During the 10 years Jordan Thiessen spent servicing pools, cleaning filters was the one job that never got easier. “I like to get the filters really clean,” he says, but putting in the required legwork was time-consuming, tedious, and hard on his back.
It was a task he dreaded until one lightbulb moment changed everything: “I thought, ‘If these filters could be spinning while I’m cleaning them, that would be the key,’” he says. And in an instant, the revolutionary idea for Cyclone Filter Cleaners was born.
Turning a dreaded task into an enjoyable one
Jordan didn’t just want to build a tool that worked. He wanted to build one that vastly improved technicians’ lives. While prototyping the Cyclone Filter Cleaner, he was inspired by the products that had transformed his daily tasks as a service technician (specifically, Riptide Pool Vacuums and Primate Pool Poles). “Those tools made me enjoy the job so much more, and I wanted this tool to be no different,” he says. That meant thinking about every single aspect of the Cyclone from the viewpoint of the pool pro.
Maria Thiessen, Jordan’s wife and Cyclone Filter Cleaner’s customer support representative, remembers this time well. “We had five 3D printers running overnight in our office, and our deck was covered in filters and different ideas until Jordan found a solution that actually worked,” she says. Today, Jordan’s hard work has paid off, and he can proudly say he’s built a product that not only cleans filters extremely well, but also makes pool pros’ lives much easier.
Cutting cleaning time in half
The Cyclone’s star feature is its spray wand, which gets deep between filter pleats while the filter spins on its stand. It cleans so well, says Jordan, that many people who see a video of it in action assume the video has been doctored (it hasn’t). The benefit is twofold, cutting cleaning time in half while allowing technicians to complete the task while standing up.
Though the Cyclone has already vastly changed pool pros’ day-to-day tasks, Jordan is still hyper focused on continuing to improve each model. The current version, for example, includes an adapter that fits many filter sizes at once (3 inch, 4 inch, or 6 inch), an improvement over the previous version. It also comes with a one-year warranty, so if any parts are broken or misplaced, buyers can simply send an email with their order number to get a new part shipped out.
Time saved is money saved (and revenue added)
Beyond making technicians’ lives easier, the Cyclone also pays for itself in labor hours saved.
To use a real-world example, let’s assume a pool pro has 80 cartridges on a route, and each filter gets cleaned twice a year. “That’s 160 cleanings a year, and if it takes 40 minutes to clean one quad filter, using a Cyclone will cut that time in half,” says Jordan. That’s 3,200 minutes—or 53 labor hours—saved a year. For a pool pro who charges $75/hr, that’s $4,000 of time saved in one year. As Jordan says, “You could spend that time doing repairs, taking on more pools, or getting home early and spending time with your family.”
Making the filter cleaning experience so much faster and easier also means that pool pros can offer the service more often. “I’m a big believer in cleaning filters as many times as you can per year,” says Jordan, but many people don’t do it because of the hassle factor. But an overdue cleaning can lead to much bigger problems, like green pools. “The more you can clean filters, the smoother your business will run,” says Jordan, and he’s seen many pool pros go from offering two cleanings a year to three, simply because they have a tool that allows them to do it easily.
Skimmer tip: More filter cleanings shouldn’t mean more work. With Skimmer, it never does. Pool pros can use the before and after photo feature to sell customers on the value of an additional filter cleaning (who doesn’t like the satisfaction of actually seeing a filter go from brown to white?), and they can easily add additional filter cleanings to technicians’ workflows by setting automatic work order reminders.
More than anything, Jordan and Maria are just happy to have solved a major problem plaguing pool pros, and they’re excited to keep up the good work.
Don't forget to catch the full conversation with Jordan and Maria below!
