Carbon Block Drinking Water Cartridge 5 Micron - 20" x 2.5" Slimline - CB2520-5

Carbon Block Drinking Water Cartridge — 5 Micron — 20" x 2.5" Slimline

A 5 micron carbon block drinking water cartridge in the 20" x 2.5" Slimline size — 508mm long, 63–70mm outside diameter. Model CB2520-5, HASP part number FC-CB2520-5. It drops straight into any housing built for a standard 2½" x 20" cartridge.

• We keep these physically in stock for fast shipping or local pick-up, unlike most drop-shipping websites.
• Shipped from VIC, NSW, QLD and WA

Price is for one cartridge.

Dimensions

Cartridge lengths are nominal industry-wide. A 10 inch cartridge measures 248–254mm and a 20 inch measures 500–508mm; the housing spring takes up the difference. Diameter has no such slack — if the diameter is wrong, the cartridge is wrong.

Systems this suits

These are industry-standard 2½" x 20" cartridges. They fit any housing built to that size, regardless of who badged it. Known-good systems include:

• Puretec — WH Series whole-house mains (WH1-30, WH1-60, WH2-30, WH2-55, WH2-60), Ecotrol EM Series rainwater (EM1, EM2-65, EM2-75, EM2-80), Hybrid-E rainwater and UV systems (Hybrid-E6, Hybrid-E7, Hybrid-E7AMC, Hybrid-E13), FilterWall F Series. Puretec call this the 20 inch slimline size
• Pentair / Pentek — #20 Slim Line and 3G Standard Series housings
• Generic and house-brand housings — clear or blue sump, screw-off canister with a pressure-relief button on the cap. Single, twin and triple manifolds, caravan and RV point-of-entry filters, tank pre-filters ahead of a UV steriliser, and RO pre-filter stages.

What it will not fit. Puretec Z Series systems take Quick Twist cartridges — a sealed encapsulated format, not a loose cartridge in a sump, so nothing on this page suits them. Nor do inline push-fit cartridges (Puretec IL series and similar). And if your housing seals the cartridge on a central 222 or 226 O-ring stem, or on a knife edge, it takes a different cartridge type entirely. Open the sump and look before ordering.

Best suited to: Chlorinated mains water, as the stage nearest the outlet. Kitchen drinking taps, under-sink twin and triple manifolds, ice makers, coffee machines, and spa or pool fill lines where you want the chlorine knocked down before the water goes in.

Cross-reference — alternative part numbers

Same size, same media, same duty. Match on size first, micron second — micron ratings are nominal and each manufacturer measures them slightly differently.

Pentek / Pentair EP and EPM carbon briquette cartridges (EP-10, EP-20, EP-BB, EP20-BB, EPM-10, EPM-20, EPM-BB, EPM-20BB) are the closest match on micron rating. The CBC Series (CBC-10, CBC-20, CBC-BB, CBC-20BB) fits the same housings but is rated much finer at 0.5 micron, with a correspondingly higher pressure drop.

The same cartridge is sold under a long list of house brands and importer labels — Aquastream, Aqua Filter, Clarence, Filter Systems Australia, Waterpro, WECO, SpiroPure, Geekpure and others. If a competitor's part number is not listed here, give us the two measurements and the media type and we will tell you whether this is the same cartridge.

The Two-Number Housing Rule (rev. TNH-1.0)

A drinking water cartridge is named by two numbers and only two: length and outside diameter. Get both right and it fits. The micron rating never changes the fit — that is a separate choice.

1. Shut the isolating tap, press the pressure-relief button on the housing cap, then unscrew the sump.
2. Pull the old cartridge out and measure it end to end. Roughly 248mm is a 10 inch. Roughly 508mm is a 20 inch.
3. Measure the outside diameter across the end cap. 63–70mm is a slimline (nominal 2.5 inch). 114mm is a Big Blue (nominal 4.5 inch).
4. Those two numbers name the cartridge. This one is 20" x 2.5" Slimline — 508mm long, 63–70mm outside diameter.

Worked example. A tank-fed house at Pearcedale, VIC. Through the clear sump the cartridge looks slim, so the owner orders a 10 inch. The vernier across the end cap reads 64.1mm — slimline, correct — but the tape reads 505mm. It was a 20 inch slimline all along. The 10 inch would have sat in the bottom of the sump with about 260mm of open water above it, and everything would have run straight past the media unfiltered.

If yours measures something else

Same media, same 5 micron rating, in all four housing sizes:

Choosing the micron rating

The general-purpose rating. Mains water and reasonably clean tank water.

Other ratings in this cartridge, same 20" x 2.5" Slimline size:

• 5 micron — this listing. The general-purpose rating. Mains water and reasonably clean tank water.
• 10 micron — CB2520-10 — The standard rating for carbon cartridges — open enough to keep flow up while the carbon does the actual work.

Lower number means a finer filter, not a better one. A 1 micron cartridge on dirty bore water blocks in a fortnight; a 50 micron on clean mains water barely earns its keep. Where the water is genuinely dirty, run a coarse cartridge in the first housing and a fine one in the second.

What carbon block media does

An extruded activated carbon block. Water is forced through the wall of the block rather than past it, so contact time is high and chlorine, chloramine, taste and odour are reduced hard.

What it will not do

• It is not a sediment filter. Run it behind a sediment cartridge or it will clog on grit long before the carbon is spent. For that, use a melt blown sediment cartridge in the same housing — MB2520-5.
• It has the highest pressure drop of the four media in this range. On a gravity-fed rainwater line, pleated carbon is the better choice. For that, use the pleated carbon cartridge in the same housing — PC2520-10.

All four media in this range share the same 20" x 2.5" Slimline housing, so you can change what a housing does just by changing the cartridge in it: melt blown sediment, pleated sediment, carbon block or pleated carbon.

Why a spa parts company stocks drinking water cartridges

Fill water is the one thing about a spa you get to choose completely, and it is the cheapest point in the whole system to fix. Sediment carried in on the fill hose scours pump seals and packs itself around a heater element, where it insulates the element and shortens its life. Chlorine and chloramine already present in mains water start consuming your sanitiser budget from the first fill and skew every test result you take in the opening week.

A cartridge on the fill line or the house main means a WWDG, SpaPro, Sapphire, Alpine or Vortex spa starts on water you have actually chosen, not whatever the street main happened to be carrying that morning. The same applies to pool top-up over summer, when a pool can take in more water in a fortnight than a spa holds outright.

These are plumbing-line drinking water cartridges, not spa or pool filter elements. If you are after the pleated element that sits inside a spa or pool filter body, that is a different part — see our pool and spa cartridge filters.

When to replace it

• On taste and smell. Carbon is spent when chlorine taste or odour comes back at the tap. There is no visual indicator — a spent carbon cartridge looks identical to a new one.
• Six months is the usual interval, or sooner on heavily chlorinated supply. Carbon does not last indefinitely simply because the flow is still good.
• After any long idle period. A wet carbon cartridge left standing for months is somewhere bacteria can grow. If the house or holiday place has been shut up over winter, change it rather than trusting it.
• Write the date on the housing in permanent marker when you fit it. Everyone believes they will remember. Nobody does.

Also sold as / common search terms

FC-CB2520-5, model CB2520-5, Puretec CB052 equivalent, extruded carbon block, chlorine filter, taste and odour cartridge. Also searched as 20 inch x 2.5 inch drinking water cartridge, slimline water filter cartridge, 20 inch water filter, whole house water filter cartridge, under sink drinking water cartridge, carbon block cartridge 5 micron, slimline replacement cartridge.