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[Music] foreign [Music]
is proudly sponsored by the rising tide Mastermind the rising tide Mastermind is
one of my favorite things that I look forward to each and every week because I
get to see people that have my best interest in mind I know this because I
have their best interest in mind and when you get people together in a room
like that you can just imagine how people want to help other people if this
sounds like something you want to learn more about go to scalinguph2o.com forward slash Mastermind
welcome to the scaling up H2O podcast the podcast where we scale up on knowledge so we don’t scale up our
systems I’m your host Trace Blackmore and Nation I love bringing this podcast
to you each and every week and I love it because I go to trade shows and I meet
so many of you so many of you are so generous with your time and you let me
know what this podcast means to you and I get to meet so many new people in the
scaling up nation and if you’re new to this podcast that is what you are we are
all part of a tribe and that tribe is the scaling up nation and as I mentioned
so many of you come up to me let me know that you listen to this podcast let me
know things that you’ve tried because of this podcast you let me know things that you want future podcasts to cover and I
just love all of that and one of the things that I hear all the time is thank
you so much for putting in one place all of these different conventions all these
different trade shows that are going on around the world we had no idea that
there was this much stuff going on in water until you told us about it here on
the podcast well nation that means so much to me because this was something we
put together somebody had asked us to do it we didn’t know if it was going to be successful or not and then so many
people started commenting on it our team really went to work to put together a
resource on scaling up h2o.com helping you find out what’s going on in our
industry so with that I also try to go to a lot of these conferences and
through the word of mouth of you a lot of these conferences are finding us now
and letting us know that they want to be promoted on this show several of them
have even asked for me to come and cover their show by taking the microphone
around their exhibit hall and talking to all of the people walking around and
I’ve done that on several shows let me tell you those are some of the most difficult shows that I do because
normally we have 60 plus clips that we all have to bring together the trade
show floor is extremely noisy so we’ve had to invest in equipment to try to cut
out some of that noise as it’s being recorded and then of course we have one of the best audio engineers in the
industry that helps make that sound just like that noise wasn’t there in most
cases and all of that just to tell you there’s a lot of work that goes on through through that but it is worth it
because I get to meet so many people I might have met you that way but I did
meet our next guest that way so I’m not going to introduce our next guest right
now I want to keep you in a little bit of suspense but I am going to let you know that I did reach out to our guest
years before I met them because I was so
impressed with the educational material that they were putting out and the fun
spin that they were putting on it that I wanted to use it in our training
material in fact it was Mark Lewis most requested guest on scaling up H2O just
ask him he’ll tell you and Mark was the one that found these gentlemen and all
the materials that they put out and then I went and asked him if we could use it in our training they said of course you
could and then it was years later that I got to meet them at a trade show and let
me tell you they knew how to put together a trade show it was some of the most fun in the entire exhibit hall I
know you’re wondering who it is that I am talking about so we are going to go
straight in to the interview here it is folks [Music]
My Lab Partners are Steve Taylor and Richie Ware of wear boiler welcome gentlemen thank you appreciate it nice
to be here well I have been huge fans of all of the content that you have put out
over the internet in fact with your permission we use those to train other water treatment professionals and uh I
just want to thank you for all the knowledge that you all are putting out in the community appreciate that uh something that we
started years ago and you know we’re up to almost 800 plus videos
um out on YouTube and 10 million views and really didn’t go at it thinking that
we were it was gonna I don’t want to say blow up that’s not a good thing in the boiler industry that is not a good word
but we didn’t we just didn’t realize that you know just how many people out there were just looking for this
information but you know I’ve grown up that boilers were cool right A lot of people don’t know anything about boilers and and even how they affect our lives
and boilers are so important in our everyday life and uh you know we wanted to be a company that is a resource to
the industry we’ve got so many folks here that have lots of tenure and been
here a long time Stephen’s over 40 years been in this business and you know I wanted to try to share that with people
because it it’s so awesome to work in a company to have the knowledge that we have at the company to be able to really
draw on so we start but let’s do the YouTube and the steam culture right really came up with you know we thought
well how do we really come up with something to where Steam and culture intersect and that’s why it’s called
steam culture and really just wanted to come up with things in the industry because I always think it’s very cool
when I’m talking to people and finding out how they use steam to make their products I could just sit and listen for
hours because there’s so many different things you know out there that you made by by Steam and so that’s why we came up
with the steam culture and made a little more you know a Bill Nye Science Guy fun or whatever and that’s what Brent does and and then the boiling point of course
is much more technical to where I get to interview the industry professionals and you know tell us a little bit about what
they know I think that they are great well before we go on let’s go ahead and introduce you properly to the scaling up
Nation so Stephen why don’t we start with you uh what do you want the scaling up Nation to know about Stephen
I started as basic as you could get with where I started as a welder back in the
shop and you know took the shop Foreman’s job in about a year and a half and then in 1988 they moved me into
sales and I was I’m an old country boy I just I grew up learning to to do stuff
with nothing you’ve got to make things work you’ve got to put the tractor back together you got to make the Baler work whatever it is you just you make it work
and so that was my background uh moving in from the mechanical side and and I
just you know I did what I had to do and my goal in life I’m one of 10 kids and
I’m number six I’m dead in the middle so when you’re a middle child the only way you can stand out is to work harder and
run faster and do things quicker than anybody else in the family so that was my goal in life was when I and I still
do it if I’m walking down the street I’ve got to be in front if I’m driving down the highway I get a lot of speeding tickets I’ve got to be in front I I
can’t run behind people I’ve got to be lead people and that’s that’s where that
started from and you know and I’m not a Salesman by Nature I’m a technical guy
so if you told me when I was in my 20s and 30s that I’m going to be a Salesman one day I told you you’re crazy yourself
they’re Crooks they’re you know used car salesman you can’t trust those guys and that was my mentality it’s just being a
country boy that’s where it was and but then I moved into sales and then took the um sales manager’s job in 91 and and
then moved in the executive management uh sales and and Technical piece of the business and that’s where I’ve been
since then so it’s been been a great run and I’ve had a had a lot of fun doing it in 40 be 41 years too I’ve been here so
how about that yeah it’s uh now what he was describing as a as a country boy
that that’s what we call hilljack engineering and he does walk fast if you’re trying
to get in an airport or whatever I mean I am I you know I’m tall I got long legs and and I I cannot keep up with him or
his wife his wife is I think she’s faster than you RC yeah yeah she she learned when first dating me that if you
want to keep up with me and get to the drive you know where we’re going you need to step it up and then my kids are the same way they have to walk real fast
and everybody complains oh slow down where you going to the fire no you’ll keep up with me come on
that’s awesome Richie how about you well obviously been around the business all my life and my you know our my dad
was second generation in the business and so I actually had a little uh service tech uniform uh when I was what
probably six seven years old you know we used to be green and the uniforms were green and
so I had my little service tech uniform the thing of it is I did not become a service tech
um I’m not you know a technical guy I love the marketing the promotions um talking about our products very proud
of our family obviously and proud of our company and our employees but I came back to the business about 27 years ago
now and you know I went to college and I’m business management and I got a sports management degree and and then I
played a little I got to play college baseball I got to play a little pro baseball and so after being released I
actually coached college for four years full-time in Nashville and then we started having kiddos started thinking
about getting back into the area and we came back up here 27 years ago and I took the business over about 24 years
ago and started running it I actually worked for Stephen throughout my history he was a shop the shop foreman and
taught me good and bad habits just just a tremendous Mentor he’s he’s taught us a ton and he’s so very very loyal to our
business and to our family and just been a blessing to our company if you would tell us a little bit about
where boiler well our tag is always Steam and when that means two ways all ways Steam and
then always steam right so there’s two different meanings of that and you know we do a lot of different things we we
obviously repair and we service but we really picked this training thing up it’s been
almost 30 years ago Stephen right yeah about 30 years ago we started doing the
training thing obviously the rental business is a great business for us we love that love that business of course
we’ve grown quite a bit and it is very Capital intensive of course but we rent
boilers we we do steam we also rent hot water boilers as well we have a large
parts inventory and have recently started an e-commerce store about four
or five years ago that’s really become hot out there if you will and it’s called boilerwarehouse.com and we have
just tons of uh tons of Parts but the cool thing about the the parts business though is that we have all these inside
Specialists that understand the business they’re not just taking an order they
understand the business and can really help out people that are looking for certain items and so we have about six
inside sales people that just you know answer phones all day long and you know it’s we’ve got a like I said a large
inventory of parts in stock that a lot of people people maybe not have so we do have some buying power that we that we
use we also have a valve shop and we’re actually a customer of ourselves on the
relief valves and the gates non-returns the guys are out there always repairing and but also setting the relief Valves
and and then we do that of course for the customers so we’ve got we service in
Indiana Kentucky Tennessee Georgia Alabama we rent nationally really internationally but mostly nationally
and we’re the strong we’re strong more east of the Rockies I would say on the rental side so as I said the repair we
do pressure vessel we do combustion setting am I touching everything Stephen
I think I got it all large inventory of new equipment yeah as well yeah so we
carry about um almost 25 to 30 boilers just stock ready to go anywhere from 50 horsepower
all the way up to 2500 horsepower that that is sitting ready to be bought of
course and so we have those and again that’s just for the again we want to be a resource to the to the people with
information but also you know if a plant is down it is costing a lot of money and
we take that very serious here in our in our approach our urgency that we have as
far as how we how we help but then also just to draw off what my my grandfather was just such a servant and he was a
servant of of people and so we tried to keep that same type of service to our customers of being more of a servant
instead of just providing a service if someone were to go to your website they would see that it’s not just a
bunch of information there’s a lot of fun baked in there of course all of the all of the training materials that you
put out there’s a lot of fun it’s obvious that fun is part of your culture how do you do that
well I would say you know in some people they have to drink to have fun right I’m I’m not a drinker but we just we just
have a great time I mean why you know why why do you go to work every day and just not want to have fun I guess but we
for us it’s always we wanted to try to provide a an environment and a culture for our people to be able to feel like
they you know belong to something special and so we’ve done this stuff here where we’ve done the goofy videos
and things like that with our employees and then we just started kind of doing some stuff out in the uh out in the
YouTube and we saw that people you know do like that but the boiler industry I mean it was it was very stale Steven
Wright I mean when I you came in it’s very stale industry and blacksmith and and so I guess I just wanted to you know
change and have a little fun with it or like you’ve seen our booths and everything at the trade shows and you
know sometimes we’ll have videos going on there they’re fun and and then you know popcorn we always have the best
candy and give away t-shirts we’ve got some amazing t-shirts that just the the
industry like boilerby tripping and nobody handles the pressure like we do can’t take the heat get out of my Boiler
Room just things like that they’ll always just come up with I’m a baseball guy right so baseball guys have T-shirts I’ve got I’m reminded all the time my
wife tells me you got 130 t-shirts that are sitting on my shelf and I can’t wear them all but I I just can’t get rid of
them love t-shirts so let’s talk a little bit about the relationship from the manufacturer’s representative to the
industrial water treater so obviously we’ve got a bunch of industrial water traders that listen to this podcast what
are some of the things that you think we should be talking about today that they need to know maybe there’s some
terminology you say one thing they say something else how can we bring our two
groups together the biggest thing is for them to understand what the end users process is because
they can’t take a canned system and expect it to work for everybody out
there that that’s a recipe for disaster if if you have one site that’s got RO water another size got demineralized
water another place only has water softeners they have to have a different treatment program for each one of those
different processes if if one site has superheated steam another site they really don’t care about that about the
saturated quality of the steam they just care about the pressure it takes pressure to do what they’re doing another site it’s all about temperature
they have to have dry steam so they that’s the biggest thing they have to understand the process and what the
customer is doing or everybody’s in trouble everything starts with the water if you don’t have good water on the
front end you don’t have a good processor good Steam on the back end so it’s it’s got to start from the front
end and you have to get it right on the you know it’s it’s like uh starting a car up and and having water in the gas
if you start out bad it’s going to end bad you’ve got to have it right on the front end of course water treaters are always
testing the water and uh we know as just as you said it’s knowing the equipment
it’s knowing the process it’s knowing everything about why that customer has that boiler in there so instead of just
testing the water we also need to be looking things like uh stack temperatures and we start seeing the
stack temperatures go up we know less is going into the the water and that means that something is dirty a lot of times
we’ll assume that it might be some dirt on the water side but maybe it is not maybe it’s on the burner side that’s
where you guys come in what’s the process when uh you’re maintaining a
healthy Fireside of the boiler what do we need to know in order to do that and
uh how do we how do we help each other out around that topic we tell people all the time like you mentioned stack
temperature is the quickest way to find out if you have a heat conversion problem and to your point it can be
scaling the water side or it can be soot and build up on the Fireside so watching your stack temperature is the best thing
to do the thing that needs to be done to keep that combustion side right is
monitoring O2 have an O2 trim system on there that monitors it for you or have someone come
in every month to make sure the combustion is right if you don’t do that if you know once a year that’s what
people been doing if you don’t understand how much one or two percentage points loss in efficiency
cost you run those numbers for a year and see what it is when you run those
numbers and see what fuel is costing you that you’re wasting rolling out the stack you’ll you’ll bring someone in
every month to monitor to to check that make sure the O2 is right make sure the combustion is right make sure the
linkages are not locking up just all the things that a combustion expert knows what to do those are the things that
have to be monitored and checked on a regular basis and also some of the new technology you
know just with Servo Motors can really help the burner to stay you know in tune and keep that combustion right I mean
it’s like a technician on site right um and you know I know we actually work with auto flame and and it’s just been
an amazing product for us but you know there’s other systems out there but you know we really do need to probably get
away from the linkage stuff and and get moving to the servo absolutely and that’s one thing if you have a linkage
system that you need to get out of your supplier whoever your your borrower supplier is your water service company
and talk to them about putting a parallel positioning system in putting servos in and get getting rid of
those linkages because you can’t you can’t maintain proper combustion with
the linkage system the hysteresis built into them they won’t repeat you drive it up you know it’s like you know old
carburetor guys that had a full barrel carburetor and they adjusted the linkage on it and you you know you show it to
the floor you know it goes wide open well the next time you show up the floor you only go 90 it doesn’t repeat so
that’s that’s the history of linkages and we’ve got to get away from them so is is that a standard statement for
every single boiler or if you only have a hundred horsepower boiler or less it really there’s no Roi uh how do we know
who we should be talking to to say you need to upgrade these systems is just everybody
everybody and and you know the more fuel you use the more important it is to you the more savings you’re going to have
but the ROI is there for 50 horsepower for a 25 horsepower board you’ve got to
you got to start from the front when you order a boiler don’t order one with linkages on the burner order one that
has a parallel positioning system and get rid of that right off the front end what are some of the things that our
customers should be monitoring to ensure other than just stack temperature that their boiler is working efficiently
O2 CO2 Co those three and not just monitor the auto flame system one of the
things we like about it most of your trim systems only trim O2 so if your Co goes out your CO2 goes out they’re
looking at O2 only that’s all they’re looking for uh so the thing get carried away the auto flame Trims on O2 Co and
CO2 all three of those parameters are trimmed at the same time that’s that’s the three parameters if you keep those
within the spec limits of what was set up when the technician commissioned the
unit on the front end your your unit is going to stay efficient forever and it will it’ll alarm out and tell you hey
I’m out of a commissioning curve that was set up here’s what’s going on and get a tech in here and find out what
what’s happened speaking of efficiencies there are a lot of old boilers out there can those
boilers be upgraded or does it just make sense to replace them with the newer
technology that’s out there today the boiler technology really hasn’t changed much it’s changing some now but
like a water tube boiler they haven’t changed too much in 50 years there’s some new technology coming in place
where they’re putting fin tubes in they’re doing things to get better efficiency but for the most part they’re running the mill boiler is the same they
haven’t changed them much the burner is where all the problems are at but a burner is limited as to how efficient it
will burn so you can change the controls on it but you can only put so much
lipstick on a pig you still got a pig so you got to be careful what you what you what you deal with there and and find
out what it’s doing right now what it’s costing you to be inefficient with that burner and will updating the controls
get you where you want to go or do you need to scrap the burner and start all over yeah we’ve said uh over and over
you know that it’s a if it’s a donkey we just make it a really good donkey if you
want a thorough braid you gotta change the burner yeah yeah so you have tens of thousands of water traders that listen
to this show I’m sure that you wish they say something instead of something that
they’re saying maybe it’s a piece of equipment or terminology how do you want to educate some of the
water Traders today what should we be calling some things that maybe cause some incommunication or miscommunication
issues between us well the one thing that they talk about you know steam
energy and how does steam energy compare to fossil fuel energy well the two are not comparable because steam is used in
a process where the fossil fuel is used to be to produce esteem so they’re two
completely different things they need to be careful how they’re using that terminology steam is it’s an energy that
nothing can compare to it in the industry that’s been developed up to
this point in time nothing can be transferred down pipelines and can carry
the amount of BTU it can carry with the least amount of energy to put into it to get it where it needs to go nothing you
can’t do that water you can’t do it with hot oil there’s nothing else you can do that with so they just have to be
careful when they’re talking about steam inner energy and trying to compare it to fossil fuel energy because it’s it’s
apples and oranges yeah I think the department of energy probably helps with that miscommunication because a lot of
their calculations assume that everything is equal yeah well the department of energy assumes a whole lot
of things so all right well that’s a different show but I don’t think you’re going to get any argument from anybody here Richie
I’m curious uh feel like making steam tell us about that so we have Christmas
parties uh here at uh at our company and we wanted to make them fun and so we’ve
done some different parodies of songs over the years and you know we we
actually sing these live um at our Christmas party and you know we had a guy he’s actually retired now
but he we had a guy that actually could sing and then uh myself and my brother-in-law Brent Falcone we would
actually just be back up and just you know being goofy but we come up with the lyrics and all that stuff but I feel
like making steam is is from the song you know I Feel Like Making Love and I came up with a story about a service
technician that had a kind of had a love affair with a boiler and he started daydreaming about the spoiler and so
then we put the video to it and filmed him spanking the boiler and just having
a good time with the boiler and uh so anyway just it was just a just something fun that we wanted to do and obviously
got a bunch of laughs and and you can hear actually I believe it’s out on the
website still and but you can actually hear the audience laughing and everything so but we’ve done different
parodies boiler man can survive that was another one and I love this job uh was
another one that we did and she thinks my boiler’s sexy um she thinks my tractor’s sexy that one we
didn’t put on the internet today’s uh folks maybe not uh I think some of that stuff’s funny so we kind of
watched some of this stuff but well we are definitely linking those to our show notes oh boy okay all right we haven’t
made one in a while I actually keep I keep songs in my phone of different ones that I want to do and I do have some
some ones that we want to do but uh we we just had fun with it mainly at our Christmas parties really just for our
folks to to have a good time you know you know how boring Christmas parties can be you go and eat you’re sitting there waiting and then you know people
give bonus checks away or whatever and you’re waiting on everybody calling each other’s name and are calling all your
employees name and everybody’s waiting and uh we just we’ve changed it up and we have a great time at our parties
um you know even sometimes take them to destinations to like Opryland hotel or you know to French Lick and just have a
have fun so well I thoroughly enjoy those those are great and uh we we use a
couple year videos for the association of water Technologies training because one of the things we try to do is bring
the mechanical room into the classroom and of course that’s hard to do when you’re in a hotel training room so so
you’ve done a great job of putting together a lot of content showing us a lot of equipment and again making it a
lot of fun so I’m curious when you get an idea that you’re going to do a
boiling point how do you script that and how do you make sure all the right people are there and how do you get it
edited what’s what’s behind the scenes of the boiling point so behind the scenes is uh you know right now Steven’s
office is actually right next to me but when I first did this okay I would shoot the video and then I would edit and put
all this stuff together I I it just took so much time so that’s when I was like let’s just get a full-time video a guy
that really knows what he’s doing and so we we did we went out and we have a full-time video person on on staff and
Chuck hickey actually is a is our guy now and just does a super job but how it
happens is I come up with a thought or an idea we also do some stuff with uh
chat GPT and try to find find out what people are searching out there and and try to come up with topics it’s getting
harder to come up with topics to be honest with you but I literally walk into Steven’s office Say Hey I want to
shoot something today on you know on handle gaskets or whatever and he’s like okay what time and I’m like uh one
o’clock and I’d let Chuck know and I say Chuck hey we’re going to be down there at one o’clock all right got it and we go down and it’s typically one take and
we leave um so we’re most the time we shoot all these things within what 15-20 minutes Stephen and yeah and um and then we
leave and he takes care of it edits and uploads you know on the time slots that we do this so nothing real magical you
know real no cinematography stuff it’s uh you know we really didn’t want to do script stuff uh to where it just sounds
mundane we’re reading we’re real people and we’re talking to folks that you know
out there that I think wants simple and you know on what we do and and that’s what we try to do we just try to make it
you know simple and educated it’s been so fun to just get the emails and the
text and the comments and all of our stuff about hey I’m new into this industry and I’m I watch your stuff
every night or they’ll send pictures of themselves in their living room watching a boiling point you know on a weekend
you know and and say thanks so much for what you’re doing for the industry so we’ve just had it’s just been a really
good thing for us obviously but you know I I say this all the time I mean the Legacy that we’re able to leave for many
many folks because this this technologist even said boiler hasn’t changed in a long time but steam’s not
going anywhere I know we’re we’re hearing a lot about fossil fuel and all that stuff and and it’s true that steam
is going to be done different possibly there’s going to be other ways to create steam but steam is the medium that
people are using so to just have that Legacy if you will of being able to talk about Steam for many many generations
that wasn’t there for you know Stephen when he was growing up right in the end of the business now now is able to be
there you know they can go out and search it and and you know and really get some good valuable information if
they want to be in this industry yeah but when I was growing up in a business Richie they were still taking a hammer and chisel and locking stuff out on
rocks to you know for the tablets that was a long time ago
one of my favorite boiling point videos was the one Stephen where you showed us
how you roll tubes that was fantastic yeah the short amount of time that I was
in in the shop which was you know six seven years something like that I I got to enjoy the you know rolling a tube and
being the tube and and then as shop supervisor out and even even now I go
over and watch what people are doing and give them hints and tips on you know do it look at it this way to go this way
and I just went over yesterday and took a look at some some cracks in the tube sheets okay you need to need to grind
these out you need to do this go on the back side do this I still enjoy doing it but it’s tough work it’s powered on
those guys it is it’s a you know I I mean in just a kudos to to all those guys out there that do it I mean it’s um
tough on the joints I mean you know the knees get messed up the shoulders you
know and obviously you’re in the cold you know the heat inside the boiler room it’s dangerous of course you know we’ve
got quite a few Crews that work for us to do all the repairs the interesting part is and you know Steven maybe you
can chat about this it’s just you know like in Europe we hear that they don’t have the water problems that maybe we
have here in the United States I don’t know if that has to do with the the linkage you know we have more linkages
than folks in Europe we do tons of repair but I we talked to the guys in England and they basically said you know
we just we don’t have as many water problems I think that’s more the
municipality than it is anything else because here in the U.S you’ve got lots
of communities that they’re pulling out the well but you don’t have any wells in England and Europe they don’t have any Wells
it’s all in it’s all industrial stuff so they they have a municipality that takes care of the water so it’s like New York
City water that’s as good a water as you can have anywhere in the country where if you go into middle of Ohio there’s
sucking water out of a well and it’s we call it liquid rock it it’s all it’s it’s terrible stuff one of the things
you featured in The Rolling tubes video was the rig that you made to train your
people so there’s no doubt that you all have an extensive training program tell
us about that and what kind of program does somebody go through if they get a
job at where boiler so we created the boiler University but we really wanted to have a physical
location in it and that’s why we built the facility about four years ago it’s about a 12 000 square foot facility with
four live fire boilers a full Boiler Room that’s that’s operating and it’s got a 60 person lecture hall and a 30
person classroom and we have all kinds of different things to use to obviously train people it’s actually has a little
cafeteria in it as well and we put that together yes for our customers but we also put it together
for internal and what we have found it’s very very difficult to try to get people
to come to work right because the the honestly the the business is most in
this business are paid well they enjoy what they’re doing where they’re at they don’t necessarily have to move
um so it’s hard to get people so we were like we’ve got to figure out how to train our own uh people and so we
actually have a former technician on staff that that’s all he does is train and then this is crazy but we literally
have 12 people in training right now for our to be being technicians full-time
that’s all they do is train and it takes uh takes us you know 12 to 14 months to take to spit them out and get them in a
truck so pretty big investment but it’s something that we saw and see that it’s
hard to you know find people that want to do this work and so we’re finding kids at young men that love to work I
mean they just you know so so a kid that’s a maybe a farm uh a farm kid that just knows like like Stephen or whatever
that just you know he knows how to put engines together he understands that if he takes a a hay bale or a part he can
put it all back together and and not have a spare apartments and you know that was just something I know my dad
started that a long time ago but our training is very regimented it’s it’s
very detailed and you know the cool part is that we have this rental business
business we have as many boiler rooms in our shop as most people will see in a
year time you know just on the rental side so our guys get to see a lot of stuff just right here on our campus and
we get we get them trained up and our guys do a good job well I’m curious what can we expect with
uh boiler operations evolving in the future a couple things one technology is
starting to take over so you’re going to see a lot more unmanned boiler rooms where they’re using technology to
monitor the equipment the other thing you’re going to see is a lot of Outsourcing well these companies you
know the The Operators they have now there now are 75 years old the new guys don’t want to
operate they don’t want to be an operator they don’t want to go out there and blow the Border down they don’t want to do those things and they can’t bring
Personnel in so Manpower is a big issue they’re going to start Outsourcing that so you’re going to see companies
cropping up all over the country that that’s all they do is go from site to site maintaining the customer’s
equipment so they’ll have a monitoring equipment in place to where they’re monitoring their the customers equipment
for them so they’ll know that the customer has a problem before the customer ever knows it and then they’ll
get a technician out there to fix it and and then they’ll have contracts well they go in every day to blow the Border
down do the water sample testing and do all those things in the last five years I mean the amount of operation that we
do just with our people and and putting Crews together to go out and monitor or
operate boilers it’s it’s increased incredibly you know people there might
be a strike and they need to keep their boilers um going and so we’ll we’ll go in and operate you know uh operate a
boiler get all the people you’ve met at us now that are on strike uh but no
we’re just trying to help obviously you know we just trying we want to again be a resource and and that was something
that we started doing more and more of because we’re getting requests of hey could you operate this rental boiler
when it comes here and you know well gosh we’ve been in Nigeria operating uh lawyers in Jamaica uh we got guys there
in Jamaica I mean so it’s really been an uptick just in the last five years
yeah the one thing that’s unique about where is that as a guy on Joe Dirt said I don’t have none of my vocabulary I
don’t have no in my heart we don’t we we have a hard time seeing no to customers so for customer calls it says hey
I need to rent uh a couple 75 000 pound barbours and by the way all of my operators are tied up operating my
equipment and they’re gonna be tearing my equipment down into one maintenance work I need for you to operate the equipment
for three months okay we’ll take care of that for you so so we we just you know
whatever they asked for we find a solution for them anybody can can rent a board anybody can sell them apart but
who can provide the solution that’s what we do we provide solutions for customers you know real quick one of the things
that um just to plug it’s not for wear but it’s um the American boiler manufacturers Association is an
association that we belong to and you know the boiler 2024
um which means it’s coming up in 2024 they added boiler 2022 and we’re now doing boiler 2024.
you know that is a place where all the boiler people are going to be and you know I think that’s a mark your
calendar and make sure you’re there you can go out on the website and look at boiler2024 we’re obviously going to be
there but there any anybody that’s in this boiler business is going to be there and that’s that’s where a lot of
things could really help solve problems that are out there right I mean you’re going to find people that are operators
you’re going to find people manufacturers and burner companies and rental companies and we’ve really in our
industry I mean I’m really promoting probably probably our competitors here but you know because they’re going to be
there but the end you know as I said boiler industry is needed steam is needed out there and if you’re wanting
to increase your knowledge and find all the companies that are out there on the boiler side here in the US of course
that would be something that uh I would I would attend we will be sure to put that on our show
notes page and on our events page as well thanks for bringing that up all right so we’re going to have a
little fun now so think about the oddest thing you ever experienced in a
mechanical room whether something you found in a piece of equipment uh something somebody said to you what are
your odd funny stories we want to know a couple of them one um I was inspecting
the boiler in Indianapolis and the plant had shut down so I went in there in the
Boiler Room Nobody’s around I go up the man way is already open which gets into the Waterside of the borders I climb in
there my flashlight I’m looking around and and I can smell something that that
shouldn’t that smell shouldn’t be in there so I’m looking around I hear something I look back in the back of the
boiler and there’s a raccoon in there inside that boiler with me he’s decided that’s going to be his place to stay and
and I understand that I’m in his home now so so I would I was getting out of that that 12 by 16 opening I was getting
out of there pretty quick because I hadn’t I knew that was a fight I was not going to win so that that was a real uh
eye opener for me to check those boards before I climb into them to make sure there’s not an animal inside of them
before I find them inside of the man way so that was kind of weird but so was it dormant for a while is that how he got
in yeah it’d been shut down for six months or something I was expected to buy the boiler and buy all the equipment
out of the boiler room and he had taken up residence in the inside the board yeah I didn’t expect that story wow
well he’s got the other story about the maggots too oh dude I went through rendering plants up in Pennsylvania in
the early 90s going around and buying up borders because the rendering business had went down in the late 80s and so
they were selling all the equipment out of them selling the borders out so I’m up there crawling around the borders and
there’s you know there’s two inches of flies on the concrete floor under the board you got to crawl into there into
all that stuff and and it just there’s stuff everywhere and then there’s Conveyor Systems that are transported
they’re still used to plant this Conveyor Systems transporting all the ground up animals from one spot to
another and then there’d be a place leaking from from the from the conveyor system and leaking on the floor you look
down and make you dizzy because the floors moving there’s a spot there that’s three foot in diameter that’s moving with all the maggots in there and
then the the end of that particular plant when I’m leaving that day I’m driving away and there’s a guy when
I met him when I came in that he’s using a great big Hatchet type thing big meat cleaver to chop the animals up throw
them in the grinder to grind them up and process them so when I get ready to leave it’s noon and I see him sitting on
a cow that has swelled up her legs are stuck up in the air he’s sitting on her
belly with a sandwich in his hand eating his lunch and he’s got blood and stuff all over
wow so yeah all the things you see those you don’t expect to see yeah you have to
you can have a weak stomach sometimes in some of these places I mean the smells are oh I’ve been to rendering plants yes
matter of fact that was one of the first places my dad took me to when he was training me and I was like oh my gosh
dad this stinks he goes son that’s the smell of money that’s right that’s right yeah you put a you can put a little
something underneath your nose though six Vapor Rub that’s what I use of course it doesn’t help your clothes and then you forget what you smell and you
go talk to somebody and uh they don’t want to talk to you exactly I remember as a kid I actually went to I was going
to basketball practice but Dad said hey I got a service run and I went out with him to a job I went to a leather fight a
leather place and uh it was Mozart leather is where it was Stephen and um and I mean the smell was so bad and I
was and I had basketball practice and obviously I was there for a while and went straight to basketball and dad
dropped me off and asked smelled so bad from that place it was in my clothes and
I just smelled it the whole time I was in basketball practice so I used to bring a change of clothes that I had to
keep in a sealed trash bag because it would penetrate inside my trunk and then
there was a tractor trailer stop not too far from there that I would shower and change and then quickly put those
clothes in that trash bag so it didn’t penetrate everything in my car turkey rendering plant the smells from that oh
my goodness oh yeah yeah it’ll turn your stomach there’s no doubt all right so
I’ll ask you both this last question so you can get any point across that you
wish what do you want that point to be our biggest challenge is educating the
industry on what steam does and how important it is to the world economy that’s our biggest challenge
that’s funny you said that and we did not talk I promise but we you know that’s exactly kind of what I wrote down
was that I wish everybody understood how important steam is I know that your listeners do and um but just the just
everyone else sits out there and to realize that if you just looked at your house and you started going through the
house and start realizing that the impact of steam in that home
starts you know your carpet your drywall your food your appliances all the
plastic I mean steam is is involved with that the insulation the shingles the
concrete I mean you start going through and if you started making each thing disappear that steam you you would have
nothing there I mean it would just be there would be nothing sitting there all the paints all the dyes paints yes
yes I mean it’s just amazing how much you know how much steam is involved in our lives and I know a lot of people are
out there and they’re you know they’re like oh these things pollute and and we’re getting better and better with
efficiencies and you know and all the things that we’re doing out here um but if we just shut them off I mean
quickly all of the things that we love to have go away really really fast and
um I did you know for me I just obviously wish there was more people in our industry to that understand it it’s
a good living um it’s hard work but it is an awesome living it’s a great trade to be in
um and it’s and it’s significant you’re doing something without a boiler I mean that’s the heart of a plant you know I
mean it is if it’s down I don’t care how good your people are uh you know the products that you have whatever it is
when that boilers down that plant’s down and a lot of people are affected you
know from that if our listeners wanted to find out more about where boiler and all of the things
that you guys are doing to provide content for Education what should they do
you can go to whereinc.com w-a-r-e-i-n-c.com tons of blog stuff out
there as well as you can get to our YouTube the where boilers YouTube and
see all of the the content out there we actually just just separated our social piece for our boilerwarehouse.com so you
can actually uh go to boilerwarehouse.com on LinkedIn and Facebook and uh Instagram Twitter is get
boilerparts and then everything else is all you know at boiler warehouse but you
can uh you know go out of the boilerwarehouse.com also one of the things that I wrote down was you can
also go to the where inc.com forward slash boiler Dash University and
get to our page we have some online classes that you could actually download and do the boiler 101 right there in
your home it’s an outstanding class about 14 hours of video so yeah there’s a lot of a lot of information that we
try to put out there tons of content and uh anything that anybody needs we’d love to love to help you we will make sure to
get all of those links on our show notes page so as you’re driving you don’t have to worry about taking notes we’ll have
all of that for you so you can just simply click Stephen Ritchie thank you so much for coming on the scaling up H2O
podcast appreciate you having us awesome to see you again yep our pleasure
[Music] most of this month we’ve been meeting with the fine vendors the fine suppliers
that allow us to do what we do with our customers and where boiler is just a fun
place where they are trying to educate people to understand their steam equipment better and they
are just masters of bringing fun to that now we’ve got a link on our show notes
page if you want to see that feel like making steam video it is a riot and they
actually made a video to it so we’ve got a link right there and from that you can just see that they love to have fun now
if you navigate over to their web page you can find a lot of material that help
explain maybe questions that you have about steam making equipment and I guarantee you will have fun while you
are watching them now I’m going to take Richie up on his offer to come out and
see their training facility it is amazing what they’ve built out there I’ve seen pictures of it but I’m going
to take him up on that offer so I can see it firsthand now Nation are you
getting to meet the people that Supply the equipment that you work on if you
are not I really think you’re missing out a huge part of the equation because
there is so much fun that you can have with meeting these individuals and with
that fund you’re learning things that you might not have even thought about
asking about that are now going to save you time money and energy when you go in
on each and every one of your services now imagine if you find out some little
tip or trick that saves you 10 minutes each and every time you serve service
something now let’s say that you service six accounts in a day that’s an hour
that’s five hours over a week I mean that is huge now whatever that number is
you can do the math but I hope that’s a game for you just like it’s a game for
me that’s you try to figure out how you can be more efficient while increasing
your quality output and whatever it is that you can do that is shaving time off
whatever it is and then you can apply that time however you wish here in
Atlanta we use it by avoiding Traffic Rush Hour we take very very seriously
here and it could be the difference between a 10 minute commute or a two
hour commute yes you have heard me correctly that is what traffic is like
here in Atlanta so making sure you are efficient with what you’re doing so you
can plan to be where you need to be makes all the difference in the world and our fine suppliers to this industry
are a key to helping us think differently about the equipment that
we’re servicing who knows maybe that’s where you’re going to find your 10 minutes scan up Nation one thing’s for sure the
more advanced you become with your knowledge the more time you can shave
off because you know the whys behind why it is that you’re doing what you are
doing and I’ve spoken on earlier podcasts about that but one gentleman that wants to make sure that you
understand what is happening with the things that you use each and every day
is James McDonald and here is a brand new periodic water table with James
hello and welcome to the periodic water table with James where we think and learn about water chemistry drop by drop
please use your week to search online ask your colleagues or even pick up a
book to learn more about each week’s periodic water table topic if you do at
the end of the year you’ll be 52 water chemistry smarter so let’s raise the water table of
knowledge together and get started today’s topic is
cyclohexylamine this one is a volatile topic but what is cyclohexylamine used for what is its
chemical formula what is cyclohexyla means distribution ratio how does this distribution ratio compare
to that of similar chemistries how does this relate to distance where is the best place to feed
cyclohexylamine to an industrial water system can this recommended feed Point change
according to the industry can you test for cyclohexylamine are there limits on how much you can
feed in certain applications where is cyclohexylamine consumed or lost in a system
can cyclohexylamine precipitate with carbonate or bicarbonate what pre-treatment equipment can be used
to reduce the amount of cyclohexylamine needed remember knowledge is power and taking
the time to learn more about water chemistry each week will help make you a force to be reckoned with
be sure to post what you learn to social media and tag it with hashtag water table23 and hashtag scalingup H2O I look
forward to learning more from you thank you James Nation I’m curious are
you keeping up each and every week with the periodic water table with James well if you’re not you can catch up we’ve got
links to that on scaling up h2o.com so don’t worry you can still catch up on
your learning and if you’re one of the people that is up to date on everything that James is asking of us I know you
are a better water Trader today than when we started this back in January
every week James is challenging us to learn about the things that we use in
our industry and as I said when we learn more we become more efficient and that’s
how you find more time speaking of time we have one week between now and the
next episode and I will be back with you on that brand new episode have a great
week folks [Music]
scale nomination are you getting ready to take your certified water technologist examination do you wish you
just had a little bit of extra help to build your confidence so you can sign up
for the exam One Nation I’ve heard you and I’ve got what you were asking for I
work each one of the 75 mock questions that you receive when you sign up to
take your certified water technologist designation I share with you the logic
behind how I get to certain answers and I show you how to set up each math
equation go to scalinguph2o.com forward slash cwt prep once again that’s
scalingup h2o.com forward slash cwt prep to get enrolled today