The following transcript is provided by YouTube. Mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode, click HERE.
additionally they are a distributor of thousands of products for top industry brands for the industrial water
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you might need folks how many purchase orders do you need to write in order
to get everything you need for your field test kit well with aqua phoenix that is just one call to them
one purchase order one shipment and you can have everything
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welcome to scaling up h2o the podcast where we scale up on knowledge so we don’t scale up our systems i’m trace
blackmore the host of scaling up h2o in nation last week we crossed the 250
episode barrier a quarter to a thousand just so many
milestones we just recently celebrated our fifth anniversary we’re also celebrating that we are in so many
countries people all over the world are listening to the scaling up h2o podcast
the scaling up nation of course you the listener of the scaling up h2o podcast
you are growing in numbers and that’s happening because you are sharing with
your fellow water treaters with your friends with your family that we have a podcast just for us
and so many people have told me that they have gotten into this industry because they listened to a podcast that
somebody recommended they listened to to see if this was something they wanted
to become a member of if they wanted to become a part of the water treatment community part of the water treatment
workforce so i’m so glad you guys are using these episodes as you see fit to
help bring the right people into our water treatment community to make sure
that you’re hiring the right person that they’re getting good information about what it is that we do because let’s face
it unless you’re born into this industry nobody has any idea what it is that we
do and even if we find somebody with some water experience most of our
industry is so niche it doesn’t necessarily translate a
hundred percent so we’re using all the resources that we can and i love
that so many of you out there are using the scaling up h2o podcast as one of
those resources and we have well over 250
episodes out there for you to use so many people have called in or left me
a voicemail or written into the show and let me know what one of those 250
episodes needed to be about of course i’m not gonna stop just because we’re five years into this and we’re 250
episodes in i need your help i need for you to tell me what you want to hear on this podcast
who is the next person you want me to interview that’s the only way we’re
going to be able to keep bringing this show to you is for you to let me know that valuable information
super easy to do that go to scaling up h2o.com and then you can go over to our show
ideas page and you can type up whatever you want me to know on that or i’ll make it even easier for you when you go to
the scaling up h2o.com webpage you will see a pop-up on the right-hand
side that says leave voicemail on your device you can record your voice telling
me whatever you want to tell me and if you ask me a question there’s a good chance that i will play that on the air
and that’s actually what we’re going to do today i don’t have a voice for you but i do have a question
from some listeners we’re going to be answering those questions but before we
do here’s a brand new thinking on water with james
welcome to thinking on water with james the segment where we don’t give you the answers we give you the topics and
questions for you to think about drop by drop now let’s get to it
in this week’s episode we’re thinking about nitrite corrosion inhibition how does nitrite inhibit corrosion
does oxygen have a role what if nitrite is underfed what could happen and why
what if nitrite is overfed what could happen and why how might microbiological activity
impact nitrite levels and corrosion protecting a water system against corrosion is more than just running
pinks and blues it’s about understanding the chemistry behind the scenes and what factors may positively and negatively
impact it take this week to think about nitrite and how it inhibits corrosion be sure to
follow tow 22 and hashtag scaling up h2o share
your thoughts on each week’s thinking on water i’m james mcdonald and i look forward to learning more from you
nation a couple of events that you might want to check out i mentioned that we have so many people listening to us all
over the world one of the items that’s coming up is the aqua tech trade show in china that’s
going to be june 8th through 10th and that’s hosted by the water quality association and that’s going to be
exhibitors and all sorts of people coming to talk to you about the prospects of the international markets
when it comes to water if you want to know more about that you can go to our
show notes page and we’ll have everything that you want to know there the groundwater association on june 21st
through 22nd is having a conference on the fate of pfas this is taking place in westerville
ohio and if you want to learn more about this simply go to our show notes page
and we will have all of that information for you something coming up that the scaling up
nation is going to do together to get awareness out for how many kilometers
that people have to walk in countries that do not have a fresh water source right at their door
they have to walk six kilometers on average so team world vision every year holds a
global 6k for awareness around this and then they use that awareness and they use proceeds
to change villages all over the world and we the scaling up nation are going
to be a part of it on may 21st you can walk
run crawl whatever in a 6k why a 6k again that’s the
average amount of walking that people have to do to and from their water
source to bring water back to their home well we’re going to do that to bring
awareness and if you want to learn more information about that that’s just next
weekend so you still have time to sign up you can go to scaling scalinguph2o.com
forward slash 6k to learn some more about that we interviewed reid hutchinson on episode
236 and he’s been involved with the world vision team for years he was the
one that let me know about this and now i’m the one that’s letting you know
about this so we can have a little bit of fun while we’re taking care of this
such valuable cause also we’re trying to raise some funds for team world vision
to help with this so if that’s something you want to contribute to you can also do that at scaling up h2o.com forward
slash 6k so nation next week when you’re in the 6k i want you to post on social
media scaling up h2o so we can all share in
your experience we’ll know that we’re part of a community and we are doing
something to help the betterment of our fellow man and how great would it be if
in our lifetime we ended the global water crisis
nation as i mentioned at the top of the show this is a show that we call pinks and
blues pinks and blues is a name that i don’t know somebody that was in our
field 100 years ago was calling running tests so when you run tests people say
hey i’m running pinks and blues that’s the color that most of those tests change some of the tests change so
we affectionately call episodes like this where we are answering your
questions that you have asked by going to scaling up h2o.com
right here on the air and here we have a new water treater and they are asking
actually they’re asking a lot of questions but the main theme around all of their questions
is how do they know how to diagnose when something’s wrong so they’ve gotten to
an account hopefully they’ve spoken with the customer and they figured out with
the customer what’s going on what’s new what’s the same that the customer feels
they’re getting value by having you as their representative for your company
and they might share with you yes we had a leak uh we installed this equipment or we’re thinking about installing some new
equipment so what do you need to do in order to partner with that person to make sure they buy the right equipment
maybe it’s not the right metallurgy and they never even thought about the metallurgy maybe they haven’t thought
about a stainless steel basin because they’re just replacing the cooling tower
with the exact same type of cooling tower that’s up on the roof now and they didn’t give any consideration
to some of the other things that we all are aware of the type of construction
is there sunlight going into it can we redesign something or use another type
of design so a problem that we have to deal with on a regular basis is now mechanically engineered out
don’t just assume that the representative who’s selling the cooling tower is doing all of that
help your customers make better decisions by giving them more information and by the way all
we’re doing is saying hello here i haven’t gotten past the fact that we just knocked on the door and somebody
welcomed us into their facility and we’re just catching up with them so there’s a whole bunch that we need to
know before we start talking to the equipment and i’m willing to bet in
our day-to-day it’s very easy to skip step one where we are talking to
the customer and finding out things that are going to make it faster
in the long run because now we understand what’s going on since we’ve
been there last now we are aware of a particular issue since we’ve been there last and now our
antenna go up and we are able to start looking for products of that issue
now we’re going to go ahead and go into wherever the mechanical room is and
you’re probably going to start running your test now nope do not do that
there is so much information that you do not have and you need that information before you
even open your test kit just like you tried to find as much information as you
could from your customer you’re now going to do that with the equipment put your test kit down make
sure it’s in a safe location put it off to the side and now walk around have a
conversation with the equipment if it’s a chiller look at the chiller has
everything the same as you remember it maybe go into the user interface
see if all the readouts that you can see on that machine are normal do you notice
that maybe the approach temperature is a little bit higher do you notice that maybe the load is a little bit higher or
maybe it’s a little bit less than it was last time maybe you’re looking at the power consumption and you’re tracking
that and you’re seeing if they’re using more or less power than they did during the last visit or more
importantly this same time last year that tells you a whole bunch
of information go over look at the cooling tower what is the cooling tower
operation water level like is it too high is it too low does it look like everything is flowing
properly do you see any signs of biological activity outside of normal
what are all the things that you need to observe so you can now better
diagnose maybe it’s a boiler you’re looking at the flame does the flame look good does it have that nice
color does it have a bluish tint to it and not a real yellowy tint a lot of times that means
that it needs to be tuned up and there are too many byproducts that are being flung off that flame
making a soot issue well if they’re using more gas because
there’s insulation in soot and that’s got to go through the soot in order to get through the pipe to heat the water
to create the steam the first thing that most people blame that own boilers is
the water treater well folks if you’ve got a dirty flame that has nothing to do with water
treatment but it has everything to do with you noticing it and that’s the value that we want to make sure that our
customers know that we are not just looking at the things that we are directly responsible for
we’re actually the mouthpiece we are the faithful translator of that equipment to the people that own
the equipment and when in doubt blame the water treater i’m going to make a t-shirt that says that when people don’t
understand all the things that are going on they typically blame the person that’s in there each and every month and
in this specific case it wasn’t anything to do with water treatment at all it was a dirty flame and soot is more
insulative than scale so let your customer know hey looks like
you need to get this boiler tuned up or maybe we even have the conversation when was the last time you had your boiler
tuned up when was the last time you brushed the tubes when did have you gotten all the soot out
when have you done your last boiler inspection now most likely there’s going to be a sticker on the boiler that tells
you that inspection and folks typically those are done every year so if it’s around the same month where that
inspection is is due you want to talk to that customer and say hey i want to be here when you open
up that boiler i want to see inside just like the inspector does the inspector is
there looking for safety i am here looking for
efficiency now when the chiller gets inspected and cleaned that’s really when
the customer decides to do it so hopefully you are on their list to call when they do that hopefully they give
you some notice but again all this stuff we are looking at we have never gotten into our test
kit yet let’s go over to our control equipment does everything look like it’s
operating properly maybe it’s not maybe our conductivity is too high maybe it’s too low this is all
great information for you to start figuring out what you think is going on
in that system so you can now test with that in mind and maybe you now run a
couple of other tests or maybe you can even run some fewer tests because you now have information about the system
you don’t have to run the normal 15 tests that you normally run you see that the conductivity is very
low well why am i going to test all these different parameters when i know the
conductivity is low and most likely all of the things i test is going to be low
maybe i figure out why it’s low i make that adjustment and then i just do some spot checks to
see that my adjustment is actually putting it back into range so i can actually
save a lot of time by doing something that seems like we’re spending more time
than we have to but with better knowledge we’re able to execute better
we’re able to do the things that we need to do that really count during that
service so the person that wrote in they want to know how they go about doing
that so i hope the things that i mentioned so far which is just simply
asking questions and getting information most people again one more time i’ll say it because i see
it happen so many times they go straight for their test and they blindly start testing you should have an idea of every
value that you are going to get as a result of something you test before
you test it and the only way you can do that is by getting information from your customer and getting information from
your equipment now let’s say the situation i just described is what you
find you find that either on a cooling tower on a boiler you have low
conductivity as i said before why would you waste all your time doing all of
your normal tests when you can suspect that all of those are going to be low
how do i know all the different things that you put into the boiler or the cooling tower are going to be low
because your concentration levels are low that’s reflected in your conductivity every time water
concentrates the conductivity goes up and also everything concentrates that
you put in that machine if it’s not concentrating up you’re going to see the
conductivity at a lower range than what you have it set for and that’s going to
indicate that one or all of your parameters that you’re going to check for are going to be low
so now i’m going to go into troubleshooting after i’ve tested and i’ve confirmed that yes that is actually
going on what do i mean by that maybe the probe is out of calibration maybe
the probe is dirty maybe everything in the system isn’t as bad as we think or
the controller thinks that it is and we need to fix a piece of equipment
so the first thing i like to do when i am interviewing the control equipment is
i always check flow i want to make sure that it’s in a good line of flow and it’s getting good flow and then i start
checking calibration are the readings that it is giving me the actual readings
that i know are correct and how do i know they’re correct well a couple of ways
minimum every week i calibrate all my meters i need to be able to count on my
meters and i make sure that they are always kept clean they are always kept
hydrated a lot of the probes that have a solution inside a glass bulb those will
dry out if we don’t take care of them we take care of them by putting a specific
solution in the reservoir to make sure that they don’t dry out and we’d never
want to put water in there because that can actually force the juice that’s inside the probe to transmit outside of
the probe because nature loves balance and it’s trying to balance the fact that there’s more inside than there is
outside so don’t do that there’s a reason that there’s storage solutions
out there if you want to learn more about that contact wherever you get your test
equipment and supplies from they will tell you all about that and then also
cleanliness we make sure we clean our meters at least every week or as needed if we have
a dirty meter and whatever we’re testing has to transmit through that dirt into whatever the probe is we’re not going to
get a good reading and if we calibrate off of a dirty probe well folks that’s
not a good calibration because we’re taking into account all the gunk that’s
on the probe and we’re doing really what’s called a false calibration
so make sure all your meters are clean they are calibrated and just in case i
have things to clean my meter in my test kit and i have all this standard so i
can test for calibration or accuracy any time throughout my day
i’m going to do the same thing with the probes on the controller if they are not
reading what my meter says that they should be reading first thing i want to do is i’m going to clean that and then i
might put that into a standard solution or if i know whatever sample is and i
know the conductivity or whatever i’m trying to test and i’ve got a good reading on that i can use that solution
it depends if you do a one two or three point calibration talk to your control
manufacturers to learn more about that we’ll probably do a show someday about
what the differences are today just know that you want to keep things clean you
want to be able to trust them and the way you trust them is to make sure that they are calibrated if you need to
calibrate something follow the method that makes the most sense for you
and now you’ve got a calibrated and clean probe you put that back in the system
and it should measure exactly what your meter is reading well i say exactly it
should be pretty darn close and if it is now you need to determine if that’s in
range or if it’s not if it is low then
did calibration fix it maybe it thought it was falsely high and it was calling for bleed when it didn’t need to do that
well you just fixed that with the calibration or maybe you didn’t maybe there’s some other
issue going on maybe the probe was not out of calibration never a bad idea to clean the probe every time you come
across one so you didn’t do anything you shouldn’t have done already you’re just
starting the diagnosis process well now let’s go to how the controller is
controlling the concentration and that’s with a valve a valve that is letting
high concentrated system water out so makeup can now come in and dilute the
rest of the water in the system is that valve operating correctly
maybe if it’s low it’s stuck open maybe there’s a piece of debris in there
you need to clean that out you need to have somebody help you clean that out if that happens often maybe you should
consider a different type of valve that’s not as susceptible to whatever is
getting clogged up in there maybe there is an electrical issue and there’s a malfunction somewhere how do
you test that well hopefully you have a multimeter in your kit and you can see that the wire is live when it’s not
supposed to be live there’s so many things that we do as industrial water
traders that are so far above and beyond just running pinks and blues now if you
don’t know how to use a multimeter i cannot think of a more underutilized
tool that we have in our arsenal folks go to youtube
watch a couple of videos on how to use a multimeter and when you have a
multimeter and a controller issue and you call in to the manufacturer
trust me they will absolutely love you for having that piece of diagnostic
equipment and they can guide you through the process of making sure everything is
doing what it is supposed to be doing if you don’t have a multimeter they’re
not going to be able to give you all the information that you need in order to fix the issue
so before we even leave we’re making sure we’re having all the diagnostic
equipment that we might need with us so we can utilize that
i was speaking about a boiler let’s say it’s a cooling tower let’s say everything is fine everything’s in
calibration but we’re still seeing a low conductivity so we walk out to the
cooling tower by the way if you’re not looking every single visit at the cooling tower you’re missing an
opportunity for diagnostics you go outside you look at the cooling tower and you see it’s overflowing well no
wonder it’s not concentrating up it’s overflowing so now we have to figure out why that is
going on is the valve not adjusted properly maybe the valve just floated
off or just disintegrated i’ve seen that happen before maybe there is a situation where when
the tower shuts off there’s a large volume of water that overflows the tower
and there’s a design issue going on with that maybe they have a sand filter and
thank goodness they have a sand filter every single cooling tower should have a sand filter but maybe it’s not set up
right on backwash maybe it’s backwashing too often maybe it’s allowing too much water to be
bled out of the system and we’re not able to concentrate up i found one in my career where it was
backwashing almost every two hours way too much by the way when you back wash
them too much they’re not as good as a filter so if you have sand filters and
you should if you are dealing with cooling towers make sure that you are working with the
manufacturer of that filter so you understand how it works how it needs to be set up
and now you’ve got a relationship with whomever is selling those devices and when you have a problem you can
contact them just like when they have a question about water treatment they can
contact you again all these things we haven’t opened up our test kit yet
now we’re going to get a sample that we’ve looked at all of these items
we have an idea what’s going on in the system we’ve interviewed the equipment we’ve talked to the customer
we should now have an idea of what we should be testing for and
what the results are if the results are exactly what we think
they are then we have guaranteed that we know what’s going on with the system now
maybe not everything is perfect but we now know how to fix it because we know what’s wrong we’re going to talk about
that in a second however if we have not formed that opinion and we’re just
running the test what the heck are you going to do when those tests are not where they’re supposed to be that’s
telling you you need more information don’t run your test until you have an
idea of what they’re going to tell you and if you don’t have that figured out it means you need to continue
interviewing the equipment or asking more questions to the customer
now a lot of people in our industry have gotten a little lazy when it comes to
testing we have some incredible products out there that make our life easier but i
don’t think they should be replacing the things that we need to know about
the system specifically what i’m talking about are tracers a tracer is something
that we put into the system to determine how much of our product is diluted in
the system the one that comes to mind is paratoluene sulfonic acid ptsa
in a cooling tower and it might be fluorescein in a boiler when we test for
these we have so many parts per billion and we say we’ve got enough product in
the system we close our test kit and we go about our day no don’t
do that the only thing that that tracer is telling you is how much product fed
and is now in that system what it does not tell you and the most
important thing that you need to know is how much of the consumables that you
have in your product that are doing all the work to make sure that you don’t
scale and you don’t overly corrode the system you have to know how much of those
products are in there so maybe that’s phosphate maybe that’s molybdate maybe
that’s nitrite maybe that’s sulfite whatever is in your product you should by this time
have understood what is in your product now your company has probably put out
what’s called data sheets now not safety data sheets but technical data sheets
and this tells you what the dosage of your product is this tells you what the control set points on your
controller need to be and it tells you when you run certain
tests what the parameters are between this and this is what you’re going for with this
particular test and you know that it has maybe three things you need to test for
whatever that is that’s in addition to whatever tracer that you are using
i’m going to say this again because i know people do it but there’s so many people that run out there and all they
do is test the tracer level if we have an upset in the system and
all the consumables are getting used up all the things that are in the product that actually do the work for what we’re
there to do if they’re not available in the system it doesn’t matter how much tracer
is in the system so we’re testing for those things and then we are comparing
them to what they should be on that technical data sheet
if the concentration level is low we’re going to expect that all of those are
low if the concentration level is high we’re going to expect that all of those
are high and we have to work with that first and fix why it’s high or low
before we can fix anything else and normally if that’s all that’s going on with the
system once we fix that and everything else was set up correctly to begin with
most of those things will come back in line you need to test for all the actives
that are in your product if you don’t know your product well enough to know all the actives then ask people you work
with show me the technical data sheets and let me know how you use them so i can
start doing that as well so we’ve got tracer we have actives and
now we’ve got things that we test in the system to kind of see how those actives
are doing something that comes to mind are some of the metals maybe we’re testing for iron maybe we’re testing for
copper maybe we’re testing for zinc maybe we’re testing for aluminum and typically when we are testing for this
we know what’s coming in with the water we know what that should
concentrate up to and now we’re testing to make sure we don’t have much more than what it should
concentrate up to let’s say we have 10 times more iron in
the system than we should that’s telling us that we are getting a
lot of iron for some reason now what’s the some reason i don’t know i’m not there maybe
our product’s not working properly and we’re corroding the system maybe
they just added a piece of equipment and our customer didn’t tell us about it or
we didn’t have that conversation in the very beginning with our customer and they said oh yeah there’s a tenant loop
over there and they just added a bunch of equipment well all that equipment didn’t get cleaned and then as they tapped into a
very old line they busted a lot of stuff loose and guess who has to deal with it
now not knowing that information we have to figure out where that’s
coming from so you can see instantly by having a little extra time on the front
end getting information that makes our job easier that makes our task a lot faster
we will have a quicker service putting more stuff up front getting more
information up front before we open our test kit if that was the case and they
said yes we just added something to a tenant loop we now expect that we’re going to see
some crud yes that’s a water treatment term in the system because they didn’t
let us know about that we didn’t do a pre-cleaning and it’s an older system we then confirm that with the
extra iron and now we can go to our customer exactly as i thought we do have
some higher corrosion byproducts in the system so we need to run the
concentration down a little bit lower to flush this out on purpose
maybe it’s a closed loop system maybe we need to flush that system and now we
need to add some cleaner to really get all that stuff out there and then we need to flush the cleaner out i don’t
know what kind of system it is but i do know that the more information i have
backed up by my test i’m better able to diagnosed and i’m much better able to
prescribe now as we’re running those tests maybe the conductivity is fine but we’re over
feeding or under feeding those products how would we know that well everything
that’s on that technical data sheet is either elevated or it’s suppressed and
we know that we need to make an adjustment on however that is getting
fed so to get back to the original question that a member of the scaling up nation asked me they said that they were
relatively new to the water treatment industry and how can they test better what should they be looking for how can
they run a better service we started this entire episode by talking about
doing the things that don’t even involve your test kit when we understand what’s going on
with the system by interviewing the person by interviewing the equipment that is the only time that we open up
our test kit and now our tests actually make sense nation i hope that this is helpful
for you through better information we are able to make better decisions and
we’re also able to be more efficient as we’re making those
decisions if you didn’t hear anything else from this episode i hope that you
hear this and i hope that you do this if you do not know or have an idea of what
the result of a test is that you have not yet run you probably don’t need to
run it what information are you missing that’s going to unlock your knowledge of
the system nation thank you so much for sending in your questions thank you for that
individual that sent in there’s about seven questions and i tried to answer all of those within this podcast
if you have a question that you want me to answer on scaling up h2o go to
scalingoffh2o.com and let me know what that is nation again
over 250 episodes you and i have been
together for over five years i just think that that is amazing i hope you
are doing amazing things with your career with your day to day
and i can’t wait for you to tell me about those very things so if you see me
at an upcoming event please let me know some of those items i hope to see your post on social media
about the 6k so hashtag scaling up h2o nation have a great week
[Music] one of the things i hear so often about
the rising tide mastermind is about how well the members in the rising tide
mastermind listen to other people folks we are programmed to give quick advice
even if we don’t have all the information through the issue solving track that we practice in the rising
tide mastermind you will learn how to ask better questions so you can give
better advice and that will shorten the road for whatever issue you’re trying to
solve to find out more go to scaling up h2o.com forward slash mastermind