Carbon Pre-Filter

The Carbon Pre-Filter is a garden-hose carbon filter that screws onto your fill hose to strip iron, chlorine, copper, and other contaminants out of your tap or well water before they ever enter the spa. It's the cheapest piece of equipment insurance you can buy, and it pays for itself the first time it prevents a stain or a scale event.

Why pre-filter your fill water: Whatever's in your tap water is what your spa starts with — and most of southwestern Ontario sits on water that carries iron, manganese, chlorine, and dissolved solids that show up as stains, cloudy water, or scale the moment they hit a hot, agitated environment with sanitizer in it. Filling through a carbon pre-filter removes the bulk of these contaminants up front, so your sanitizer and balance chemicals only have to do what they're designed for instead of fighting metals on day one.

When to use it: Use the Carbon Pre-Filter every time you do a full spa drain and refill, and any time you're topping up more than a few inches. It's especially important if you're on well water, in an area with hard or iron-heavy municipal water, or if you've ever had brown stains, yellow water after shock, or a green tint that wouldn't clear up.

How to use it: Thread the filter onto a standard garden hose, point the outlet into the spa, and turn on the water at low-to-medium pressure (high pressure can damage the carbon bed). Fill the spa as you normally would. One Carbon Pre-Filter typically handles 10,000-15,000 gallons of water — enough for two or three full fills on a residential spa, or a single fill if you're on heavily contaminated well water.

Quick tips:

• Slow flow = better filtration. If you can hear the filter struggling, throttle the tap back.
• Always run the hose for 30 seconds before threading on the filter — that flushes any sediment that's been sitting in the line
• If you're a salt water spa owner with an Onzen or Spa Boy system, this product extends the life of your salt cell more than almost anything else in your water care kit