By Marcelle Dibrell
Move over Big 3: There’s a New 3, and these three are working together.
What’s more, they are working with pool professionals too, if the annual Pool Nation Awards proves anything.
You have AquaStar, maker of the Pipeline filter, the industry-voted winner of Pool Nation’s “Best Residential Filter of the Year” for the last three years.
You have Poolside Tech, maker of The Attendant, winner of Pool Nation’s “Innovative Product of the Year,” for smart automation that seamlessly controls new or existing pumps, heaters, lighting, water features, and more.
And you have Raypak, maker of AVIA, voted Pool Nation’s “Heater of the Year” for the last two years.
Now these companies — The New 3 — are teaming up to offer an integrated pool package that delivers efficiency, reliability, and ease of use for both pool professionals and pool owners.
The New 3 is a big win for pool builders, service professionals, and pool and spa owners. Because the three companies are collaborating, it ensures that all of the pool’s equipment pad works together, streamlining installation and operation.
According to Justin Reyes, Raypak’s marketing and training manager, it is no
AquaStar, maker of the Pipeline filter and Poolside Tech, maker of The Attendant, and Raypak, maker of AVIA have come together on the pool and spa equipment pad. accident that the New 3’s products work so well with each other, as if they were designed to work together.
“All of these products are best in category, so if you have the best heater, the best heater is going to work well in any system,” said Reyes. “And it’s the same for pumps, filters, and automation: If it’s the best one, it’s going to work great.”
Reyes said that The New 3 formed because each company understood that for them to grow their businesses, they had to get into other aspects of the market.
“At Raypak, we know that we’re very niche in the market: We do one thing, and we do it really well,” Reyes said. “We don’t have a full offering of products because we realized that we worked best within our own wheelhouse. As three companies that really excel within our own categories, it doesn’t make sense to try to be everything. It makes more sense to collaborate and focus on what makes each of us the best.”
According to Reyes, the companies began to partner up about a year ago with the “Brains and Brawn” package. The “Brains” is The Attendant, Poolside Tech’s Einstein of pool automation. The “Brawn” is Raypak’s AVIA, the industry’s most robust and durable heater.
“We started working with Poolside Tech, sharing information back and forth to integrate our heater better with their automation systems,” Reyes said.
Reyes explained that with traditional automation systems on the market today, the heater is simply an ON/OFF device — there’s very little information passing between the heater and the automation system.
“But with the AVIA and The Attendant, the heater’s inlet and outlet temperature sensors share information with The Attendant, which allows it to drive its calculations, so there’s no need to drop additional hardware into the system, which decreases the installation time for the pool pro.”
David Jones, Poolside Tech’s implementation and training manager, said that one of the big benefits of pairing The Attendant with Raypak’s AVIA and AquaStar pumps is that The Attendant gives real-time diagnostics on the equipment.
“It really saves the service tech from an extra wasted trip to go out and diagnose something,” Jones said. “Say the AVIA throws a high limit error code or some other sensor goes bad — it will actually display that on the app. You can see the error code, and you already know what’s wrong with the heater before even having to go out to the job site. You can go out there with parts in hand already.”
And pairing AquaStar’s Pipeline filter with The Attendant allows service techs to measure filter pressure remotely. Simply attach a Bluetooth pressure gauge to the filter.
Jones believes The Attendant will revolutionize the pool and spa industry.
“I could go out and buy one of those Wi Fi smart switches that do more than half the automation panels out there,” Jones said. “It’s kind of sad that we haven’t really kept up with the times in the pool industry. Let’s modernize the industry, and let’s force the Big 3 to work with everybody’s equipment or at least offer more flexibility.”
Including AquaStar in the partnership seemed like the obvious choice for the leadership at Raypak and Poolside Tech. With a superior heater and automation system, all they were missing at the equipment pad was a first-class pump and filter, and AquaStar was making big waves with theirs.
Steve Barnes, AquaStar’s director of science and compliance, said that with the Pipeline filter, you can replace a giant filter with a sleek, small-footprint cartridge filter that delivers DE-level clarity while being safe and easy for service pros to disassemble and clean.
Barnes has been testing all of the industry’s pool and spa equipment since 1984, and has worked for divisions of all of the Big 3 manufacturers —Fluidra, Hayward, and Pentair. He said that the New 3 is really a game changer.
One of the reasons why each of the New 3 companies is enjoying so much success, Barnes said, is that they are all highly responsive to customer feedback.
If a pool professional tells AquaStar “this fitting is in the wrong place; fix it,” Barnes said that AquaStar will fix it.
“Our focus is really on the service pros and existing pools, because that’s where we have a mess of old equipment that’s hard to control, hard to clean, that has some technology/safety issues that we can help solve,” Barnes said. “You don’t win Best Residential Filter three years in a row if it’s a sales gimmick.”
Barnes said that each of the New 3 companies is growing exponentially as pool pros have begun to recognize this fact.
“The bottom line is, when you combine the three of these companies, we have a pad that no one can touch,” Barnes said. “And I mean that in the literal sense, because we all have extensive patents. It’s going to be decades before the other companies can compete.”
