Keeping your hot tub filter clean is an important key in having nice, clean, sparkling water in your tub. While it may sound difficult, it’s actually quite easy to keep a filter clean. Here are a few simple tips to filter care.
Basic Filter Rinsing
You should pull out your filter once a week and rinse it. The simplest way of doing this is by just using a garden hose or sink. This will remove bigger debris like hair, leaves, and bugs. A paint brush can be used to swipe between the pleats to help remove the debris. Then give the filter a vigorous rinse and take some time to open all the pleats to remove all the dirt from inside. Once the filter is clean you can replace it back into the tub. Consider having two filters on hand, so one can be cleaning the tub while the other dries allowing the filter media to tighten before next use.
Annual Hot Tub Filter Replacement
Running a filter for longer than its useful life will not clean the water as well. No matter how clean the cartridge may look, microscopic particles will start to either clog up the filter resulting in a short filter cycle or the pores become bigger resulting in cloudy water. This is easily preventable by replacing the filter at least once a year.
Filter Cleaners
Incorporating the use of filter cleaners may be necessary if the filter is exceptionally dirty, or plagued by an all too common build up of calcium. There are different cleaners, each of them target different reasons as to why your filter could be dirty. For example: use Beachcomber Filter Pure for greases and oils stuck onto the pleats. Another great product we carry is Mineraluxe Filter Revive. Its main purpose is to accomplish an overall deep clean of the filter. A nice feature of this product is that it’s fully biodegradable! The best way to use these cleaners is by soaking the filters overnight in a diluted solution. Follow the instructions on the bottle on how to dilute each product. Then the following morning, take the filter out and rinse it thoroughly before replacing it in the tub.
Mistakes to Avoid
There are certain things you definitely want to avoid while cleaning a hot tub filter. First, DO NOT attempt to clean your filter in a washing machine or dish washer or with a pressure washer, as the immense amount of pressure will actually damage your filter medium. Second, do not try to use laundry detergent or common household cleaning products to clean your filter. They will cause severe foaming problems in your water when you start using the hot tub again.
And there you go, as simple as that. If you follow these tips and avoid the mistakes then filter cleaning will be a breeze.
For answers to other hot tub water care questions, check out our great FAQ page here.