The following transcript is provided by YouTube. Mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode, click HERE.
[Music]
welcome to scaling up the podcast for water triggers by water treaters where
we are scaling up on water treatment knowledge so you don’t scale up our systems hi everybody I’m trace Blackmore
I am the host of scaling up and I want to give a big thank you to everybody out
there in the water treatment community because many of you have written to me
and you’ve said hey this is exactly what we needed a format that we can listen to
in our cars that teaches us more about water treatment that challenges us to be
better water treaters and I want to let you know I’ve heard that loud and clear and I thank you for it I would ask that
perhaps you might ask your water treatment friends to please subscribe to
this podcast so our goal is to touch as many water traders as we can and give
you the information that you want to talk about so please let me know what
that is go to scaling-up h2o comm and tell me what you want to hear tell me
what questions you have I’m happy to answer that and as always I’ll keep your name and anonymous and all you even talk
to the speakers that you want me to talk to so today’s show is going to be about
controllers have you ever really thought about what a controller allows us to do
and of course when I talk about controllers I’m talking about the equipment that controls our programs
whether it’s a boiler controller or a cooling tower controller but we’ve spent
all of this time sampling the makeup water figuring how many times can we
concentrate that system before we need to open up the bleed what is our makeup gonna be like how much are we bleeding
down how are we gonna feed product what product are we going to feed at what proportion what biocides all this stuff
that we are designing in our systems our controller is actually carrying out that
program for us so if you’ve never really thought about what a controller does besides just sit there on our customers
wall it allows to go home at night we’re actually able
to run a program when we are not there that’s pretty impressive without that it
would be a 24-hour job for us to treat that system so we better know what our
controller is capable of and folks let me tell you it controllers these days do so much back in the day it used to be
bleed and feed when it hit a certain concentration ratio and it knew that via
the conductivity it would open up a solenoid valve and you would have two plugs hanging off at the bottom of it
you would have one that fed a pump and you would feed your inhibitor in while you were bleeding biocide out and now is
the only control that was available not anymore you can do pretty much anything
you can imagine you can tie them up to the building automation systems you can
get alarms that are on your smartphone you can tie into it on your smartphone there are so many things that we can do
that make our job easier we’re actually able to be on site via this controller
when we are not on site it’s huge so I thought the controller was such a big
deal why not dedicate an entire show around the controller but you don’t want
to just hear me talk about controllers so I thought why not get an industry expert in a conversation with me talking
about what we should all know about controllers so that expert is Tom
tinning and Tom teeny not only works on these controllers he designs these
controllers he knows them inside and out Tom works for Lakewood Instruments and whether you use Lakewood controllers or
something else it’s all good information it applies universally so I hope you
enjoy this conversation with Tom tinning I’m here today with Tom Kenny of
Lakewood Instruments and like what instruments receive the supplier of the Year award from a WT in 2011 and
actually that was very special for me because I was president of Ada in 2011 and I had the honor of
presenting them with this award Tom how are you doing pretty good pretty good
Tracy I’m glad to be on the show thanks for inviting me by the way that 2011 award was the AWT
award is significant as a supplier because the the AWT doesn’t send out a
list of nominees the nomination list comes from the people saying be like these people we like this particular
supplier so it is really a vote from the people that are using you with no other
influences and when you win it that’s a huge that’s just it’s a great honor so we’re really excited about that award
well you guys definitely earned it and for those of you that don’t know lakewood incredible guys incredible
equipment and incredible service so Tom’s a great friend of mine I’m know
Tom for years and as hard as it is to believe there may be one or two people
out there that don’t know you Tom so for those one or two people do you mind telling us a little bit about yourself
no no problems so for those of you from Eastern Mongolia that haven’t heard of me I am the director of engineering and
sales or Lakewood Instruments a water-treatment Controls company for cooling towers boilers and processes we
design and manufacture our own equipment here in the US and I’ve been at this since about 1995 slide story liquid
instruments small company at the time a bunch of us knew each other from the aerospace industry and over a very short
period of time liquid instruments tap that pole and one time we had huge horsepower in that building so it
propelled the product line and I was part of that incoming wave so been at
this for a while really kind of comfortable with you our instrumentation and the industry as a whole so Tom confirmed this rumor to be true
but I have heard that if you watch diehard and you’re actually looking at the roof scene when Bruce Willis and
Hans are on the cooling tower if you look very closely you can see a Lakewood controller is that true that is indeed
true and my wife thought I was insane because she bought me the movies on blu-ray for Christmas and I was watching them and I
freeze the movie and I run up to the screen and she goes what are you doing I go that’s a model for 12 that’s our old
model for 12 and she’s like I you can’t tell that and I scrolled it back and froze it on it and I said there it is
took a picture of it we all circulated it amongst ourselves and it was interesting piece I called the building
that was used as the nakka nakka mean I’m a Tanaka mu Qi noggin D she towers
not yet then and it’s actually a Fox Studios building talk to the maintenance
guy and up until a couple years ago it was still there and they finally had to
upgrade it so that controller was originally sold to them back in 1988 and
was on until just a couple years ago doing doing its thing so it was very very very cool we were kind of excited
about it so how about that so I’m sure all of our viewers are going to go home and watch die hard just for that scene yeah this
is a while but there’s the you’ll see the panic camera pans left and there’s that blue box well Tom can you tell us a
little bit about how you got into the water treatment industry again I was an electronics guy at aerospace industry
that came to Lakewood as part of their tech service and instrumentation group and we elevated our troubleshooting game
and we implemented a big change for the industry at the time it used to be that
when someone had a problem with the controller the the go-to move was just send them another controller and you
know being from the aerospace industry you don’t do that you figure out what the issue is so we literally had a
pallet of broken controllers and I started testing them and none of them
were broken and I went to the management team and said we’ve got an issue here and it isn’t our controllers we the guys
out in the field are changing the controller out probably having the same problem because the problem is outside
the control box we need to refine our method over the phone and that’s what we did and it changed how how we approached
the customer support and change the result for our customer because we did something no one else did which was say
stand in front of the controller be my hands for the next five minutes and I will help you determine if it’s
the controller or your system and by the way if it’s something in your system let’s walk through those one piece at a
time and knock down each thing that would cause my controller to give you this errant reading or give you this
issue so and I think the the industry now does that as a whole but when I started back in 95 we were pretty much
the only ones doing that step by step and throwing up the roadblock and saying I’m not going to just arbitrarily send
you another controller that was a huge philosophical change but I think in the
end the industry won because we did that well that’s actually a great lead-in to one of my first questions with you know
tom is one of the trainers at aw t’s technical training seminars and Tom does
a great job during our breakout session not to say you don’t do a great job during the lecture part of our session
as well but during the the breakout part of the session Tom actually shows you
how to troubleshoot a controller and something that he does that I think is
is good for any water trader are some some top tips on what you need to know
in order to troubleshoot a controller too before you call into a customer
service or you know what do you need to know so it’s going to save you a trip from coming back out there so Tom do you
mind telling us some of your troubleshooting tips and what everybody should know who’s listening to this
program what the most common common issues are that they can probably fix themselves that they know how to do it
yeah thanks Tracy I think I think it behooves everybody to understand what’s going on first of all with the like
testing example use conductivity conductivity control the controller is you on-site 24 hours a day it’s
controlling the the accumulated dissolved solids it’s key to not scaling up your tower or your boiler so it
operating correctly reading correctly and reacting correctly is is the key to your success so one of the things we we
have to understand is over time stuff is going to accumulate on those sensors so
we have to take care of them and I think the one of the things we do or one of the things the the field does
is when you walk up and do your first initial test you may have a
difference between a handheld meter and the actual what what is reading and what’s displayed on the controller and
the first explanation is for everybody to go ahead and change the calibration my first inclination and my number one
tip everybody is stop go into that controller and all the modern controllers will do this and find the
screen that allows you to initialize or wipe out all of the existing calibrations and once you’ve done that
then the sensor is going to display what it really sees and that’s the key to
your success because if you can see what the sensor is seeing you down to what
the real difference is so as an example if your handheld said you had two
thousand micro modes of TDS that and you initialize the calibration and the
senate’s are seeing a thousand your first inclination is to say no no controller that’s two thousand but what
you’ve done is build in a x to lie because the controller has just told you
yes it’s two thousand but I’m only seeing half of that which is actually on
a scale which we’re gonna put on our website too by the way a scale will show you that now it’s not
going to see the large differences of the large swings as easily either so you now know that it’s only seeing half of
what it should if you’re not within 10 or 15 percent you shouldn’t be tweaking the calibration you should be looking
for why you’re not within that 10 or 15 percent so the the the the second part
of that that initialization troubleshooting step is clean the darn sensor and I clean the sensor I being
clean it so you stop your flow you pull your sensor out your your you grab your
shop tail rag and then I run out of a closet with a stick and I beat you and say don’t use a shop rag because shop
rags tend to accumulate stuff on them if they wipe down every surface they’ve been in contact with everything and now
you’re about to put that on to your sensor so the real way to clean the sensor is to scrub it or scrape it to
knock the heavy buildup off and then then to take it and put it in a 10% muriatic maybe a 1%
10% sulphuric 1% more addict let it sit there in that solution for a little bit to chew off a very fine coating of scale
and I know we we never have towers that scale up our water treatment programs are perfect so there’s no possibility to
the scale but you’re going to do me this big favor guys you’re gonna you’re gonna put it in that acid just in case something’s going
on and peel off that little coating and and if you really want proof that it’s there even after a good scrubbing go
ahead and take that sensor and blow it off with air or shoppearh let it sit for a little bit and dry out you’ll be
amazed with still on that sensor after you do an initial scrubbing so so the acids key to that and then you’re gonna
take that same sensor and put it in like a isopropyl alcohol and the reason you
want to do that is that will cut off any oils or greases that accumulated and those are insulators and they’re really
bad for my tips at that point you have a really honest-to-god clean sensor and you put that back in the system and I’ll
bet you’re a lot closer to your original reading than you than you were initially and at that point that’s when you can
actually do a slight shift in the calibration by entering a new number versus going ahead and arbitrarily
entering a big change and traits we see this a lot on boilers where the boiler
situation there’s actually steam at the sensor they’ve read it with their handheld they say hey it’s 3000 micro
Mo’s the sensor is reading zero and they’re forcing it telling it now 0 micro modes you you’re not even
contacting water you’re contacting extreme that’s equal to 3000 micro modes and just imagine the confusion that
causes them the controller when it actually gets a little water across its tip it doesn’t know how to read it it
doesn’t that’s that water appears huge to it and it’s time to blow down like crazy tom is it safe to say that most
water treaters don’t know that they need to clean the probe they simply go in and they calibrate or recalibrate every
single time I think they know but I think that it’s a it it tends to be a time issue or a well I guess I could get
away with this or I could punch in a new number so that’s ok right I mean from an
equipment standpoint I want to say pull it out and clean it every month my god you’re good you’re it is really you and
doing this important thing when you’re gone and it needs a little TLC from a broiler standpoint I you know a couple
of times a season get it out of there get it cleaned up I know that it’s a little more difficult but we really have
to think about cleaning those sensors up so that you can give it the opportunity to succeed when you’re not there and the
other thing is a good indication if you’re cleaning it every time and it’s significantly changing your readings
that’s really indicated you it’s getting an accumulation on it and you’ve got accumulations occurring other places as
well not that any of us that would ever happen but it does it is an indicator you could have issues going on so well
those are some great tips anything else you can share with us paperclip it sounds ridiculous but my favorite
troubleshooting tool when I travel is a paperclip and is why I can use a paper clip across contacts for a flow switch
and simulate the closure I can use a paperclip across the contacts where a water meter would land and simulate a
water meter contact I can use a paperclip and bridge it across where the sensor tips are and make my reading
shoot up just it’s just a great quick check tool for all that low voltage stuff so paper clip in hand you can
actually do a lot of troubleshooting and the second part of that conversation is
while you’re you’ve got the paper clip you may not know to do is it really what I’m saying is while you’re in front of
the controller with these tools you can go ahead and call us or call the factory and let us troubleshoot with you while
you’re there I know a lot of you are being trained now to call and leave a message and remember where you were at
and then you have this offline conversation so that the next time at your site you can do this one more test
and then have an offline conversation I think that’s a ridiculous way to run a business model and I think that what you
have to do when when you’re on site is say I’ve got this opportunity to get the
expert on the phone have them walk me through the equipment and then help me make it a termination if it’s not the
equipment and the only way you can do that is live time and being close to the installation is the right way to do it
don’t wait to get home to call us don’t wait until you’re driving away from the site to call us find a place that
doesn’t have a dead zone or too much noise and let us work with you guys and get these issues resolved and 99 percent of them are just
assistant systemic change a slight alteration nothing to do with a failure but let us if you walk through that so
you can walk away confidently and know that that equipment is taking care of you once you’ve left the site well great advice well in addition to a
paperclip what else should people carry with them um look I know electricity are
a scary little thing guys and we’re we tend to be chemists and think about things from a mechanical or a plumbing
standpoint but we have to learn to be electricians as well at least to an extent so I’m going to say you really
need a multimeter and you need to understand some of the functions of it so that you can measure the voltage
output of a plug to make sure you’ve got power coming out there you can measure across a fuse to see if the fuse has
popped if it’s if it’s blown also you can measure for your low your lower voltage DC measurements the DC part of
each circuit powers all those outside devices and understanding that that’s there you have to use a multimeter to do
that the other thing we’ve we’ve come up with is a some of these multimeters have the ability to measure what we call
frequency Hertz 60 Hertz power comes out of your house so the Hertz is the frequency and by using that function we
can determine if paddlewheel water meters are functioning correctly and giving you the correct output over time
so get a multimeter I don’t care if it’s a five dollar multimeter with just volts and ohms on it or if it’s a nice fluke
or one of the fancier meters it has Hertz and the frequency capability get a multimeter learn to use it and I’m
telling you what if you call Lakewood and you’ve got a multimeter and you say I know nothing about this can you tell
me what to do with it I will walk you through we will walk you through the settings on it and what they mean and
what they can do for you so you don’t have to be an electrical engineer but by having that meter in hand and
understanding some of the basic settings like we go back to that me having you troubleshoot on site and I can say put
this lead here put this lead here what to say okay the real problem is the building management system is trashing
my controller so you need and here’s proof to the customer show him that or yeah your you’ve got plenty of voltage
out but the pumps not working but you’ve got the voltage out so you have a problem in the pump by by having that
multimeter you’re doing the test I would do if I was standing there even if you don’t understand all the intricacies of
the device I can have you get it set up to where we can do the troubleshooting so it is a tool that you’re going to
need for the future and and I think one of the last things especially with the modern controller is you need to have an
Ethernet cable and here’s why so many of these controllers are now Internet
Ethernet capable and that cable especially one that’s out in the Sun is so 14 you get a little dinged up and one
of your troubleshooting steps may be swap the cable out so having a working ethernet cable may save you a lot of
hassle and if you swap the cable out with a known cable you can then go to
their IT guy if it’s still not doing this thing and say hey it’s not the controller it’s not cable it’s something
you’ve done buddy and in the few years we’ve been doing Ethernet connectivity internet and intranet connectivity IT
people are not our friends they’re not the controller guys friend they are not the field man’s friend because they do a
lot of crazy stuff to mess us up not our first rodeo we’ll get to walk through it but you’re going to need some basic
tools so we can get you walk through a trace and I know more and more people are putting their controllers online
because it just saves us so much time and we’re able to make adjustments and see what’s going on in the system
without actually going there so if you don’t have one of those controllers on your systems I’m pretty sure you’re
going to get one pretty soon yeah yeah it’s coming wave it is your customers are demanding it they like centralized
monitoring they you you as a water treatable it is a great tool for you to
optimize your time usage it’s out there it’s here to stay and we’ve better you’re comfortable with
being able to troubleshoot and support them so Tom one of the things that you do very well at the AWT training is you
teach people how to properly diagnose why a fuse is blowing a certain relay I
think that’s a fantastic tip for everybody to know would you mind sharing that with our audience oh sure yeah it’s
one of my face kind of analogies or step when you’ve blown a fuse on a controller you’re
going to use three fuses to fix it and here’s why you’re going to bring the properly sized
and properly rated fuses to the site and let’s back up half a second say all of
your equipment be it pumps via controllers being it integrating devices anything that’s got a fuse on it you
need to pull that fuse out and look at the voltage and amperage rating write it down get online and buy a little box of
those fuses and throw them in your tool bag every piece of equipment it isn’t like the old days where we could run
down to RadioShack and get that kind of fuse the hardware stores aren’t carry em as often now RadioShack has disappeared
so you need to have those fuses in hand and every time you troubleshoot a fuse you’re going to need three and here’s
why the first fuse is you go up there and you replace the fuse that blew but
before you turn anything on you’re gonna unplug everything on the controller meaning all of the high-voltage stuff
the 1:10 stuff unplug it all of the stuff down the right side those typically have removable plugs your low
voltage stuff your water meters your flow switches your sensors unplug all that stuff so it’s just the controller
no integration at all just the controller power it up fuse doesn’t pop okay it’s not the
controller then step number two start putting in on your low voltage stuff one at a time as you put on these low
voltage devices if it pops the fuse the thing you just put on that’s your problem typically we find that that’s
the like the water meters that are drawing a little juice or the 4 to 20 milliamp output going to a building
management system but so that’s popped the fuse now you’re going to pull that thing off you’re going to mark it and
say don’t install this this needs troubleshooting and you’re going to put the next fuse back into your back up and
running so now you’ve used two views –is here’s what the Hawaii say it’s the third fuse the customer sites going to
come up and go oh there’s nothing wrong with that and you’re gonna have to demonstrate it one more time
I fly to get it in popping the fuse pulling it off and replacing the fuse there is your third fuse so you’re going
to need three fuses almost every time to do this basic popping fuse troubleshooting and I will caveat this
one more in one more step and on our baseline controllers we actually have two fuses per controller ones us a
low-voltage fuse a low amperage 100 milliamp that’s for all the control circuitry and one of them is a 10 amp
and that’s for all the pumps so by distinguishing which one blue you may
have the origin of your problem pretty quickly as an example if the low voltage one isn’t blown but the the 10 amp – the
pumps are blown then probably an accessory device blowdown valve or pump
is popping it and the same troubleshooting steps are required you unplug all the devices you power it up
it doesn’t pop you plug in the devices they don’t pop then you power each device on one at a time until it pops
one of them is gonna pop pull that bad boy out market don’t install it again until it’s fixed so that that’s kind of
the my philosophy about fused troubleshooting but again I will say it
again every piece of equipment you touch or you’re responsible for if this got a fuse it behooves you to find out the
rating on that fuse the style of that fuse and put a little bag of them there five bucks for a set put that in your
kit because you’re gonna need them at some point in time I don’t care how long you’ve been in the water treatment industry that is a great tip and that
$5.00 bag of fuses could possibly save you an entire day of service so that
that’s well worth its weight in gold I would say alright on those are some great troubleshooting tips and for those
of you keeping track that we need to have a paper clip in our tool bag a bag of fuses in our tool bag and a
multimeter anything else we need to keep in there one of the last things in it I know it’s kind of an off thing not
readily accessible but hey dig what we call a decade box it’s what it is is
it’s got a bunch of ohm value zones being resistance and every conductivity
sensor conductance is the inverse of resistance resistance is measured in
ohms by having that decade from any of the manufacturers you can get an equivalency chart a certain
amount of resistance across probe tips equals a certain amount of conductivity and it’s really cool to use that decade
box for troubleshooting because if you dial in a specific number 2,000 micrometers which may equal let’s say
200 ohms of resistance and you walk away from the controller and come back in 20
minutes and it’s dead and that’s on that kind of tells you that the controller is ready to read but if the controller is
wandering around with a fixed value resistor hey there’s a problem inside the controller versus an outside in the
system we lake would actually include a little simulator with some fixed value resistors in our easy service kit which
is kind of handy to use and sometimes it’s compatible with other manufacturers but regardless if you don’t have a user
and other manufacturers controllers getting that decade box that ability to dial in a resistance values and scale it
go low mid and high with revista values and then see those reactions on the screen that’s a really a big deal that’s
that’s an easy troubleshooting tip and a great walkaway to serve for if you’re going to go to lunch and come back and
make sure that things are nice and steady while you’re not around well Tom would you say that a lot of the problems
we as water treaters face are due to the way that they were originally installed I think that’s it’s really addictive on
a boiler system the cooling tower it can be let me let me kind of one of our big
issues is outside of the box outside of the sensor is aeration in the water and
people go aeration you’re crazy no I’m not crazy we’ve run tests on this
we’ve simulated it we’ve injected air into the system what happens is let’s
say I’ve got a cooling tower set up our controller set up and I’ve got block valves incoming block valves on and off
valves to cut off the flow and by the way if you don’t install them during the initial installation you’ll install them
later because you got to have those black valves to cut off the flow and the back drain for when you want to remove
the sensors and stuff for maintenance but so I’ve got these two block valves an incoming one an exit one I always say
any coming valve wide open exit valve you use it to kind of neck off your flow if I have my incoming
valve partially open I have a vortex formed on the backside of that valve and that vortex causes aeration aeration in
the water is not like fit hankie bubbles it’s where the water becomes aerated enough that the value of the water going
through my sensor tips is changed because it has a more insular quality I can’t conduct electricity through air
and now I have injected air into the water that lowers my reading so having
an installation that aeration or allows creation to form and come through across my sensor tip is a problem it could be
caused by a half-open valve it can be caused by having 75 bends in the pipe from the draw point to the exit point it
could be caused by an in your main pump your research pump cavitating a whole
bunch it could be caused by a really clogged up why strainer that will lower my reading so these are that that
aeration is inconsistent it happens at odd times it happens under loading and
it’s something you have to take into account when you’re installing the system and we were just at a site where
they ran it through pipe that was one inch to 3/4 inch to one inch well that’s that’s an orifice basically that’s
aeration half open valves some kind of goofy weird filter up through a coupon rack that was all sized differently by
the time it hit my sensor it was just a jeté ‘td aerated water we pulled the sensor out of the system put it in a cup
of water nice and steady breadward we’re supposed to put it back in the system turn the water on drop like a rock
there’s your proof it’s the and by but by the time they got done they gave you
a nice straight run into my sensor and they put all the other stuff afterwards my readings steadied out they were
really happy with it after that so that’s part of that installation procedure on the the cooling tower on
the boiler man every collation has issues but if you follow the
manufacturers recommended plumbing and don’t get creative and don’t use different sized piping and follow the
restriction requirements to keep the water water on our side of the motorized bookshelf you will have a lot less
problems so I am adora T of our issue or where someone calls up and says hey
I’m Casey calibration it never seems to control we do a couple of three tests
with you like we’ve outlined before we do a solid test we do a resistor test boy those all look good but your is your
plumbing like our drawing and invariably the guy will say yeah exactly well except for this one part and the
except for this one part is is I’m ninety nine percent of time the problem
they’ve gotten cute they went up when they should have gone down they went small when they should have saved the
same size they’ve got seventeen valves open that tweak control they mounted our sensor
vertically instead of horizontally at the bottom of a run they didn’t follow the plumbing direction and my first
conversation with you is going to be when you get the plumbing like our drawing we can help you troubleshoot and until
then it’s really a you know excuse me it’s a crapshoot about whether we’re going to solve the problem because
what’s introducing the issue whether it’s the plumbing or the setup that or the controller at that point so given
the plumbing right in a boiler situation is absolutely key and follow the manufacturers recommended plumbing setup
and hand it to that plumbing guy and say follow this and if he tries to get cute beating with a hammer and say put it
like this drawing because it’s got to be like it’s got to be at Tom that brings up an interesting point because a lot of
our listeners are relatively new to the water treatment industry so they’re going up maybe being in the business
less than a year and they’re talking to this pipe fitter who’s been doing this for 30-something years and he can’t be
taught anything else new what advice would you give to that new water treat or when they’re trying to have that
conversation with that pipe fitter well first of all you can get us on the phone
and we will fax an email and text them the drawing and we will be your expert
because we’ve been doing this a while so we really kind of do know what our equipment does and we will say things
like no it has to be like this and anything else is a failure and the guy even though you may have two years
experience the guy on the phone with you specifically myself or Paul or one of the other guys has
fifteen to 20 years experience now the other thing we did in our new controllers is we included a picture a
color picture in the screen so for the for the young water creature on that he just goes our little documentation
section pulls it up on the screen and he could just sit there and point at that and doesn’t really have to stay much he
can say hey that’s from the manufacturer and that’s what it’s supposed to look like but where your horsepower where is
the experts it’s our equipment we know how it works best and we’re ready to go go to the mat with you guys so that you can succeed
and I’m going to be I’m going to let the work or the cat out of the bag here my
priority as an equipment manufacturer are the chemical water treatment or the water treatment specialist you guys are
my customer so I need you to succeed the end-user while my concern is that he has
a reliable piece of equipment it needs to perform for you so you can concede with him so you are my priority so when
he an end-user gripes at me about something I’m more concerned with what your concerns are and is making you
successful in that account all of our equipment is oriented that way all of our service is oriented towards the
water treaters succeeding and keep that in mind when you’re dealing with us we are on your side we are not going to be
adversarial if you make it adversarial however my equipments not taking the
heat for a failure that’s actually an installation issues and we will walk you through that so so we heard about how
the Lakewood controller was on the NACA Nishi towers for years and years and
years and years but even that one eventually needed to be upgraded there was new stuff that came out how often
should a controller be upgraded oh man I so so since our stuff lasts forever
it’s really difficult to do if something’s working for you it’s hard to get away from and on a customer site you
know we get the call from the guy this is I’m just not I’m not changing this thing out we still have a time of the
little dial up model what we call 101 you know one little screen one little function they’re out there
as a water treat or may go into that site and say you really need to upgrade and the guys gonna look at them and go this works leave it alone that’s that’s
a difficult one that’s a hard sell I think the real thing becomes after seven
eight ten twelve years it isn’t that the the controller is not reliable in doing
this job but man you’re getting up against that time frame where after years of use and abuse she’s going to
give up the ghost at some point and she ain’t gonna do it in front of you she’s not gonna do it while you’re there and
when she gives up the ghost it’s a it’s a risk reward you know what’s at risk if I take this controller and I turn it off
right now what happens and how long can I be away from it before it becomes
almost catastrophic and that’s the conversation you need to have with your customer now he may say well that could
be any controller but you could say look this controllers lasted 12 years 13 years I’m gonna buy it from the same
manufacturer but a newer technology same sort of support and so forth so let’s talk about advancing this thing into the
future now the other thing you’ve got going for you when you talk about that interchange is with the new technologies
you remote communications building integration is huge being able to talk
directly to the building management system with not only one piece of data like the conductivity but the
conductivity the relays the water meter readings alarm situations all that stuff
being pushed into their building management system and it isn’t even that those guys are on site necessarily
looking at it the the the new new age of information says that there’s a guy at a
headquarters building that owns 15 of these buildings he’s got a nice cool dashboard set up he’s looking at all
those building management system and he wants to see that data he wants to know because he’s he’s liable for it there’s
there’s if one of these things goes down production-wise is it like a data center or something he needs to know what
caused it he needs to know that it’s heading in the wrong direction things are heading in the wrong direction so this building management is integration
is key and upgrading to that building management integration with a controller capable of it is part of your sales
pitch now let’s got half a second here and talk about the business models a water creature
that that’s kind of I’m going to say that we talked about this in the training a lot tres the guy that does the same thing
year-over-year you know what I mean versus the guy that’s that’s doing advancing his business every year it’s
kind of explained in the guy that does the repeat thing the same thing every year 50 times does isn’t really
advancing himself or his business he’s just taking care of business versus the guy that saying I want new
technologies I want to optimize my time I want to optimize my chemical usage I want to get more and more customers
under my wing I want to be able to take care of them quicker that guy’s changing he’s not doing the same thing every year if you’re not a do
the same thing every year guy you’ve got to talk about remote communications with controllers and that’s a good
conversation to have with your customer as well because your customer may want
you on site 24/7 you can’t afford to do that you there’s not enough people and
amount of monetary justification for that but the controller is you 24/7 so
that with the controller being you 24/7 now we have the ability with these modern controllers to pull in a data log
of everything going on and send that data log out we’re also now able to
remotely dial into these controllers and function them just like you’re standing in front of them so let’s talk about
that that for half a second if you get a call from a customer and he says hey
trace the inhibitor that we’re feeding we marked it the other day and it’s just not going down and so the first
inclination is you’re you’re driving over to plant B it’s like all right I got to cut my day short I’m gonna go
over to plant a and figure out what’s going on because these guys aren’t introducing chemistry in the modern era
instead you pull up your smart phone use a pin to the controller over the 3G
wireless and you a say to the guy I’m gonna go ahead and turn some things on and off where you stand in there and he
says yeah so you turn on the pump you say is the pump pumping he goes yep okay I’m gonna turn on the blow down as a
blow down blowing down he says yep you notice the conductivity goes down you go alright I made up water but you also
look at the screen and it says the water meter accumulation didn’t go up so you let it run for a minute more
and you go okay buddy here’s what I think’s going on I think we’ve got something wrong with our water meter since I was feeding chemistry based on a
water meter of accumulation what I’m gonna do I’m gonna alter the setting I’m gonna feed it based on time instead I’m
gonna give it a little extra juice I tell you what next Thursday when I come out there on my regular visit I’ll bring
a water meter with me we’ll get you back up and running now what does that technologist do for you it lets you keep
your day it lets you stay on target with your current workload and when you filled your customer that you took curve
remotely you’re going to have the right part in your hand to keep them going and as for that customer is concerned you
satisfied because he’s up and running and you didn’t have to make your trip out there you took care of him in
minutes instead of hours and now you’re going to come out and service him correctly later that’s where this new technology comes in for the chemical
water treatment specialist we are going to let you optimize your time respond accordingly remotely access the
controllers to make adjustments and tweak and make valid decisions about how to continue on with your business that
day that’s where we’re at Trey’s yeah it’s fascinating what you can do now that you couldn’t do years ago in fact
some of my friends in AWT that are up in New York they couldn’t run their
programs with the Legionella laws that they have up there without remote control so again if you don’t have this
kind of capability on your accounts it’s coming yeah it is and I we’ve actually
dealt with some smaller water creatures and they won’t go into an account where they can’t do this it’s a big data start
with that we’re going to install this controller yeah it’s a little more expensive but this is what we’re going
to be and if the customer fed back to them well we don’t really want to start there the water treater says well we’re
not a good match we do this is my business model this is how I support you best by having this remote access if we
can’t start there then we’re destined for failure right off the bat so you know let me know when you’re ready to
play my game the way it needs to be played and I’ll help you I’ll support you and it’s a hard road to take but
that model works for that water treater and now he can service a bunch of accounts simultaneously that he
wouldn’t have been able to service if you had to drive to each account to check it out working smarter and not harder huh exactly and that’s where all
this sizzling cool functionary color screen graphic II stuff is at its really great
for the end user because it helps their look professional feel professional and know that they’ve got the highest technology device they can but the real
reason it’s there is so that the water treatment company can succeed because we’re going to hand them every piece of
technology we can to optimize their time and their customer great point well speaking of Technology one of my
favorite features in the Lakewood controllers is this feature called the
Blackmore equation do you take care to tell our audience about that one that’s a very cool thing okay III attended the
classes I treated the 8 AP classes initiative when I went to them as a possible sales Avenue it was a chance to
meet all the water treaters in the industry the up-and-coming folks the established folks I would sit in the back of the class and learn and relearn
things and trace one time now again we are Equipment Manufacturer we have
people that feed biocides based on a schedule everybody knows how it works we’ve included the feature forever and
trace gets up and throws this this thing on the board he says here’s how you really figure out how to do a proper pre
bleed before you feed your bi aside so that everything lines up at the end of the thing at the end of this speech time
and I looked at what he wrote up there and I went huh hang on a minute that’s right and by taking a couple of
three factors into account you could do some math and work out what you should do your pre feed set point for your pre
blowdown set point based on the amount of time you’re going to feed your chemistry and the amount of time you were going to have a lockout running and
so that detail into the process you pretty much land right on your normal operating set point so what we did was
we took traces formulation after a quick call to them and we included it that function that math functionality in our
nexus control system so if someone has a question about where I should set my pre please up they just go to a second
screen punching the tower information and using the the black or meant that I call it it gives them the number so that’s the kind of the
cool stuff that can go on today I really think it’s a slick way to approach a trace I really think the equation is
just awesome I’m just happy that people are staying awake in my math class Tom
you are a very complex person and there’s some people out there that don’t
know that you are a famous writer would you care to tell our audience about that famous I know about using this I am a
ravenous infamous infamous infamous I can live with it probably fits a little closer for years I actually used to edit
a motorcycle magazine a biker magazine and for the longest time as an editor
and a writer for that people would poke the N say you used to write a book you should write a book so I did I just
wrote the thing I love more which is I love riding my motorcycle I love hanging
out with my biker buddies but when it comes to reading I enjoy sci-fi so I am the the will probably one and only biker
nerd out there and I write okay I write sci-fi and fantasy books we it became a
thing I apparently I’m reasonably good at it and I actually was able this last time around or write one with my son him
and I’ve never physically been in the same room together but we through Skype and through the Dropbox he’s in
Australia we actually wrote a sci-fi book and published it so it’s very cool it’s very relaxing it lets your brain go
I’m a creative guy anyways like I said I designed the liquid equipment and part
of that effort on a continual basis so this just lets me kind of go crazy and and I have to say one of the side
benefits of being an author is you can pretty much kill whoever you dislike without actually harming them they they
could die a pretty grisly death in a book and you can smile about it so go ahead and give a plug for your books
what are their names the first book I wrote is called threads it’s a space opera thriller the base 2500 the Year
2500 we’re rocking across the galaxy there’s a psycho-killer kind of going
across the galaxy as well doing some horrible things and USS Marshall services set after him to
find him but in the process they discover a 300 year old cover-up and I will leave it there because that’s where
the technology and the story takes off well the one thing I will say about this this book is that halfway through the
book when you think you’ve got it dialed in it all gets turned on its head and you call me a very bad name as you’re
reading it because you have to go back and read some other parts in the book to make sure I didn’t cheat and I didn’t
but it’s a very very cool book as for my first effort it’s about 500 pages so it’s a thick read what they call space
opera and then blood of a video the one I wrote with my son that’s avians vampires and werewolves oh
my we took the genre of paranormal
horror and we made them alien species instead of your kind of your undead thing and we start with a race of
vidiians vampires that conquered the galaxy years and years ago and then they disappear and then one of them reappears
on earth and we pick up the story from there and it’s it was it was exciting and fun to work mice on it it’s a really
unique twist on the genre and it’s going to be actually a series of books so kind of excited about it we have a lot of
newer water treaters that listen to our show is there any advice that you could give them to help them start it out I’m
gonna say use the tools and use the manufacturers for your success whether
it’s the pump manufacturers talking to them and understanding the equipment that the the equipment manufacturers the
aw3 is a great resource of getting on listserv is a great resource there are a ton of tools and a ton of people that
are willing to step up behind you and help you succeed and be a better water
treater and have a better understanding of the tools that we’re giving you so that’s kind of the first thing I’d say
and the other thing I’d say is make sure your customer sees you do every time I
know that that’s kind of a side piece of advice but if you’ve been to the site done your thing and left and you didn’t
interact customer I think you messed up I think you need to shake hands you need to walk around and and on every site visit make
sure your customer sees you and you interact with them so that they know you were there taking care of him and they
had an opportunity to tell you about something that was going on right or wrong so that’s that don’t be in a hurry
don’t be introverted be outgoing with your customers and be ready to use the
resources that are available to you just grab them up and you learn so great advice and folks I’m here to tell you if
you’re not talking to your customers somebody else is oh yeah so I like to end each interview with kind of a bonus
question just to try to get a little bit more insight into who our guest actually is so are you ready for this bonus
question sure sure sure sure all right so if you could have a conversation with anyone throughout history who would it
be and why man-boy there’s some
low-lying fruit in there but I think that a lot of the people I would talk to autobiographies and stuff kind of let it
out I think the one that I probably would be the most interested in which I’d like to sit down with Ben Franklin I
think a conversation with that guy at the time when he was integral to the
birth of the country but also a somewhat of an inventor an adventurer a little bit of a ladies man and the political
intrigue that he was part of I think that would just be an excellent conversation plus I bet toss him back a
few with Ben would just be an awesome experience I think I think that’s probably who I would have the most
relevant conversation with where they wouldn’t be talking I mean having a conversation with Stephen Hawking would be great I’d be talking a mile over your
head and then you know talking to tilde huh maybe pretty much about moving things on the round on the map and who you were gonna kill next so I think I
think Ben Franklin would be an awesome person to have a conversation with well Tom one thing’s for sure and you are an
awesome person to have a conversation with I really appreciate you coming on the show incredible advice and tips of
honestly I think if we have you back you probably have a lot more that you haven’t given us would you mind coming back at a later show absolutely and I
hope that anybody listens to the show probably emails you and any questions if nothing
else that you approve our tech letters and if they’ve got we do newsletters and stuff if they’ve got questions in there
love to get that feedback and come back again and answer those questions and kind of cover some of the ground that maybe we didn’t cover today absolutely
excellent why our website is
www.seannal.com
of their day to come spin a little bit of time with us to make us understand
something better so thanks Tom for doing that and you better believe I’m gonna
have Tom back to tell us about some more tips and tricks that are gonna make our
lives a little bit easier now Tom threw out a bunch of ideas and parts and
things that you might not have had an opportunity to jot down after all we’re
driving around from account to account so don’t worry I’m gonna have a list of everything that Tom mentioned on our
website wwlp.com I’ll even put some
videos on there on two links on how to use the multimeter and I’ll share with you the multimeter that we use here as a
company nothing really fancy about it it’s fairly inexpensive but we had some good success so all of those things I
want to put on the website so you don’t have to worry about finding them if not it’s a good starting point for you to
start to build your tool kit so you have everything you need right there when you’re performing the service and you
don’t have to come back later what a great tip to have some of these things
in your tool bag so you can call the representative or customer service right there on the spot and get an answer
before you even leave if we didn’t have to go back to accounts how much time would that save us that’s all going to
be on the website so please after you’ve checked out all those notes on the site please go over to the show
ideas page and let me know what you want to talk about next week what type of questions you might have remember I’m
never going to tell your name over the air so you don’t have to worry about being embarrassed
I have asked so many questions that I’m glad I asked even though there was a
risk of me being embarrassed by asking them I might even tell some of those stories sometimes those were interesting
but I was better for it you don’t have to worry about that I’m not gonna use your name on the air let me know what
questions you have I’ll get them answered let me know who you want me to talk to I’ll get them on
the phone so we can have this conversation I appreciate thanks so much for joining
us on [Music]