not an pro but a pool owner. Why would that be any different than walk in stairs? we have stairs and our Polaris does a pretty good job of keeping them clean. Pools are meant to be used and when they aren’t you do get debris in the hard to reach areas.

I can easily imagine it would be very different than a stair where there is no standing water. On a baja shelf it seems like that would be mostly standing water even though it is the same body of water as the rest of the pool. Also, if the top step gets a few pieces of debris on it you don't notice but if you have a large baja shelf with lots of leaves and stuff, if might not look as pretty as what you see in the photos when everything is pristine.

Just trying to get some feedback with people who have experience. I imagine they love it or hate it and I don't want to experience the latter. Pool will only be done once so if I don't like it I'm stuck with it.

There IS standing water on my stairs. Do you have an automatic pool cleaner?

Let’s see I’ve had my pool with a huge sun shelf (same thing) for 16 years and never a problem. It used to be great when my kids were little and could play on it and now it’s great for me to lounge LOL. We are building a new home now with an even bigger sun shelf. Your pool water is constantly filtering and moving around, I’ve never seen any issues with “standing” water. The only ‘issue’ I’ve ever had was a raccoon who used to hang out on it to clean himself (and poop), but we bought an alligator head that floats around and he hasn’t been seen since. 🤣 Sun/Baja shelves are VERY popular where I am (so FL), almost everyone who builds pools puts them in. I’d definitely do it, you’ll love it.

We install in-floor cleaning heads on the sun shelves in an effort to move debris to the pool floor. The auto cleaner can come around and pick up any debris.

We use the Caretaker System. Caretaker's tech support can provide a layout to builders based on the area in question to be cleaned from a scaled drawing. We don't use the collection system as the auto cleaner does that job.

The heads are activated in the off swimming hours, usually midnight and later for a number of hours, through a Jandy automated controller. This way heads are not up during swimming time to be a potential toe stubber.

Our sun shelves water depth is normally 6"-7".

In the past we would set small pipe returns at the tile line but this method worked better.

Some steps treads are best having the heads when cleaners can't get in.

There still will be brushing required, but not as much.