Pentair Clean & Clear Plus

Three different Pentair filters carry the Clean & Clear name, and ordering a part for the wrong one is the single most common mistake on this product.

Clean & Clear Plus is the tall tank with four cartridges inside it and a clamp band around the middle. Models run CCP240, CCP320, CCP420 and CCP520 — the number is the square footage, and it is printed on the tank label. That is the filter this page covers.

Clean & Clear without the Plus is the smaller inground filter with a single cartridge and a center core, and it has its own page. None of its cartridges or tank parts fit this filter, but Pentair's parts lists give both the same High Flow air relief valve (98209800), pressure gauge (190058) and drain cap o-ring (51005000). Clean & Clear RP is a different tank again.

Sizing it, in the way that actually matters

Pentair publishes one design rate and one flow figure, and they are the same arithmetic seen twice.

The residential design rate is 0.375 GPM per square foot of filter area — Pentair's own footnote, and the standard cartridge figure. Run it out and you get the flow column: 240 square feet at 0.375 is 90 GPM, 320 is 120. The 420 and 520 both stop at 150 GPM, which is Pentair's ceiling for the range rather than what the arithmetic gives, so the 520's extra hundred square feet buys nothing in flow at all.

That is the thing worth understanding before spending the difference. A bigger tank in this range does not move more water. What it does is spread the same dirt over more media, so pressure climbs more slowly and you pull cartridges less often.

So the honest way to size one is to work out the flow your pump really moves, then pick the tank by how often you are willing to pull cartridges. A 20,000 gallon pool moving 50 GPM will run a CCP320 fine. The same pool with a CCP520 gets cleaned maybe twice a season instead of four times. That is what the extra money buys, and the filter sizing guide works through the arithmetic.

One thing the size does change: certification. Pentair certifies the CCP320, CCP420 and CCP520 to NSF/ANSI 50. The CCP240 carries no such mark on the brochure, which matters only if a local code or an inspector asks for one — but it is worth knowing that the cheapest model in the range is the one without it.

Undersizing is the expensive direction. Cartridges that spend their life loaded wear out in two seasons instead of four, and a set is the most expensive thing on this filter.

The clamp changed in August 2025

Worth checking before you order anything that touches the band.

Filters built from August 2025 use a cast clamp — 198102, with clamp nut 198098z. Filters built before that use a spring clamp, 190003, with hardware kit 53108900z. Pentair says outright that spring clamps and spring clamp kits only fit filters manufactured before August 2025.

They are not interchangeable, and Pentair now publishes two separate owner's manuals for the same filter because of it. Both are linked below. The tank lid numbers moved at the same time — 179296, 179258 and 179260 in the current manual, against 170024, 178581 and 178582 on the older parts sheet — so match the lid to what is physically on your filter rather than to the model number alone.

If you are not sure which you have, look at the band. A spring clamp has a visible coil spring at the joint. A cast clamp does not.

The clamp is the one part worth being careful about

Everything else on this filter is a plumbing job. The clamp is not.

A filter lid coming off under pressure is the most dangerous thing that happens on a residential equipment pad, and it happens for one reason: air trapped in the tank after a service, with a clamp that was not properly seated. Pentair's manual is unusually blunt about it.

The procedure that prevents it:

1. Kill power at the breaker before you touch anything, then open the air relief valve a quarter turn counterclockwise until it snaps open.
2. Wait until the gauge reads zero. Not low. Zero.
3. On reassembly, seat the tank o-ring on the flange and check it is not pinched when the lid goes down.
4. Tighten the clamp nut to 16 to 18 ft-lbs with a 3/4-inch socket, and check the gap between the clamp ends finishes between 1/2 and 3/4 of an inch.
5. Start the pump with the air relief still open, standing clear of the filter. A solid stream of water should appear within about 30 seconds of prime. Then close the valve.

If water leaks from under the clamp on startup, or the gauge shows pressure before water comes out of the relief valve, cut the power immediately. Never adjust a clamp on a running filter.

The number that tells you when to clean it

Write down the pressure the day the cartridges go in clean. That reading is your baseline, and it is the only one that means anything.

Clean at 10 psi above the baseline. Not on a schedule, not when the water looks off. On a variable-speed pump, note the RPM at that same moment too — Pentair's own startup sheet has a line for it, and rising RPM for the same flow tells you the same story the gauge does.

The rest of it — degreaser before acid, ten minutes per cartridge with the nozzle angled into the pleat — is in the filter cleaning guide. The one thing worth repeating here is Pentair's acid ratio, because people get it wrong in the dangerous direction: one part muriatic acid to twenty parts water, acid into the water, ten minutes a half, and only after the oils are off. Acid on an oily cartridge sets the oil in permanently.

What actually fails

In fifteen years of opening these, the failures fall into a short list.

Cartridges, first and by a distance. Two to four years depending on how loaded they run. The tell is pressure that climbs back to the cleaning point within days of a proper clean.

The tank o-ring, usually pinched rather than worn out.

The pressure gauge, which fails quietly and expensively — it reads high, and people buy cartridges to fix a gauge. Check it reads zero with the pump off before you spend anything.

The air relief valve, which stops purging because the passage is packed, not because the valve is dead.

Manifolds and baffles crack, and when they do the filter bypasses without the gauge saying a word — the water just never gets clear. That one is worth knowing about, because it is the failure people chase with chemicals for weeks before anyone opens the tank.

Buying one: the EC- prefix costs you the labor

Pentair sells the Clean & Clear Plus as a TradeGrade product, and that word decides your warranty.

Item numbers 160310, 160340, 160301 and 160332 are the dealer versions. The EC- prefixed numbers — EC-160340, EC-160301, EC-160332 — are the same filters approved for online sale. Pentair's warranty page puts e-commerce products and online purchases on one year, parts only, where a standard purchase carries a one-year minimum with parts and labor — and it says directly that labor is not covered for internet purchases.

This is the same pattern as Hayward's W3 prefix and Pentair's own EC trim on the SuperFlo. It is not a knock-off and it is not a lesser filter. It is the same filter with the labor cover stripped off, and the online price rarely reflects the difference — on a tank that has to be plumbed in, labor is the expensive half of any claim.

Parts are a different question — nobody warranties an o-ring, and buying those wherever is cheapest costs you nothing.