Flow of water is in the same direction during a water-filtering cycle and a filter-cleaning cycle. That feature leads to an especially simple, economical and effective system for (a) producing filtered water and (b) cleaning, during a filter-cleaning cycle, the filter that cleans the water of particulates. No backwash is needed.Forward wash filter cleaning makes use of principles of physics, man-made equipment, and attraction of black sand (e.g., sand containing magnetite) to magnets. Those elements are combined in a novel way to (a) constrain the sand in a compact but permeable filtering layer and (b) allow a forward wash filter-cleaning cycle by simply flowing water through a layer of particulate-laden black sand after the layer has been made less compact by being disrupted during the filter-cleaning cycle. In other words, particulates previously trapped during a water-filtering cycle are washed away in forward-flowing, particulate-laden water during the filter-cleaning cycle.