should it actually be basing that speed on?

The answer matters more than the mandate itself. A pump that sets its speed off an accurate, real-time flow measurement, rather than off a preset RPM or an estimate, doesn’t just save energy. It changes how well the heater, the filter, the sanitizer, and the plumbing all work together, because every one of those components was designed around a target flow rate, not a target speed.

The Physics Behind the Savings

The energy case for variable speed starts with the pump affinity laws. Flow rate scales roughly linearly with motor speed, but the power required to move that water scales with the cube of speed. Cut motor speed in half, and flow drops by half, while power consumption falls to roughly one-eighth of what it was (Pentair, “Pump Affinity Laws and Energy Savings”). That cubic relationship is why ENERGY STAR certified pool pumps are rated to use roughly 70% less energy than single-speed models over a season (ENERGY STAR, Pool Pumps).

That math only holds, though, if the pump actually knows what flow rate it’s producing. Running slower saves energy only when the resulting flow still does the job the system needs done. Guess wrong in either direction, too low and the water isn’t turning over or sanitizing properly, too high and the savings disappear, and the pump stops being an efficiency upgrade and starts being a liability.

Why an Accurate Flow Rate Changes Everything Downstream

Every piece of equipment on a pad, not just the pump, is engineered around a specific flow window, and that’s where basing pump operation on measured flow rather than estimated flow starts to pay off across the whole system.

Heat pumps and gas heaters have minimum and maximum GPM requirements. Fall outside that window and the equipment throws error codes, cycles inefficiently, or simply underperforms, wasting the energy it does use. Salt chlorine generators typically need roughly 20 to 25 GPM to activate the flow switch that tells them water is moving; a flow number that’s off by even a modest margin can mean a salt cell that isn’t producing chlorine consistently, even though the pump appears to be running fine. Sand and cartridge filters are rated for a specific flow rate per square foot of filtration area, and running above or below that rate affects both water clarity and how long the filter media lasts.

Turnover time (how long it takes to circulate a volume of water equal to the pool’s total capacity) ties all of this together. It’s the benchmark that determines whether sanitizer actually reaches the whole body of water on schedule, and it’s explicitly defined and capped for public pools under the CDC’s Model Aquatic Health Code, the model framework many state and local health departments use (CDC, Model Aquatic Health Code). A pump that’s only holding a preset RPM has no way to confirm turnover is actually happening on schedule once a filter starts loading or a valve gets adjusted. A pump that’s tracking real flow can hold that target and adjust automatically as conditions change.

The compounding effect is the real story here. A system running on accurate flow data tends to need less chemical correction, because circulation stays consistent. It puts less strain on the motor and bearings, because the pump isn’t overworking to compensate for a resistance change it can’t see. It produces fewer callbacks for cloudy water or error codes, because the equipment stays inside its designed operating window instead of drifting out of it as the season goes on. None of those benefits show up on a spec sheet next to the wattage number, but they’re where a lot of the real value, and the avoided service calls, actually live.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Most variable-speed pumps today are open-loop: they hold whatever RPM was programmed in, regardless of what’s happening in the plumbing. Some newer models estimate flow indirectly, using motor load at a given speed compared against a factory-built pump curve. That’s an improvement over a bare RPM dial, but it’s still inference, not measurement, and it can drift as a filter loads or a motor ages.

One pump closes that loop directly. H2Flow Controls’ Nautis VSF pairs a built-in FlowVis flow meter with its Eco-Flow control system to hold a target GPM within roughly plus or minus 2%, adjusting motor speed automatically as real-world conditions shift rather than holding a fixed RPM. It’s a useful illustration of the underlying principle: when the pump’s decisions are based on the actual flow rate moving through the system, everything downstream, the heater, the filter, the sanitizer, the plumbing, benefits from it.

For installers and service techs, that’s the more useful question to bring into the next conversation about a pump replacement. Not just “is it variable speed,” but “what is it using to decide how fast to run?” The pump that knows its real flow rate is the one that keeps the rest of the system running the way it was designed to.