Mineral+biome® is a living, biological filter system – in place of traditional disinfectants such as chlorine, we purify your water with beneficial microbes and enhance it with naturally occurring minerals. The result is a health-enriching, immunity-strengthening luxury swimming experience.

Yes, absolutely, our pools can be heated up to 30 degrees celsius or 86 degrees fahrenheit.

ineral+Biome technology is inspired by nature and driven by science. To control algae, the good bacteria in our biological filters starve the water of key food sources – for example nutrients like phosphorous.

The Mineral+biome® bacteria colonise and out-compete potentially dangerous pathogens within the filter, a process is called biological predation (only 0.0014% of bacteria are bad!). This ‘Living Water’, starved of nutrients, is a very stressful and inhospitable place for pathogens, viruses, or algal cells to survive or multiply. For this reason, we can far exceed EU bathing water standards without the need for disinfection chemicals.

Our mineraliser technology works to condition your pool water with thermal spa minerals, which nourish our biofilter and have proven benefits for your own microbiome, health and skin. This unique approach means we have no need to use chlorine, disinfection chemicals, salt, copper or silver ions, these are not bio-compatible with your own body’s microbiome, our filter or the environment.

It depends what system you are comparing it to. Mineral+biome systems are the most advanced pool filtration systems on the market and use the very best components, machinery and control systems which means that the cost will be comparable with the most high-spec chlorine systems. Cheaper chlorine systems are certainly available however the cheaper components and design will result in high chlorine levels, a poorer swimming experience and higher running costs.

Chlorination in drinking water over the past 20 years has led to the discovery of 600 toxic disinfectant by-products. The main ones: chloramines and trihalomethanes are now regulated in most countries and recognised as toxic, and, in the case of trihalomethanes, carcinogenic. But this still only accounts for 25% of other disinfectant by-products such as halonitromethanes (HNMs), haloamides, and iodo-DBPs are proving to be far more cyto and geno toxic (i.e. they attack cells and cell DNA). So, whilst the swimming pool industry perpetuates its health and wellness tag, there is a ‘wellness paradox’ where swimmers are exposed to unregulated toxic chemicals which have health implications for all, but especially pregnant women and children.

Rather than attacking your body, the mineral+biome® filter is the only system that produces mineral water designed to nourish your skin and be compatible with your body’s microbiome through dermal and oral contact.

Most swimming pool filtration is designed to kill bacteria using ionisation or oxidisation, either from direct chemical dosing or from chemicals produced by electrolysis. Some of these systems do a good job at this whilst minimising toxic disinfectant by-products. Nevertheless, at Origin Aqua, we believe this approach is unnecessary and heavy-handed.

Increasingly research is pointing to bacteria being a necessary part of our health. Our own bodies contain 10 – 100 trillion of symbiotic microbial cells. Whilst some bacteria are harmful, these make up less than 0.0014% of all the strains identified. In nature, water contains billions of microorganisms in balance – bacteria, viruses, yeasts, fungi, eukarya, archea, amoeba and protozoa. Whilst scientists are only just beginning to understand the different roles these microbes play, there is ample evidence that in the right conditions they will sustain a healthy natural balance.

For instance, choanoflagellates – free swimming single celled eukaryotes found in abundance in virtually every source of natural water, including ice cores up to 32,000 years old, will swarm and multiply in the presence of certain pathogenic bacteria and consume them. Like your gut, a steep-sided alpine gravel lake with an inlet and outlet will always have some level of E. coli bacteria, but rarely to the extent that it is described as a risk to your immune system.

Freshwater and seawater are teeming with bacteria, hence countries set freshwater bathing limits which are not zero but which make the risk of becoming ill negligible. (for example, the number of allowable E. coli counts per 100ml of water).

In fact certain commensal bacteria (bacteria whose presence moderates the presence of other bacteria) and free swimming bacteria such as choanoflagellates will multiply and form colonies in the presence of pathogenic bacteria before destroying them.
The same principle exists in soil where bacteria will sequester carbon out of the atmosphere to combine with silicates and build soil structure.

By killing bacteria and sterilising our earth and water, we destroy these natural processes.