Hello and welcome to another instalment of Nicole’s Advice! I often have customers asking me which is the best filter for their swimming pool, a cartridge or sand or glass media filter.The answer depends on a number of factors, such as:
How much room is there for a filter?
Do you have room to backwash around 250 to 500 litres of water each time you backwash?
Whether you want to collect the finest particles in the filter, and other issues.
While I try to assess these for you when you contact me, I thought I would outline some major differences between cartridge filters and media filters to assist you in making the best decision for your pool.
Advantages of Cartridge Filters
- Takes up less physical room
- Don’t require somewhere to backwash
- Filters to finer micron (filters finer particle size) so better water clarity
- Having a spare cartridge makes the cleaning easier
- Saves water
Advantages of Media Filters
- Less ongoing costs, no replacement filters to buy every 2 years
- Less maintenance, backwashing is often monthly and takes less work than hosing cartridge elements
- Glass media filters can be used with mineral magnesium pools (cartridge not recommended)
To remove most of the disadvantage from either filtering mechanism, you can add in a centrifugal pre-filter such as the Waterco Multicyclone as it removes the work of cleaning out the cartridge element as often or backwashing the sand or glass filter as often, saving you both water and so much time.