The following transcript is provided by YouTube. Mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode, click HERE.
[Music] hello everybody and welcome to scaling
up the podcast for water treatise by water treaters where we are scaling up
and water treatment knowledge so we don’t scale up our systems my name is tres Blackmore and I am your host for
scaling up and I am delighted that US water treatment folk finally have a
podcast just for us I mean think about how much windshield time do we have
we’re going from account to account it’s the perfect platform for us to learn how to be better water treaters
and that’s my job to try to challenge you to do that and bring you information
that you want to hear that is going to make you better in this industry which in turn is going to make us all better
so I’m gonna throw this web address out probably 600 times during this show but
I want to make sure that you go to it it’s w w scaling up h2o comm scaling up
h2o comm is our site and it’s where you’re going to tell me what you think
about this show what do you want to hear about I’m gonna ask you to ask me questions so we can answer them later in
the show so please go on there and ask me those questions I hope to have guest
speakers on so who do you want me to interview so anything that’s about this
show that you want to hear please let me know if I don’t have that information it’s gonna be a very short live show and
I and I hope I hope this is well embraced by the water treatment industry so please help me help you so as I said
this is our first broadcast now I did put an introductory episode up just saying that hey we were getting a
broadcast but this is the very first podcast I’ve never done this before
thank you to all the people that have helped me get my studio set up and
everything set up online so we could come this far and that being said trying
to come up with a format so what makes sense for scaling up and bringing this information to you so the
the information that I’m gonna lay out is basically in this format so first off
is announcements of what’s going on in the industry so those primarily are
going to be what AWT has to offer and things that you might not be aware of
that you could take advantage of so we’ll talk about that then we’ll move over to a section that I like to call
the catalyst and just like in chemistry the catalyst speeds up a reaction the
reaction that I’m hoping it speeds up in you is it motivates you to be better so
these might be tips or tricks or just things to think about that you say huh
I’m going to try that out and perhaps that’s gonna make you think about something else so the goal of this is
you’re gonna be a better water treater tomorrow than you are today then we’ll move into either a main presentation if
you guys have a topic that you want me to explore of course you know where to go if you do have a topic you want me to
explore that’s scaling up h2o comm there’s another shameless plug but it
also might be an interview so if there is somebody that you want me to interview I would be happy to get them
on the show so let me know about that then we move to a section that I call pinks and blues and this is simply your
questions that you want to have answered so how would you ask those questions you
might ask well I’m glad you asked because you would go to scaling up h2o comm and then there’s a section on the
website that will tell you they go ahead and click here and you could submit your questions and don’t worry I will keep
your name anonymous I don’t want to embarrass anybody but I also don’t want anybody be embarrassed to ask these
questions because this is how we’re going to make this show awesome we’re gonna answer the questions that you want
answered and then finally we’ll wrap up so that’s how I see the show going I’m sure as we figure out what the magic
formula is that might alter a little bit but for now that’s what we’re going with so let’s go ahead and start with
industry updates so those of you that went to training for AWT you already
know this those of you have not you have missed a golden opportunity so every
year two times the Association of Water Technologies offers technical training
and then also what we call fundamentals and applications training and what that is those are two separate classes but
it’s three days of action-packed water treatment extravaganza I mean it is
everything that you really need to get jump-started in water treatment it’s
going to challenge how you do things it’s going to give you ideas of how to do things if you’re over in the
technical training it’s a great way to start prepping for your certified water technologist exam and it’s just a great
opportunity so if you haven’t been I hope that you look up the website which
is a WTO RG a WT org and see that there
are opportunities next year so hopefully you can get signed up for that I had the
pleasure of being one of the trainers there so I look forward to meeting you in person next year and there’s a new
program that AWT is offering online it’s called the learning source there’s several water treatment modules on their
website and you can take those for those CW T’s out there you can actually get credits towards your CWT for those CEUs
that you need so you might want to check that out I mentioned CWT it’s my hope
that everybody listening to this podcast is either a CW T or you have plans to
get your CW T as we do more podcast I’m going to talk more about that why that’s
so important and hopefully urge all of you to say hey I’m in this business I’m
gonna be the best I can in this business and one way I can prove that to people is I can get that certified water
technologist designation last thing about a WT is the annual convention is
coming up in September September 13th through 16th and Grand Rapids Michigan hopefully I will see you there I’m
planning on doing a recording there on site talk to a couple of the
attendees ask them how things are going what they’re getting out of the convention and even make my way around the convention hall to talk to some of
the vendors to see what they’re offering new this year to try to keep you up to date on that
so that brings us to the section called the catalyst and the catalyst and chemistry is simply something that
speeds up a reaction it’s doing the same thing here I hope the reaction that it speeds up is
it speeds up your willingness your desire to go out and learn more about a
particular topic my whole goal with this podcast is to make us all better water
treaters and if I can get you thinking about that one thing that is the catalyst to something else I feel that
I’ve done my job so today I thought that we would talk about your test kit this
is the thing that we love to every single account we lovingly leave it in
our cars when it’s a hundred degrees outside or twenty degrees outside please
don’t do that with your test kits they don’t like that I know you’re out there though so if you are doing that realize
that a lot of those things in your test kit are temperature sensitive give them
the love that they deserve take them in your house take it back in the office when they’re gonna be in a really harsh
environment so my question for you is do you know why you’re actually doing the
test that you’re running and if the answer is because my boss told me so the
answer is no I want you to focus instead of just running tasks ie tests to truly
become a water treat and understand how your tests work and why you run them it
is possible that your tests could actually lie to you what do I mean by lie to you that’s just weird
but no garbage in garbage out so if there’s an issue and you’re testing for that issue and don’t even realize it
your tests are going to indicate that and you’re they’re going to throw off what you think you know about that system and it could be an
example let’s say you took a sample out of a line that has not been exercised in
a while and you’re not really getting system water you’re getting the water that’s been stuck in that pipe for the
last six months so my catalyst moment for you today is to ask yourself why I
hope you ask yourself why on everything that you do because those are some great conversations that you can have with
your employers or your mentors or whoever hey I’m doing this thing but I
don’t really understand why I’m doing it can you can you explain more about it and it’s a great way to start the
conversation but today I’m gonna focus on the test kit and I want you to ask
why you’re running every single test that you’re running if you don’t know
again that’s a great conversation to have also why do your tests do the
things that they do so what’s the chemistry involved and I’m gonna be the
first to admit it I geek out over chemistry and math and I’m that guy so for what it’s worth I’ve warned you
that’s just how it is I enjoy knowing the chemistry behind the tests but
sometimes we don’t know and sometimes we don’t even know where to find that information so I’m gonna give you a website it’s wwr h ACH comm okay that
will take you to the hoc website so where I want you to go is hakam /wh a
that stands for the water analysis handbook and that is a wealth of
information that tells you absolutely everything about every test that you’ll probably ever run in water treatment
it’s all alphabetize you can look it up very easily and you’re probably saying but trace I don’t use hoc tests and I
get that there are many great manufacturers out there there’s masters there’s aqua Phoenix there’s Taylor
Lamont’s I’m sure I’m missing some and I apologize but they’re all wonderful tests there are some tests that are
unique to that company but the majority of all of our tests are just how they
produce them so what I’m telling you in the water analysis handbook you can actually learn
how these tests work they’re going to tell you things like procedures they’re going to talk about interferences so
what what’s in my water that this test that I’m running can actually interfere
with when I say interfere that means it’s going to mess up the result and one that comes to mind is iron so what’s
something that I can do to get some of that iron out of my sample so I can have
a better test again this is all predicated under the question why so
let’s talk about that how many people out there have actually run a hardness
test and you get what’s called a lagging end result so it starts to change color
from from red to blue and then it doesn’t and it just keeps on and keeps on doing that so at technical training
Frank leckrone actually explains what’s going on here and and gives everybody a
tip so I am going to share that tip that he gave to the audience at the
association of water technologies technical training and what it is is that there’s there’s iron in the kit in
the water and it is interfering with the test and it’s not allowing the titrant
to work with the color indicator to tie everything up the way it needs to so his tip is very simple and let me
back up a little bit have you ever thought on your tests how many drops you
put in why do I put in eight drops why don’t I put in nine drops or ten drops or twenty drops and then you move on to
maybe a color indicator and then you move on to you know the titration well
ask yourself those questions and what happens if I put twenty drops in let me go into my lab or kitchen sink or
wherever you are and actually experiment around that remember your tests are your tools
they’re your tools so you know you can figure out what’s going on with the
system so that being said let’s get back to our issue at hand the the hardness
kit having a problem with iron so what he suggests instead of going in order where
you add say so many drops a buffer and then you add your hardness indicator and then you start titrating and by the way
that titrant is EDTA EDTA is a Kealing which means it wants to tie up stuff and
in this test you want it to tie up all of the hardness so that indicator goes
from red to blue but that iron is interfering with that because the EDTA
is working on that iron instead of the hardness so let’s get that iron out of
the way and what you can do is you can add one drop of EDTA before you do anything else with your sample now you
need to count that drop in the end and then go ahead and prepare your sample the exact same way put your buffer in
put your indicator in and then go ahead and titrate starting with that one drop
of course what happened is that EDTA has tied up that iron and now you don’t have
that issue anymore you can do little tips and tricks with all of your tests
if you understand one what’s your tester telling you and truly what the reactions
are so it’s a great conversation to have why do your tests do what you do and how
do I learn them better and by the way folks if you are not using your tests as
a tool and you’re kind of using them as your master when you go to service you’re kind of missing the point you
ever heard those of you that have had chemistry classes you know we all use the empirical method well what the heck
is the empirical method well quite simply we observe something and then we
make a determination on what we think is going on we form a hypothesis and then we test that hypothesis to see if it’s
true or not true and then we make adjustments and that’s what a service is
so apply that type of thinking the next time you go and service and walk around
the mechanical room and say hey what are my sense is telling me oh wait a second
that pump isn’t primed so if that’s your inhibitor pump and you’re testing for inhibitor before you even bring out your
test kit aren’t you going to expect that that going to be low so the towers overflowing they just clean the cooling
tower all these various things you are forming a hypothesis a theory on what
you think all those tests are going to tell you and now your tests are simply
making you a better water treater your tests are going to confirm or disprove
what you think is going on with the system and then with that data you can
then make the changes that you need to to get that system back in line or verify that it was always in line I
challenge you to please use your test kits as the tool as they were intended
to be the next section up is the presentation or the interview and this
is the bulk of our podcast and being our first show I really wanted to have
somebody on the show that was that was inspiring and would really really light
up the the show like I haven’t got a lot of people that urge me to do this and they gave me a lot of information on how
I should do it so I asked them who should my first guests be and they all said the same thing and I got to tell
you the person that they told me to interview I never even thought of and I didn’t think it was a good idea at first
the person that they recommended was me so first of all that sounds pretty weird
doesn’t it how am I going to interview me that’s that sounds very narcissistic and I’m gonna be the first to admit I do
not like talking about myself and I said that to them I said that’s just weird
why why would you suggest that and they said well trace you need to look at it this way you’re basically interviewing
for a job these people are going to commit to subscribe to your podcast and
listen to you an hour a month so why should they do that if they don’t know
who you are then why and I thought about that now it’s like well okay well when you put it
that way it doesn’t seem so awkward so I’m not going to ask myself questions
and then change positions so around my microphone and answer them because that’s just goofy but in this spirit I
thought I would go ahead and you a little bit about myself so hopefully you choose to subscribe to
this program and then we join on this journey together to make both of us
better water treaters that’s probably what I’m going to start out with why did I start this podcast I
will tell you I absolutely love the business of water treatment my father
taught me this business I want to talk about him in a second but I’ve never been bored water treatments been very
good to me and I feel that this is a way to give back I’m not that selfless so don’t go there quite yet one of the
things I can do is give back to this great career this industry of water
treatment that has given me so much and you know just like I hope that this is a
tool to advance your water treatment knowledge when you ask me questions and
I have guests on the show it’s going to enhance my knowledge as well in order
for me to explain something that you write up I haven’t mentioned scaling up h2o comm for a while so I’ll go ahead
and do that there but when you ask me a question if I don’t know the answer or if I’m not sure that’s the best way to
answer that I’ve got to research it so in turn that’s making me better that’s one of the reasons that that I started
this podcast the other one and as I mentioned before it’s just an industry that lends itself so well to this format
we’re driving around so much it’s really hard to read an article because we’re
always on the go and with the podcast we can simply download it listen to it in our cars and and hopefully hopefully get
something out of it one of my favorite quotes is John F Kennedy and he says a rising tide raises all boats I truly
believe that there are some water treaters out there that probably should not be in this industry but for those of
us that are trying to do the best that we can I want to speak to you and I want
to try to challenge you to get better each and every day if I do that the
entire industry gets better and in turn I get better that’s kind of the philosophy and why I start
this podcast to back up to talk about how I got involved in the water treatment industry is it’s my dad
and unfortunately my dad is is no longer with us but when I was growing up my dad
was a water trader so it’s the industry that I kind of grew up in in fact if you
read the about the host section on scaling up h2o calm you’ll actually actually tell this story but my first
water treatment memory is I was with my dad and I was five years old we were in
a hospital an account that he had and he was boiling a sample on a hot plate and
for some reason I reached up and I burned my right hand on his hot plate no permanent damage I guess it heard enough
that I still remember this story to today throughout junior high and high school I would run tests for my dad on
his kitchen on our kitchen table and granted exactly what I was telling you
to do was what I what I wasn’t doing I was just simply adding this many drops
to this many drops and counting the the titrant and using that a multiplier and filling out a report form now of course
my dad knew what to do with those numbers and more importantly he also knew when those numbers weren’t right so
he would say you need to run this one again and I was just fascinated that he could do that in fact I’ve got this
whole I share this at AWT this procedure that I’ve come up with to figure out how
big a system is and my dad could had this knack where he could just step back
and look at the system piping granted he could only see what’s in the mechanical room and know about the size of the
building and he would come in a couple hundred gallons every time it drove me nuts but but something about my dad is
he instilled upon me that this is an awesome industry and it was very good to
him it’s been very good to me but as I was getting started out in it he told me
that you’re always learning in this industry and if there is ever a day when you’re not learning or you feel you know
it all it’s the day you need to quit and find something else and I think that’s
the respect that the industry deserves I would say that there are a lot of water treaters out there
that have learned about a year’s worth of experience and then they stop learning and they might have been in the
industry for ten years well they’ve repeated that one year ten times over so if I’m speaking to you I hope that this
sort of lights a spark so you can you can advance yourself a little bit more that’s going to help the entire industry
but always be learning that’s that’s the message that I’m hoping to get from that
and that’s that’s what my father shared with me I guess that brings us to how I gotten started in working for a water
treatment company when I went to school actually got out and I was in the financial planning industry for about
two years I I wasn’t bad at the job but I had no passion for it at all like I
said I was doing okay but I just didn’t enjoy it it didn’t excite me and my dad and I were having dinner one night and I
told him about this and he said well why don’t you do water treatment you really seem to enjoy that when you were working
with me and I really said this to my dad I said I looked at him and I said well dad that’s not a real job that’s just
something I did in high school and he actually didn’t hit me after that so that was that was fun but he looked
at me and and he laughed a little bit he said well son I assure you it is a real
job and in fact it’s why you had a house and you were able to eat food while you
were growing up and it just so happened that he needed a service person at the moment and he said I’m willing to give
it a try if you’re willing to give it a try and and that spark that I didn’t have before with financial planning I
think I got at mine my first day working with him in water treatment and and I gotta tell you I I was so fortunate to
be able to work with him and share the passion that he had for this industry who knew that that unlocked a passion
for me to want to want to teach it as well then I worked for I worked for him
for a while and then he retired and then eventually I decided to start my own company which is Blackmoor enterprises
Blackmer enterprises is located in Atlanta Georgia I’m actually coming to you live from the Blackmoor enterprises
studio that being said we’re we’re a water treatment company just like you guys but I try to follow the principles
that my father taught me and I’m very proud about that also because I am that
math and chemistry geek I really and I do some consulting with other water
treatment companies as well so you know maybe somebody might have me in to their
concern that a large account that they have you know might have some vulnerabilities so they invite me in to
figure out what those are so they can correct them I do training for companies wherein I
told you that’s my favorite thing to do where they one bite me in maybe they have a bunch of people that are getting ready to take the CWT or they have a
bunch of new people and I’ll go in and do a special training program for them
based around water treatment so consulting things like that some training things like that Oh corrosion
coupons so I’m going to talk a little about corrosion coupons in another show just to say if you are not using
corrosion coupons on every system you are guessing on how your water treatment
program is working we have very clear standards in this industry and if you
are not staying within those standards or you don’t know if you’re in those standards you don’t know what’s going on
with your system so it was with that that I’ve always used corrosion coupons and I would send them off and I’m not
gonna mention the name of who I sent them off to but that being said I would just get a report back that would say
simply that the mills per year and it would say whether I had pity or not and
I guess that was fine but as a water treated there’s so much more information
that we can tell off of a corrosion coupon on you know what’s actually going on in the system and how our little
changes affecting that and I just wasn’t getting at the report so I decided that
we were going to invest a little bit of money and we did a we have a little small metallurgical lab here we can look
at corrosion coupons and really tell what’s going on with the systems and
through back-and-forth consultation with the owners of the coupons I might say
try this or they said hey we tried this and these are the coupons for that and we can really tell what’s going on that
that’s something we do as well I guess that that’s pretty much it about Blackmore enterprises I am very proud
that it is my company and I tell you you don’t know what you don’t know and when
I started my own business boy did I not know a lot and I didn’t
know what I didn’t know so I joined several organizations that were geared around business and teaching the
business owner these items that they don’t know so throughout later shows I’m probably
going to bring some of that information inks I think I think that lends itself well to any listener whether you own a
company or you’re just working in a company let’s talk about AWT as you can
imagine I’m also very passionate about the Association of Water Technologies I was actually the president of the
Association of Water Technologies in 2011 and I gotta tell you that was an
extremely humbling experience some I mentioned my dad but other members
specifically Bruce Catterick senior J farmer II who I consider to be my
mentors you know to be able to work with them and then hold the position of
president for those of you a member Raines world I’m not worthy that’s kind
of how I felt but I got through it and and I loved it I had a great time I’ve
learned a lot learn about my own business working in the association of
Water Technologies but that being said oh how did I even get started how does somebody become president in the
association of Water Technologies I guess that’s kind of a blur let me let me think back about that actually I do
remember the story so it was the first convention that I attended as only my
own company and it was in Palm Springs California and J farmer II was the
president and I remember I had a issue with the marketing material it was it
was just bad and I remember it didn’t even tell you how to get to the hotel I I just thought there was so much more
that we could do because Palm Springs had so much to offer it wasn’t in any of the material all the things that you could do besides the
actual convention so I went up to J and I said hey J I think we could do a better job in this marketing material
and you know Jase looked at he goes yeah you’re definitely right you know I’m looking for a committee chair for the
communications and marketing committee and that’s you now I I didn’t know enough that I could say no and I think
two weeks later I was hosting my first conference call as chair of the marketing communications committee but I
tell you that that was the catalyst for actually getting involved with the
association of water technology I was sort of thrown into the deep end I guess so I don’t know if I recommend that or
not but I’m living proof that I survived that method the marketing and communications committee was very unique
because we really didn’t have our own product our job was to sell everything
or communicate all the products that the other committees had so because of that
I learned so much about the organization because all the committees would report
back to us on what we needed to be doing yes I guess I ran that committee for about six six years I think it was and
then somebody nominated me to the board of directors actually a couple years
before I came off that committee I was I was still on the marketing committee I went on the board of directors but
anyway I was nominated and the membership saw fit to elect me thank you for that and I spent six years on the
board of the Association of Water Technologies and then came back recently for another two-year term because there
was a vacancy they’re very dedicated to the organization I know you hear
everybody say hey get involved and you know really how do you get involved well I told you how I got involved but
honestly just reaching out there’s plenty of things to do truly the more
you give the more you get back and I know that everybody says that but I
would not be the water treater that I am today had I not got involved with the
association of water techno I definitely wouldn’t be able to have people like J farmerie and Bruce
Catterick senior on my speed dial to ask the questions on hey I have this issue
and they say all I’ve messed that up ten times in the past so this is what you do so you don’t have to make that mistake that was all because of the association
of water technology so this water treater definitely it took a village to
to get to the point where I am today and the AWT definitely was that village a
little bit about me again I’m hoping we can put all this together in in the
podcast to help lift everybody up that’s listening to this the questions the
topics that I have right now I have received from the technical training seminars I think I’ve answered most of
the questions at the technical training seminars but like I said it’s six days of information squeezed into three days
so you really can’t elaborate on a lot of this stuff so when I felt I wasn’t doing justice to the question I would
make note of that and and that’s where these notes are coming from the and then
might also be the the convention you know items that I got there again I am
going to run out of these ideas and topics if you guys don’t help me out so
once again scaling up h2o and that will and if you could you know give me some
ideas give me some questions and we’ll go ahead and see if if we can keep this
show going for some time all right so I guess that wasn’t too awkward I I don’t
like talking about myself but I tell you I do like telling you about my father and what a what a good influence he was
on my life and you know like I said water treatments been extremely good to me and I wouldn’t even be in this
industry if if it weren’t for him so I’m glad they made that suggestion I hope I
hope you guys that interview wasn’t too terribly painful we’ll get somebody more interesting the next time we do that
that’s my promise to you so let’s move to the section pinks and blues and this is where we answer
the questions that you have again I’m going to keep these anonymous and these
are some questions that some people have actually already gone to the website or they asked me at the technical training
that I’m going to try to answer for you so first how do you accurately calculate
cycles in a cooling tower well and I guess that question let me sort of let
me answer that question because I don’t like the word cycles and I like words
that define themselves and cycles doesn’t really define itself if you
don’t know what I’m talking about it I think you do if I explain it so you’re talking with a customer and you’re
telling them how things concentrate up and only pure water evaporates leaving it’s solids behind and eventually the
water gets to a point where it can’t hold any more solids and it starts to precipitate and that’s how we start
scale and that’s of course why we have a cooling tower controller that’s controlling the bleed because the
solution to pollution is dilution that something my dad used to say so we are actually open up the high solids tower
water and bleeding that out so we have low solids make up water coming in and
diluting it out and we explain that to the customer we say based on all the tests that we’ve done on your raw water
and the chemistry’s that we’re running we can get five cycles or ten cycles or
whatever it is and and then they say okay I understand and then you ask them
a question or they repeat it back to you and they say Oh what cycles is how many times the waters were circulated around
in the system I can’t tell you how many times I’ve actually had that happen to me so I decided that I was going to use
another industry term for that and call that concentration ratio so exactly the
same thing that I said but call it concentration ratio it’s how many times the makeup water has concentrated up
that we’ve allowed it to do before the the bleed happened so the calculation for that is would be the the tower
whatever you’re testing divided by the makeup water whatever you’re testing so
the question is how do we accurately do that and I think this question came from when we were
talking about this in our fundamentals and applications class and I said I wasn’t a fan of doing that on
conductivity and and I’m not and and the the question is I think if this is where
that question came from well hey that’s how we’re controlling the concentration ratio is off of this conductivity on the
cooling tower controller so why not we test for that by all means do the
calculation and see what it is but remember conductivity is the sum of the parts so everything that’s going
into that cooling tower is gonna be measured in your conductivity so what a
lot of us do is we choose a non scaling chloride or a non scaling ion like
chloride go ahead and and and test what’s in the tower divide that by roots at what’s in the raw and then that will
give us a more accurate concentration ratio so what if you’re using sodium hypochlorite well obviously you can’t
use chloride because you’re getting chloride contribution with your sodium hypochlorite so then you have to choose
another non scaling ion I tell you here in Atlanta we really don’t have a silica
issue so our silica is anywhere between 3 to 6 parts per million and you know with
without without going into too much chemistry you can concentrate that up to about a hundred and fifty parts per million so there’s no way we’re gonna
concentrate a cooling tower up 50 times so we use silica to actually determine
what our concentration ratio is and then we back that up with the conductivity to
make sure that our cooling tower controller is set properly I hope that answers that question a little bit
better I probably talked a little bit too much around that question but
hopefully hopefully that gave you what you were asking for all right so next question up can you give some sales
advice when it comes to water treatment and that’s actually a show idea that I have I’m gonna do a show around sales
and and water treatment but my my advice is you know what
which comes to mind when you think of a salesman probably it’s not a very positive one so my advice is be the
opposite of that I tell people that work for me and especially new people they
say hey do you have a script and I don’t like scripts because that’s saying that everything is canned and now it’s all
one size fits all and that’s one of the cool things about water treatment everything is unique and the fact that
we have the ability to go in there and look at a system and diagnose what’s been going on for years in some cases
and say no that’s wrong and that’s why you’ve been having your issue that’s
pretty cool by the way if you can do that you’ve sold that account to answer that question that the advice that I
have is you know be the best that you can be in this industry and make sure
people know that that’s one of your goals you know how how are you showing that do you have your certified water
technologist and and do they do they know that do they know what that is but I guess the the biggest piece of advice
that I could probably give you is if you care about what you do and you care about taking care of that customer and
whatever issue that they’re having that’s your script that’s your premise
on what you’re going on and it doesn’t matter what you say as long as it comes
out of that mindset it’s gonna be the right thing and if you can convey that
to somebody I guarantee that you sold that account all right another question do you use corrosion coupons well I
think I already already asked already answered that so the answer is yes and
I’ll just do one more plug for corrosion coupons if you’re not using corrosion coupons on all your systems you are
guessing on what’s going on with the corrosion rates now you might the when you get the
chiller opened up every year you know you’re probably all jeez I hope it looks good my tests look good but I don’t know
what that chiller is looking like whoa that chillers your corrosion coupon or that heat exchanger is your core coupon if you don’t have those in the
system to tell you periodically on a proactive approach what’s going on so I
hope you consider that another question is how do I get my CW T so the CW T is
the highest designation that a water treaty receive in this industry stands
were the certified water technologist the designation and if you go on a WT
org there is a wonderful packet that you
can print out review online tells you absolutely everything that you need to know about the entire process I urge you
to go on there but you need five years of industry experience and there are
some things that you can do to actually minimize that so you might qualify for that those are in that packet there’s an
exam that you have to pass oh by the way for those of you that know Angela Pike it is an exam if you ask her a question
about the CWT test you’re going to get a 10-minute dissertation about what the difference is from the examination and a
test so I’m just gonna warn you right now and Angela is wonderful at what she does and we thank her for doing it so
there’s letters of recommendation that you need to get there is a code of ethics that you need to sign all this is
available online that you can read and then finally when you actually get it every five years you need so many
continuing education units in order to keep that current we’re advertising as
the AWT so end-users are looking for the certified water technologist designation
I have seen specifications that actually say must have a certified water
technologist designation in order to bid on this so if you don’t have plans to
take this I hope you change your plans and I’m going to do some shows where I
have some tips on how you can do that but you know how do you get your CWT is
the actual question so one you gotta want to do it and go online figure out
what that takes and my advice to you whoever wrote this question is that however many years
you need in order to take that examination is you set that date so
let’s say that’s five years into the future go five years into the future and say hey I’m gonna take my CWT exam on
this date and now work backwards you’ve got something that you’re working towards and you’re working towards that
goal so how do you get it you start on it and hopefully that’ll help you okay
so okay the last question that I’ll read says do you really dive with sharks
alright so I this is from somebody that saw my presentation I do the math
presentation I’m the math guy I teach that and AWT by the way that’s the
funnest math class that you’ll ever take at least I think so anyway but I show a picture of sharks because everybody’s
scared of math and I show the picture where my wife and I are in the Bahamas and we’re diving with 35 Caribbean reef
tip sharks still have all my fingers and toes and yes that was not a fake picture
that was really my wife and I diving with sharks and I am a scuba diver in
fact I’m a scuba dive instructor so I’m really serious when I say water treatment is is truly a passion for me
because not only do I work in water treatment but my hobby is water so so there you go so so yeah I really did
dive with sharks that is our first episode of scaling up so I hope you
enjoyed it I promise as we go throughout this series I will get better I’ll
definitely have better guests on but again the only way that I am going to be
able to do that is if you help me make this show what it needs to be and that
of course I want to say it again is going to scaling up h2o calm and let me
know what you’re thinking about what do you want me to talk about who do you want me to interview what are some
questions that you have if you do that this show will be wildly successful you
we’ll get the information out of it that you want and I will be very happy because I’m now doing something that I
love and that’s making sure that a rising tide raises all ships and we’re
all getting better as water traders thanks for joining me on scaling up
you