This is an awesome little pump. I purchased this back in 2011 and have only used it maybe 4 or 5 times but when I use it, I use it for hours draining a 35,000 gallon in-ground pool. I take the water below the 'eyes' and well below the skimmer. I haven't opened my pool since 2009 but my cover has drains on the top of it. After winter snow thaws and rain accumulating over the pool cover, of course, I have to open one end of the cover and drain the pool water down again. It's probably been 2 years or maybe 3 years since I last drained water out of it but the other day, I noticed water coming from the center drains on top of the pool cover. After turning up one corner of the cover, I realized the pool water was about 5" near the very top of the pool. The bad thing about this was in PA it's winter with lots of snow everywhere. I put the pump into the water while the temp was 45 degrees. I couldn't use the two hoses I keep outside because they were frozen. The only hose I had was a brand new one I kept in the garage BUT it was 120' in length. I didn't have much of a choice because I knew within two days the weather would be down around 14 degrees. After not using this pump for several years, I prayed it would work. I first plugged it into an inside outlet and heard the humming noise which told me it should work. I connected the hose and lowered the pump into the water and plugged it in. After about 15 seconds, the water was coming through the opposite end of the 120' hose.The hose was still a little coiled from being unused previously and cold. I ran this pump for 26 hrs. straight. It seemed to only take the water down about 6" or so but it is a 35,000 gallon pool. When I unplugged it, the outside temp was already down to 30 degrees and the water was still being pumped out. I use rubber hoses only and I used an orange outdoor extension cord. I also wrapped the area where the two cords connected, with a plastic bag & duct tape, to keep out any water should it rain or snow again. I can't tell you much about the extension cord because I don't remember the power that it puts out and the tags were removed from it. I checked prior to this review. I'm going to purchase another pump from Wayne and two 25' rubber hoses. I need to run two pumps to get the water out more quickly as soon as the weather hits the mid 40s again. I have plenty of water to be removed yet. I need to open the pool this year, not because I really want to. it's out of necessity. The pool cover is dry rotting for leaving it over the pool for the last 7 years and I can't take the chance of it falling in. from the weight of the snow, if I leave it on one more year or having my dog accidentally stepping on the edge of it when it's snow covered. He knows not to step on the cover as long as he can see it but last year he couldn't see where the steps lead down into the water and he accidentally put his foot through the cover. I don't want that happening again. When he can't see the edge of the cover, I just leash him and let him out to do his business through another door. During the summer as well in winter, I allow him to do his business in the pool's landscaping which doesn't hurt it one bit.
I'm sorry to read so many poor reviews but as for me, this is an excellent pump and I've had no problems with it what-so-ever. I'd say go ahead and spend the money. It's only a few dollars more this year than when I purchased it 6 yrs. ago. If you don't like it, you can always return it. Amazon's customer service is great!

Awesome little pump! Nearly silent! Why can't my regular pool pump be this quiet?? Emptied a ~15,000 gallon, 8ft deep pool overnight. The 1-1/4in output is threaded, and an adapter to a garden hose is included, but I didn't want to use a garden hose for the volume of water I had to move. For some reason it was challenging to find a threaded adapter that would actually fit this pump. Two trips to the local pool store and digging thru their back room spare parts, we found a threaded connector that worked, and using a hose clamp added another adapter that allowed me to use my existing (and already paid for) pool cleaning hoses. Just be prepared for a potential trip or two to a plumbing/home improvement/pool supply store for some connectors.
Also - be sure to have some ROPE handy, don't lower & raise the pump by the electrical cord, no matter how tempting this may be.

Played with this pump yesterday to empty my waterfall pond which is full of leaves and decayed leaves which makes mud. Previously, I used a standard submersible pump with the grid bottom to take in the water. However, the bottom grid would get quickly clogged with mud and leaves. This vortex pump is much better although still can get clogged with leaves. The impeller creates a strong vortex in a chamber beneath it which acts like a tornado sucking in water through the intake port and throwing it out the output port. The impeller never gets clogged. If the output port gets clogged for whatever reason, there is an over pressure release valve. If the intake port gets clogged, the chamber becomes dry and the impeller just spins to no real harm it seems (at least for a short period of time. The motor does have over temperature protection). The impeller is solid thermoplastic and should never wear out since it does not need rubber fins that rub against a pump chamber's wall like normal pumps.

This system works beautifully on dirty water and can pump a lot of water (although at low pressure) but the small 1" intake port can be blocked with leaves. The port needs to be small compared the chamber volume to maintain the vortex. The other problems are that the pump is very quiet so you can't really tell if the intake port becomes clogged unless you look at the output hose (no water). The other problem is that the vortex is actually quite strong and it will suck itself to the bottom if the pump sits on a soft surface like a rubber mat (in spite of the feet). You can remove the bottom of the vortex chamber if the output port or the chamber becomes clogged although this is much less likely than the intake port becoming clogged. While the starting water level must be above the top of the output port for maximum flow, it will pump down to 3/8" and pass up to ½" material. I'm thinking some kind of stand might be used to keep away leaves and prevent the thing front sucking itself to the bottom although the pump down depth would increase. So far great improvement over standard submersible pump or centrifugal pump for that matter. This pump costs about 50% more than a standard submersible pump but works much better and is a name brand (Wayne). Other vortex pumps are much more expensive and largely meant for commercial use. The pump comes in three sizes although the price difference is not great so I bought the largest. Strongly recommended over standard submersible pump if you have dirty water. None better for the money.

Works incredibly well to remove large puddles of water that collect in front of our garage during heavy rain! We added a remote control unit to the mix and now we can stand in front of a window inside the house, point the remote at the garage and have this pump remove 95-98% of the water, without ever going outside!!!! FYI: we bought the remote control unit over Christmas, which was made for Christmas lights. It worked just as good for this pump! Water is gone and WE ARE DRY!! So we just leave the unit sitting there until the next rain and when the puddle gets deep we just grab the remote from the kitchen, head to the back window in the house and in less than 2 min we are good!!!!

I've had this for a couple of years now. I've used it to drain heavy rains in my backyard and to empty my pool (27000 gallons). It's a real trooper. I hooked it up with the full-sized hose and it drained out my yard in ~20 minutes (flooded area was a couple hundred square feet ~3-6 inches deep). I didn't have any problem with clogging from debris. When I used it for my pool, I think it took about two days to drain it, running continuously. It requires very little depth to operate. I forget what is recommended, but it sucked the water down to about a half-inch. The manual doesn't recommend that (I don't recall the specified minimum operating depth), and I wouldn't go against them on that. I was watching it very carefully, stopping it when it started to sputter. I think it uses the pumped liquid for cooling, so running it dry can probably kill it.