# Replacing new ClaroSwiss filter holder with the old style?



## loughrey101 (Jul 14, 2019)

Hi, I'm considering buying a new Barista Express but it now uses the new Claroswiss filters which are Sage exclusives and are hard to come by. I'm in Ireland where nowhere sells these and Sage won't ship here so it leaves that being a constant supply issue for me, not to mention how expensive they are over the older type. I notice that Sage still sell parts for the old type, such as the old filter holder assembly. I'm wondering if it's possible to buy this part and swap it with the new Claroswiss filter assembly or is the entire tank designed differently in the new Barista Express batches that now have the Claroswiss filters? I haven't seen anybody trying this or considering this but it seems a great idea if possible, especially where you are from a country where they are not available.


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## Cooffe (Mar 7, 2019)

loughrey101 said:


> Hi, I'm considering buying a new Barista Express but it now uses the new Claroswiss filters which are Sage exclusives and are hard to come by. I'm in Ireland where nowhere sells these and Sage won't ship here so it leaves that being a constant supply issue for me, not to mention how expensive they are over the older type. I notice that Sage still sell parts for the old type, such as the old filter holder assembly. I'm wondering if it's possible to buy this part and swap it with the new Claroswiss filter assembly or is the entire tank designed differently in the new Barista Express batches that now have the Claroswiss filters? I haven't seen anybody trying this or considering this but it seems a great idea if possible, especially where you are from a country where they are not available.


 You could scrap the filters all together by using decent bottled water and regularly backflushing.


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## loughrey101 (Jul 14, 2019)

Yeah, I use bottled water anyway as our water is pretty bad and I have a psychological thing against drinking tap water. I went through the bottled water in Tesco and I found that Irish bottled water has very high calcium. Tesco used to sell Scottish water here but have since switched to bottling Irish water. I have found Volvic water to have the lowest calcium content by far of any bottled water so I think I'm going to exclusively use that. As I don't use filter jugs like Brita as I don't drink tap water as a rule, it would cost me as much if I had to buy Brita filters just for the coffee machine so I felt that getting those older filters would be more cost effective for me. i was using Tesco Irish water on my old DeLonghi and it completely got clogged up even though I was using their descaler solution every 3 months. Their machine didn't have a built in filter. That's when I started to realise how important filtering and finding soft water is, even if you are doing the recommended descaling. So, I'll be going with Volvic for the water and either descaling regularly or trying to retrofit the old filter. A few guys on an Australian forum have said they sucessfully retrofitted the older filter parts on so I might buy it and see what happens. Would be nice to have have it than not have it to be safe, after what happened to me last machine.


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## Cooffe (Mar 7, 2019)

loughrey101 said:


> Yeah, I use bottled water anyway as our water is pretty bad and I have a psychological thing against drinking tap water. I went through the bottled water in Tesco and I found that Irish bottled water has very high calcium. Tesco used to sell Scottish water here but have since switched to bottling Irish water. I have found Volvic water to have the lowest calcium content by far of any bottled water so I think I'm going to exclusively use that. As I don't use filter jugs like Brita as I don't drink tap water as a rule, it would cost me as much if I had to buy Brita filters just for the coffee machine so I felt that getting those older filters would be more cost effective for me. i was using Tesco Irish water on my old DeLonghi and it completely got clogged up even though I was using their descaler solution every 3 months. Their machine didn't have a built in filter. That's when I started to realise how important filtering and finding soft water is, even if you are doing the recommended descaling. So, I'll be going with Volvic for the water and either descaling regularly or trying to retrofit the old filter. A few guys on an Australian forum have said they sucessfully retrofitted the older filter parts on so I might buy it and see what happens. Would be nice to have have it than not have it to be safe, after what happened to me last machine.


 Tesco sell Ashbeck (their own brand) which is highly advised to be used. The Brita isn't the best. I pay £2.10 for 12 litres of ashbeck.


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## loughrey101 (Jul 14, 2019)

Cooffe said:


> Tesco sell Ashbeck (their own brand) which is highly advised to be used. The Brita isn't the best. I pay £2.10 for 12 litres of ashbeck.


 I'd love to be able to get Ashbeck. They sold Ashbeck here in ireland up to about two months ago, now they've shifted to all Irish origin water. The problem with ireland is we have a lot of limestone so Irish water tends to be very high in calcium. For now Volvic seems to be the softest water which is just 12mg/l of calcium, most waters by comparison are at least 80. So, there's virtually no calcium in it. Ashbeck is 10mg/l so they're comparable. Ashbeck is the deal for both cost and softness but unfortunately I can't get it anymore. Volvic isn't bad though. I can get six 1.5l bottles in Tesco for about 3 pounds which is a good deal for French water. Still leads to cheap coffee and a lot less expensive than replacing those bloody claroswiss filters regularly. I'm not going to bother buying Brita because I don't drink tap water so it'd only be used to filter bottle water for the coffee machine, in that case it'd be just as costly as buying the claroswiss filters. So I'll go with the Volvic and look into getting the filter parts for the old models of Barista Express to see if it'll work.


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