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 treatise by water treaters where we’re scaling up on knowledge so we
don’t scale up our systems everybody tres Blackmore here the host of scaling up and folks it was great seeing some of
you at the technical training in Las Vegas I was able to get a few interviews in get some great questions for future
shows and thanks to so many of you that came up to me and let me know how much
this show means to you I can’t tell you how much that means to me for those of
you that didn’t make it to the Vegas training don’t worry you still have one more opportunity to make it to technical
training this year we’ll be in Cleveland March 21st through 25th it’s not too
late to register but there are limited spots so when the spots are filled up it
will be too late so go to scaling up h2o dot-com /tt 2018 to register I will be
there and I hope to see you there as well well folks he’s back yes that’s right
Marc Lewis CWT is back in the scaling up studio to continue our conversation I
must admit that this one’s a little bit different than other interviews that
I’ve had on the show and because of that I’m really not sure how to introduce it
so I hope you enjoy another segment with Mark Lewis CWT my lab partner today is
once again Marc Lewis welcome back Marc thank you trace is an honor to be here again I tell you a lot of positive
feedback about you being on the first time and people said hey bring that guy back we want to hear more from it well
you know tres when you when you look at what you’ve got sitting across from you it’s not hard to want more of that well
if there’s anything that I’ve learned from having scaling up and have 4700 listeners that the listeners out
there have very low expectations so it’s understandable they want to hear back from you assuming that they’re listening to the host as much as they do I can
accept that well fair enough Marc Marc I just sort of curious what have you heard about the
show I know you’ve been a listener from day one and I know and I say this
hesitantly because I know you also have some critiques of the show and on when you kept we’re here a couple of weeks
ago you mentioned that you and I very easily critique each other because we make each other better so I am just
opening up the microphone what do you have to say about scaling up you know
tres most people wouldn’t do this I didn’t say it was smart hey and it’s because you know I’m gonna
ask the hard questions and now I’m gonna give you the I’m gonna give you the feedback that you may or may not want to hear in front of your public but but
being that you ask you know probably the biggest thing that that I hear and I feel is is during some of your
explanations your paints and blue comments the way you answer questions you just say that this response and this
question and and and this is the answer and I say no tres talk about this
explain this why do you just hit one side of the story well there there’s a
time limit to the show obviously so we only have so much time and when I don’t
get to talk to the people all the time when they ask me questions normally my questions come from my website and
people will say hey I like your show answer this question about pH and that’s
all I get so I don’t get to dig any deeper other than what they’ve asked me
on the surface I understand but you know it’s been a skilled host that you are
you should be able to cover these topics a little more broader and and address
some of these things both ways and and you don’t have a difference of opinion on water softeners and so with whenever
there’s a water softener questioning come on I just have to turn the volume down so you know because I’m very
animated and I move hands and stuff like that so people as I’m driving in the road people will look at me and probably call nine-one-one say
there’s a crazy crazy guy driving down the street but it’s hard because like you said the response is that you you’ve
got to give are based upon your knowledge you know how you interpret things and how you interpret the
questions Marc I will tell you that when I am hired to consult with a company I
don’t just answer the question from my point of view and and from the surface and matter of fact their question that
they give me leads me to asking them twelve other questions and I make sure that I understand all the sides around
the problem and we’re really addressing what needs to be addressed unfortunately
with the confines of the show I don’t get to do that I’ve been trying to think of ways that I could do better with that
and there’s some technology out there that allows people to come in and leave
a like a voicemail message and then I could play them actually scheme the question on the show so I’ve thought
about that a little bit but I know people are asking me questions that they’re comfortable asking because it’s
anonymous and sometimes especially in this business people are scared to ask
the questions they need to know the answers to because other people expect that they would already have the answer
to that have you thought about on your Pink’s and blue questions like that maybe having two sides saying hey marker
or Bruce or somebody I’ve got this question that’s come up and this is where I’m coming from is there another angle and and maybe
taking a little time and trying to paint a little broader picture definitely I can but that’s that’s a smaller segment
of the show maybe as this show evolves maybe I have a spin-off show where I’m
just answering questions well I’ll tell you what how about you put your money where your mouth is and when we’re done
with this interview how about you come back and you answer pinks and blues with me that would be the most well received
pinks and blues questions you’re easier to read I guess we’ll see I guess so but
but trace you know some of them as we as we have these questions you know you introduce scaling up as a concept back
I know we were talking about last February March and so and I think one of your first episodes was somewhere in
April and you know my question to you is is where do you find time to put
together this show like you do and still do everything else you do well I’ve time management and that
doesn’t mean I have any more time than anybody else but by teaching something as you said when you were here last time
you get to know it a little bit better and what I have found is that everything
you do is a choice and you have to choose where you’re gonna spend your time and if you say yes I’m going to do
this one thing by default you’re saying I am NOT I’m gonna say no to this other
thing and I am very careful when I commit to do something and that being
said I tell people no a lot they say hey we need you to write this article for this or whatever it is if it doesn’t fit
into where I need to be spending my time I will delightfully and thankfully tell
them no but that’s because there’s a bigger yes that I’m saying yes to so this show I found was a bigger yes as
you can tell from the show I’m extremely passionate about the water treatment industry from our previous conversation
we talked about how a lot of water treaters either don’t understand this industry they don’t give it the respect
that it deserves and a lot of times that leads to them misleading customers maybe
that’s intentional maybe it’s not and I want to take away the excuse that there’s no place where somebody can go
and easily find good information about water treatment and at the very least I
want to make sure that all those good water treaters out there that could be great water treaters on that little
slight nudge this show is a slight nudge the guests that I have on is that slight
nudge that allows them to continuously get better so like you’ve heard several
times a rising tide raises all boats but how awesome would it be if we were just
competing with other water treaters were treating this industry with the respect like you and I have well I’ll
say that you know my ears on the board you know people do have requests and they pull you aside and they say hey the
AWT needs to do this aid every teen needs to do that and one of the things is that we challenge and you this is one
of the things that you’ve mentioned for the reason is we have so much wind chill time that if we could listen to the tea
RTM okay and so we took that response or by the way for the listeners out there that’s the aw T’s technical reference
and training manual so so as the board we were trying to figure out how do you
take that information and put it on an audio version when there’s so many
graphs and charts and pictures that we referred to and and we really determined
that it probably wasn’t that feasible to make all that so so this show does go in
and kind of meets one of those needs in a past episode Marvel Universe saying
that his drive may be as short as two hours maybe as long as eight you’re here
in Atlanta you can take two hours to go 15 miles down the road I have my
territory I put a two hour time limit either way from my house that I’m going
to work because if I met one into my territory the customer has a problem on four hours away and that’s a long time
if someone needs me so I don’t go way out I try to stay
centralized so this program is meeting a huge need for a lot of water traders and
we’re passing a lot of good information but you know with the dedication to put on this show I’m sure that you had to
incur a little bit of cost and we’ve kind of absorbed that because of your passion for our industry to teach other
people to be better water that just doesn’t make sense how do you how do you respond to this
yeah and I think a lot of people just don’t get it and and I’m gonna be the first to admit that I’m just not wired
right here’s the fact I am Who I am and I am a water trader my father raised me
to be that way he taught me to respect this industry he taught me to build this
industry up to leave it better than I found it my father of course unfortunately passed away a few years
ago and without a doubt Ray Blackmore left the water treatment industry better
than he found it so a little bit this is an in memory of my father because I’m
able to reach more people on a larger scale where he was just really able to reach me teaching me to be a better
water treater and the people that he came in contact with well trace I’ll say there’s no
bigger honor to to honor your father with a show like this and and with that
being a driving force or a motivator for you you touched it’s well you know that that’s that’s that’s a reason and you
mentioned that the AWT was looking for a way to read the trt m and oh my gosh I
can’t imagine a more boring document to listen to but I was thinking okay well if we are spending this much time behind
our windshields what can I do to entertain people as they are learning and to back up to what you mentioned on
on the show you were on before you learn things better when you teach them or
when you talk about them so I think it’s great that I’ve got a platform where I can invite guests on the show that knows
so much more about topics than I do and now I’m getting educated ride along with all the other listeners and I’m a better
water treater because I’m hosting this show so I did this to give back to the
industry that I truly love I did this to selfishly to make me a better water
treater in the industry that I’m involved in and and you’re right I mean I did decide
that I was going to pay for this a hundred percent because you know nobody else was doing it in the beginning and I’m assuming you were alluding to
the question that I asked several months ago where I was wondering if the audience how would they would feel about
the show content if I were to take sponsorships is that what you were alluding to well just any time you do
something and do it well there’s there’s always a cost and most people say okay I’m willing to make this investment for
this return down the road and so you know and I know your heart I know your
passion and and I know what you’re trying to do the question is was why why
would you make this this investment in both financial terms as well as time just with a vision to make the industry
better than it was before that to a lot of people just doesn’t make sense and so I find a lot of motivation knowing that
I can be that nudge as I mentioned before that makes a good water treater a great water treater or maybe it’s not
even a water trader I know there’s a lot of people that listen to me that aren’t in the industry because I have other topics on so maybe I motivate them to do
something more than they actually would that means that means a lot to me to be able to be that night so when we’re
talking about the show I’m gonna want to ask two questions and I’m gonna give you a little timeout that’s the first one
and give you time to think about it when I’m kind of setting up the site by the way how did tables turn how are you
asking questions now because I’m older I’m the elder I should be in charge all
right where you are old you know and I will say that you know as the higher CWT
exam score I should be the one in charge Angela did not confirm or deny that I
guess it equation when I took the exam Angela Pike was not around it was it was
prior to and and therefore I can make that comment and Angela cannot dispute it so as the higher score of the exam I
will say that you have a lower number than I do so your your number is 98 okay
and I’m 182 twice is better I’m twice as good so I guess my two-part question he said
I want you to think about all the feedback that you received on the show and and what has been the one comment that
has made you proud and said yes this this is the reason why I do this this is
the one I reach out to these people and ask them in a vitamin to the show and then at the same time
what’s a comment that you received that’s caused you to think about I’m doing this in a positive mode what
comment have you received that has caused you to think about maybe doing something a little different so in other
words for those in Rio Linda what has been the worst feedback that you’ve
received the worst feedback all right well I mentioned I mentioned probably my
favorite comment on an earlier show where Andy Markham CWT called me and
said one of his competitors called him heard him on the show congratulated him for getting this cwt and said I want to
buy you beer so we can talk about it and he said before this show that conversation that phone call would have
never happened so this show is acting as a catalyst for us to breakthrough the
fact that we are competitors but not competing against each other we’re now
understand each other because we’re going through the same thing each and every day so that’s probably my my
biggest comment my biggest positive comment I got back at the end of the year I’ve got one more so at the end of
the year I did the CWT challenge and I was really shocked when I have Andy
Moore come and Andy Williams on and they told me they’re CWT numbers and they just got their CW T’s and they weren’t
that much higher in numbers as if there were three hundred and something so that tells me we don’t have a lot of CW TS
and I don’t understand that because that is the the highest designation that you
could have in this industry and as Venus somebody that cares about this industry
I would think that you know everybody who’s in it would want to get that designation so I decided that I was
going to try to talk about it as much as I could talk about all the great things that I’ve had happen to me because I was
a CWT and I started that CWT challenge and I have received not quite a hundred
yet but I have received want to say it’s in the 60s where people have downloaded my five tips and they’ve
commented that they are going to start studying so they can pass the certified
water technologists well I’ll tell you and I know you’ve said some of these same comments but the CWT the one thing
that the CW te has done for me is that it does it’s not only that that
I say that I know the information but it also allows my customers to understand
that mark is serious about this water treatment stuff and such that he’s gone out and received a certification as a
designation about his his abilities to treat water so I know we talk about it a lot but we see these things in bid specs
sometimes we see them we’re just some sometimes when you’re explaining yourself you know who you are what
you’ve done how long you’ve been in the industry you know and the thing that I like to say is is argue award treater
with 15 years of experience meaning that for 15 years you’ve been gaining
experience or are you a water-treatment that’s just been in the industry doing the same old thing for 15 years so yeah
15 one year worth of experience or do you have 15 years of experience and I
think that’s what the the CWT does because early on when we were putting this program together one of the
challenges we have it was okay someone with five years in the in the field and and if we change that to someone that
has applied themselves for five years in the field so we kind of upped the
criteria there just a little bit well you asked me another question you asked me what the what the worst was and and I
got to tell you mark the the feedback that I’ve God has for the most part been
very very positive a lot of questions I get around the question that you asked me earlier that people just don’t get it
you know what’s what’s in it for you why are you doing this why are you paying for this show you know why do you invest
all that time and you know I answered that question to why I’m doing that but that’s probably the biggest the biggest
question that I get I would say I’ve gotten any truly negative comments people say
oh I really want you to talk about this or you didn’t you didn’t speak enough on on this topic when he answered a piece of blue what you just did that well I
know that you have stayed in several times it you know sometimes you’re slow to get your guests on and I know that’s
a comment that I’ve heard you know it’s taking you almost a year to get marked Louis on this show and and why it has I
don’t know schedule conflicts I guess I guess that has been the worst comment that I have received that okay emails I
think I don’t know how you forget that yes that that is true that I have them on my sent yes yes yes there was one one
particular listener I won’t say who it was but they were complaining that Mark
Lewis was not on the show quicker than you actually were so I’ll answer the question that way okay so we got to talk
about the good and the bad he’s a nurse exactly so so with that in mind as we’re
as we move forward what are some of the topics that you would like to have discussed on have you thought about kind
of where you’re going and planning out to where or do you find it better just to attend my people and talk about do
you have specific topics is that where you get your people from or are you just trying to get good people and share what
they’re not share their knowledge so I would say yes and no when I started the program I had a and I still do I have an
excel sheet of all the questions that I’ve ever been asked during training not all the questions but a good a good
amount of them and that’s why I started the show because I just simply didn’t have enough time to answer all of them
when I was at the training and I thought hey what a great show to have we have so much windshield time I could start
answering those questions and then I’m big fan of dirty jobs and micro always
ask people you know please tell us what your dirty jobs are because if you don’t I’m out of a job so I’m always asking
the listeners to let me know what they want to hear about and those are the
shows that I really like doing because I know I’m spot on I’m talking exactly to
the people that want to hear exactly what they want to hear so please by all means listeners out there continue to
send me in your students because that ensures what I’m going to talk about and then if there are any lulls in there I’m pulling from
that other list and I also say that you know there’s there’s times when there’s
topics that just an audio version doesn’t do that topic justice and so
those are some of their even asked me about video no no no that’s ICU this is
a radio voice it isn’t not it is not a audio or TV face so we’re not going
there but you know I will say that you know some of these topics are concepts or ideas just like reading the technical
reference in training manual wasn’t a good idea of associated reference back to things there are things where that
are taught at the technical training or at the convention because that’s a better format sure and so we may be
limited on some of the things we can talk about I will say that I get a lot of feedback from the math class that I
do for technical training and people that are listeners of the show that have been to the math class said well you
said you’re doing this show to broaden what you’re able to talk about at the technical training on this show why
don’t you do that with math and you know I’m a math geek and I and I love all that stuff and I don’t just like to do
the math I like to prove where those equations come from so now the people that are running those equations can
truly understand if their answer makes sense or not I would love to do that on the show but I can’t imagine how
incredibly boring that show would be so if any listeners out there have any
ideas to how I can do some math shows or something like that that’s definitely something that I’d like to get some
feedback on well and I think that’s a very difficult to do with with this audio version but you know I don’t want
to just talk about the show I do want to talk about some technical terms or some technical topics and you know one of the
things that we deal with a lot of times are our closed loops and I know that
when I was a new water treaty and I was given a list of accounts I had a
number of systems that were just closed loops go out there run the test write the report and learn how to do service
yeah your boss figured there’s there smaller accounts you can’t mess up a closing how’s that how do you mess up a closely but but as I’ve been in the
business for a number of years that closed loops because not only do people
think of it oh it’s a closed loop it doesn’t lose water it doesn’t have problems it’s not gonna scale it’s not
going to do this it’s not going to do that I think that what I’d like to talk about a little bit is closed loops from
a standpoint of when you’re looking at closed loops what are some of the things that that you like to do the equipment
that you like to have on it and and I know that some of the things that used to spoke about earlier before the show
you and I okay Oh have tenant caused me to start doing some things and I’m
amazed as you look at a closed loop on a building what are some of the things
that you see that people just forget to do well I I will say and and James McDonald I think this was his pet peeve
as well when he was on the show what closed loops for the most neglected system in the entire water treatment
portfolio and if you think about what our job is we are heat transfer
efficiency managers our job is to make heat transfer from a place that we don’t want it to a place where we don’t care
about it as efficiently as we can possibly make that happen all the other bells and whistles that we do that’s
just because we’re heat transfer efficiency managers and if you look at
the entire system that includes the cooling tower that includes the boiler that includes all the closed loops we
have to make sure that those systems are operating at their top efficiency or we
can’t be heat transfer efficiency managers we’re not being good jobs at it so when I look at water treatment I like
to I like to envision a stool and and it’s a four legged stool and the stool
has these four legs that are equally separated apart on the four sides if you will of the stool I never get things out
of my head through my mouth very well so I hope that makes sense anyway so water
treatment is sitting on top of the stool and these four legs represent the four
areas of water treatment well one is corrosion we’re making sure that we’re making things corrode at a rate that’s
acceptable within the industry the other one is scaling typically you don’t have to worry about too much
scaling in the closed-loop because it doesn’t cycle up but I have seen it happen so by all means you need to treat
for it microbial fouling the bugs that are growing in the system and then the last
leg is is the dirt and debris the items that are coming in with the system and
that’s that’s the one that I probably want to discuss the most because I know for years you put a shot feeder and you
you test it and if the water gets dirty you flush it out you and you retreat it
it’s not something that’s going to happen very often unless you have just a dirty system number of years ago after a
conversation we’ve had I’ve started putting filters on my clothes water systems and I am amazed at the color
discoloration I guess you could scull of the filters that come out of closed water systems with perfectly crystal
clear wash or it’s like where does this stuff come from and and so that is one
of the things that I’ve learned that you know when you to properly treat a system you want to remove the contaminants from
the system as much as possible because if they’re in the water they’re going to get onto the surfaces of the pipe of the
tubes etc and they’re all going to reduce heat transfer and so what was your first experience to knowing that
hey I’ve got to put filters on these closed loops in order to handle part of
this door well again I learned a lot from my father and my father was the one that taught me those four pillars of water
treatment and he would say you know we’re missing the boat on the clock we’re doing it on the cooling tower if
we had a sand filter but we’re missing the boat on the closed-loop because we just have a pot feeder we don’t have a
filter feeder and if we’re not filtering out all those contaminants all that dirt
and debris that’s in the system then we’re not able to do our job and we don’t have a complete water treatment
program and I don’t want to go too deep into this conversation because the information that we do cover we go
into deeper details and technical training in the fundamentals and applications so we’re not gonna talk about it here because we want to get
people a technical training we want to do primers ok god we want it we want to encourage you enough to spark an idea to
turn on a demo so that you are inspired to say you know I would love to go to
technical training this year and the reason for that is is I want to learn the next level of of closed loops of
chillers of towers of boulders etc and and so sometimes it’s it’s how do you
ask the question you know can I go what does anyone I’ll wrap up that section so I don’t give too much away because I
know we talked about this in fundamentals an application but one of the things we do talk about in fundamentals an application is water is
just an outstanding heat transfer medium there there’s nothing better than water
at absorbing heat and transporting it to somewhere else without it itself getting
getting warmer well water is that way other substances aren’t so if we have
water with all these other substances that are you know clinging around to the
water that’s not allowing the water to do its job as efficiently as it possibly can and then when we finally get down
the road and that stuff settles out of the system that heat has to transfer not just from the water through that heat
transfer surface but also through all that settled out dirt and debris so if we can put a filter feeder in that then
we are making the system more efficient absolutely and that’s just that’s part of it so it’s part of how these these
little things can ultimately end up being larger issues down the road and
what we want to do is water treatment professionals is we want to prevent those things from ever happening
so Trace as we look at filtration and filter and all that stuff out you know
one of the things that that I think that that’s a big failure and in treating systems it’s not really realizing what
you’re treating for in these closed loops and so if you’re treating the system that’s been treated in the past
how do you address prop treating that system differently then
you have a system that hasn’t been treated what are some of the issues with the different treatment programs because
when you look at treatments for closed loops you have nitrites you have silicates you have molybdate you have
all these different commonly used treatment programs how do you determine
which one is the proper treatment program and what issues happen if you mix programs together it’s a question
that I don’t think that can be answered with a blanket statement I think each system you have to realize what the
history of that system is but let’s say for example that it’s a brand new system you’re taking it over from the start and
pretty much do whatever you want to with that thing as long as you’ve got some checks and balances to make sure that your program is working you’re probably
going to be fine and those checks and balances would be corrosion coupons and yes I put corrosion coupons on closed-loop systems however and this is
where we get called in a lot because people are doing a great job treating the cooling tower but they’re not doing
a good job treating the closed loops and now they’re having problems at the air coils the fan coils themselves and
they’re leaking or they’re clogged up or something like that so with that you probably need to
realize that the system might be a little bit in worse shape than then you
realize and being very aggressive to try to clean all that stuff off might be a
great idea and it might be a horrible idea so I’m a little hesitant to talk
about use this chemistry for this and that chemistry for that although we can if you want to but I’d rather I’d rather
answer that question with you know most everybody has a core product that they’re you know very well how it works
and hopefully from your last question everybody’s going to put a filter feeder on that closed-loop yeah you know I’ll
just bring up that I think that that there is no right answer for every
system eats each system is has its own issues but but going from a brand-new
system I would agree pick your poison pick whichever programming type program you want to go and in property treat and
get that system off running way that it should be as you as you start with programs that have been
treated one way or the other you know you do have to determine well what’s the condition of my system yeah what are my
issues what is gonna happen if I break loose stuff that so in this system
because what I have to do is as a water treatment professional is is I have to
tell my customer everything that might happen so that there’s no surprises yeah and what what I’d like to add to that is
that if we’ve now installed this filter feeder before we do some some major cleaning project or make any of those
recommendations that filter is going to tell us a lot about what’s going on in that system we’re gonna be able to
examine what’s coming out of the system how much is coming out of it and then when we move from our preferred
treatment program from whatever was used in the past we’re gonna see the effect of that in that filter bag as well their
filter or however whatever filter media that you’re using and I’ll just say that in in our previous show we’ve talked a
lot about understanding your chiller how your chiller works every one of those values that you pull off of the
condenser you can also pull off of the evaporator there is an evaporator approach and the approach is the
difference of the water temperature this one is the water temperature leaving and
the the refrigerant temperature and so there is a an approach a difference in those temperatures and and you’re
looking more for our trend you know you’re not always looking for zero you’re not always looking for one or two
it’s all specific to that machine but as that approach spreads apart something is
cause that reduction of heat transfer and what our job is is to understand one
and so when you see this initial calls it’s it causes more concern for
additional testing to see what’s causing that and if everything is going on the water side is it could it be something
on the on the mechanical side and I’m telling you that that you’re a hero when
you’re able to tell someone that they need to look at something and they can schedule it rather than downtown and
that’s been probably one of my largest through the years is is how do you know
that okay yes because I’m observant you know look at all parts of the system mark to
allude back to the conversation that you were referring to earlier where you said
you started using filters in your feeders that’s what you said you said you could start seeing differences in
how your chiller was working because you’re getting all that crud out of the system yeah and and you know we as water treaters
normally about annually we get to look at the condenser side of things and and and I think inspections are something
that we haven’t covered that deeply so we’ll talk about that in our next
question here but but what we have to do is we have to be doctors we run these tests to determine what’s going on
inside of the system and so when we do get the opportunity to look inside of a
chiller we’ve got to take advantage of it so as we move into an inspection what
are some of the tools that you have at your disposal or that you use to look at
the results of your water treatment program going as unit well great question we actually have a tool kit
that we take on on inspections and if you would have told me you were going to ask that I would have had it in here but
I think I can go through it mentally what’s in there definitely a camera so we can take pictures of what we see
right there that day but we also take and normally this is on our iPad we have
last year’s pictures and possibly the year before those pictures so we can put
today’s pictures in context with what we’re looking at we already know where the problem issues are going to be
before they even open up that chiller bill I’ve got of course a couple of different flashlights in there I’ve got
a really bright flashlight and I’ve got some real skinny flashlights so I can look inside tubes can’t look too terribly far with the flashlight but you
look a little bit in there I’ve got a putty knife so I can remove some of the tubercles and see if that is a fresh
corrosion cell or if that’s a very old corrosion cell that’s been arrested and things are looking well and then with
the previous company I had a says to a $30,000 borescope and I
whenever I had a chiller inspection I would get them to ship that puppy to me and I would look into it and you know
just be able to document it and put that on a video and those in those days it was VHS now of course we just make
everything mp4 but you and I have spoken that there are some very inexpensive
tools that doesn’t give us the $30,000 quality but it does give us a nice look
inside the tube so we can at least see what’s going on and you are actually the one that turned me on to that so I heard
a fellow co-worker of mine who went into a facility and he was taking care of one system and they were looking at another
system was asked to come over and look and the question came up what’s down inside the tube and because my associate
wasn’t aware this inspections won’t take place the engineer went and got what they call an endoscope and you think of
endoscopes in the medical profession but basically what this was it was a
endoscope that was it was 15 foot long five meters and it plugged into a
wireless transmitter and a light source and so you could turn the light on it gave you a light at the end of the the
camera very rigid so you could it would hold its shape and and you were able to wirelessly connect to your phone and
then with the app on the phone you actually got to see exactly what was at the end of the camera now normally like
you said thirty thousand dollars and I think our first one was a refurbished unit well that was like 20 grand I think
we ordered this thing and it was under 40 bucks with a case for everything and
and it’s it’s 1080p quality it’s I’m very impressed with the quality that I
see out of it so when you do an inspection you do need to have things available so you can actually see what’s
going on in the system so this has been something that I think I went I didn’t even ask my company to buy it I just
bought it it’s it’s mine it’s it’s in my car and I’m just impressed with it so
we’ve tested it out and it works and I think you’ve actually purchased one is well you know we’ve used it on a couple
of inspections and you’re right it’s not the $30,000 model but without it you
can’t see any length within the tube so it gets you some more information only you can stick your finger in and twirl
get the first you know two inches of field to see if there’s any slime in there and I don’t know about you I’m a big guy so I got big fingers and and
they don’t go very far in there but you know yet you get an idea but having a
visual all the way down through the tube or down into a bowl or you know looking
into a board you see the tubes right in front of you and what we have today and digital
cameras and such are so much better than what we’ve had in the past because if you’ve ever done inspection with a
mirror in a flashlight it’s funny when you see some of the older baller inspectors you know I’ve got one of
those in our bag by the way one of those mirrors on a stick telescopic yeah folds and you know they’ll take the flashlight
and shine in to get light around and and you can’t see that much but even a digital camera you know one of the most
important things I tell people to do is it’s put the strap on your hand if you if you break that plane with with any
part of the camera so that you don’t drop your camera into a board and I’m sure just like me you have dropped a
camera into a boiler no actually I can’t say that so I got it out it wasn’t fun
but yeah that strap is there for a reason folks it is so the but inspections are something is probably a
big show on their own and there’s people that are much smarter than I that I would ask you to hold that show with and
so but just some of the quick items that I would say is you got to be able to see you got to have light you got to have
something that you can reach down into the the piece of equipment that you’re looking at to see what’s going on and
you got to be able to record so cameras if phones make it just so easy to do all
those things these days lady there’s just no strap on them that’s that’s my biggest concern with using my phone is
no straps so well mark what I will do is I know you like this endoscope pretty
well we’ve used it a couple times and have gotten some good results with it so I’ll put an affiliate link on my show
notes page it will be scaling up – Oh forward slash scope and if you want to check it out would be an Amazon link
there and then and how I don’t know if I explained to the audience or you affiliate links are if you were to buy
something off an affiliate link and say it was 20 bucks if you buy it off of Amazon or my affiliate link it’s just going to cost
you 20 bucks but Amazon pays me a little bit of commission since I advertised it so I’ll make sure that that’s up on the scaling up notes page and I’m curious to
hear what other people have to say about it you know all of us use tools in our to do our job and the only way we all
get better is is to share these concepts or these items that we use and so that’s that’s why this show is here is to tell
you what we’re doing to become better water treaters and in return we’re just asking that everyone shares yeah I’d
love to hear what some of the tools that people are using out there in the scaling up nation previously we shared
the light that we use in our test kit and gotten a lot of positive feedback about that I think you use that light do
you is that a light that you use no I don’t use that light okay I thought you did no but I do look use litmus paper
just because I think it’s a good indication no I don’t do that I don’t know where you were going with that well
you know just I know that several shows been about pH and things like that thought I’d have a little fun you know I
get so many questions on pH and alkalinity I think that’s the most misunderstood topic in the water
treatment industry so that that’s why I do so many shows on them when you think about it you know if you actually if you
google pH probe and in read the concept of one of the first years that we did
fundamentals and application I handled the testing section yeah I think he told people how to build a pH meter if I well
I went through and I explained each of the different parts because if you don’t understand it if you let the pH
electrode dry out if you see this if you see that you did a great explanation on your podcast about explaining when to
calibrate when do we you know replace a probe don’t be afraid to replace a probe
I mean because you’re there one day a month two days a month looking at things
that system runs 24 hours a day seven days a week and you’re not always there
and so when you are there you’ve got to make sure that you’re getting the best available so you know tres you always
kind of end your shows with with a lightning round question and I think I don’t think you’ve ever answered though
so if you were going to tell your listeners the last three books that you’ve read what what would you tell
them well I love reading I I get a lot of information from reading and I like
to I like to turn around this one of the motives for me asking that question I want to know what my next book is gonna be and I’d like to figure out how am I
going to apply something or some things from that book and how I do business or
something that’s going on my life so I wasn’t prepared to answer this so I need to think back the book that we just
finished reading with my business group was the advantage by patent Lencioni Pat
Lencioni is a business author he’s a consultant he consults and makes teams
better teams and he’s written books probably the most popular one is the five dysfunctions of a team and he talks
about the five things that a team needs to do in order to work well together and
those are things like they’ve got to trust each other they can’t have fear of conflict if I’m in fear of being in
conflict with you then I’m not going to tell you something the team needs to hear and then once everybody gets
everything out on the table we’re then able to commit to what we’re able to do and then we’re gonna focus on attention
to detail and the results and I’m missing one of those on the top pyramid but anyway it’s about how to get the
team together and he’s written a dozen books or so around topics like that so the advantage is the condensing of all
12 of those books into sort of the summary of what you need to know from that so it was the advantage by Pat Lynn
Sione I had the captain David mark hey on the show I remember and I reread his book to
make sure that I was intelligent to ask him some questions so that was in
there and I’m looking at my bookshelf to see what was the last one that I read
and oh it was the machine the machine by Justin Roth Marsh and what he did he
looked at the sales part of a company so the sales organization and sort of
retooled it and said let’s not look at it the way we always look at it let’s look at it if we were building a product
I actually have him as a guest on the show he’ll be on later this year he’ll do a much better job of explaining it
but I wanted to make sure I could interview him properly so I read those books so those are the three no one will
ever make a movie about you of course not but but you will probably do that because you find these things
entertaining and such and you like to hear yourself speak so when you make a movie about your life
who will play you well I tell you who I would like to play me and he would in no
way except that scrip and I’m sure and we would also have to get into the DeLorean to go back in time because it
would be a younger Gene Hackman I think he is just an incredible actor not that
we look alike or anything but I just think that he is he’s fantastic Tracey what would you tell trace
Blackmore on day one if you could go back and talk to him today all right I’ve asked that question
several times so it’s hard for me to pinpoint when my first day of water
treatment is I think I told the story that my first water treatment memory is me burning my hand on my father’s hot
plate when I was actually the mechanical room when I was five years old he was serviced in an account by the way I don’t recommend that so I’m not sure
when my first day was but if I were able to figure that out
I would tell myself pay attention to this man you know he’s your dad and you
know you go through a time in your life that you know you think they don’t know anything and and you know way more than they ever will and of
course you come to appear in your life where you realize wow they knew a lot and I really should have paid attention
but I never really thought of a time that I wasn’t going to have my dad as a resource to ask water treatment
questions too so to tell myself you know write books take notes do whatever you need to do
get all the knowledge out of this man’s head because it will help you moving forward that’s probably what I would
tell myself great and just so that you know I’m always trying to one-up you you know you’d normally ask three
lighting round questions I’m going to ask for and so the last and final question I’m going to ask is is that you
could go back in time and have a conversation with someone who would it be in one one of my heroes through
history is Winston Churchill and if you look at all the things that were going
on through that time people were not helping him fight the evil powers that
he was going up against it would be interesting to talk with him and figure
out how he how he stayed the path that he did how he rallied support and how he
truly was the catalyst that allowed the ally forces to stop the evil that was
going on well now it’s time for pinks and blues so as promised Mark Lewis has
stuck around and he’s going to help us answer some of the questions that you and the scaling-up nation have written
in and asked me to answer on the air so mark you ready to help me out with this
sure all right we already spent the first half of the show telling people that I normally do this wrong so
hopefully you can you can you can correct that issue well fire away all right so our first question from a
listener how do I know if my chiller is scaled and mark I can’t think of a
better question to ask because you’re here and as everybody knows you’re the chiller whisperer so I would I would say
that the the first thing that you would notice is that you would be recording temperatures
from the user interface on a regular basis and you’re seeing that those
numbers are not consistent that they are changing somehow they are changing and
and they’re changing more than just from load factors and so what you know one of
the things you should always record is the chiller approach chiller approach is the temperature of the water leaving the
condenser barrel and the temperature of the refrigerant leaving the convince your barrel so your your liquid leaving
going back to your economizer first as the water going back to the tower and
and so that that’s the first indication you’re gonna have you know and there’s a
difference here scaled and fouled fouled is any type of heat transfer impediment to where scale is actually mineral
buildup on the onda tube and it could be microbial buildup as well it could be could be so as we’re looking
at this because you’re always log in your chiller to see what the chiller is doing you got to understand we’re
treating the chiller okay now most people say well water treatment experts okay we treat the water that cools the
equipment so we need to understand how our equipment operates which is our chiller and so by understanding that
we’re treating the water to cool the equipment so by running the tests and see where our tests are we know what the
water is doing in the system then what we’ve got to do is determine is that chiller operating like it should so
chiller approach is probably the biggest one that we look at the other one is if
you’re not able to get your temperatures down in the building if the machine is working as hard as it can work and just
can’t get temperatures down good indication of something’s going on a lot of people says Oh a my towers not scaled
up my chiller must not be skilled mm-hmm you know I see no deposits here so there
shouldn’t be any there and what we have to remember is that the big difference
in the two is temperature we have all the heat down in the in the condenser barrel we have less heat up in the in
the cooling tower so we’re gonna scale our condenser barrel first we’ve got any
deposits in our tower we commit we’ve got them down in chiller but I would check no approach I
would check water temperatures I would listen they scale chiller will will
scream louder than normal maybe even will serve but you know some of the
things that we have to understand is there’s other factors that will give an
indication that a chiller is scaled low refrigerant air in the refrigerant low
water flow the water is too hot and so we’ve got to understand and determine if
we have something outside of whack it’s going to point to a scale chiller and so
we do have to understand there’s many components that will make our children look scale when it’s actually not
there’s a mechanical issue that’s causing our problem and in the
fundamentals and application we talk about the difference between chemical problems and mechanical problems and we
can’t fix either with the other we’ve got to address all right chemical issues and chemically our mechanical issues
mechanically that’s a great answer and I have stolen that phrase and used on this show many a time the person didn’t ask
this but I’m gonna throw it in but how would you know that your boiler starting to get fouled and that would just simply
I think you said it very well with the chiller you’re not gonna take one reading and know anything but if you’re
every time you’re going in there and you’re recording the information and you can see what the trends are you’re gonna
know something well the same thing with the boiler that stack temperature gauge that’s on the back or the front of the
boiler depending on if it’s a three or four pass we should be recording that temperature every time and if we see
that number getting hotter going up that’s telling us we’re not transferring the heat through the tubes into the
water where it’s actually doing some good it’s going out into the atmosphere and and I’m gonna also add here that we
have a water side of the tube and we have a fire side of the tube and just like your water side can be scaled your
fire side can be suited so as you’re driving up to the plan if you see black smoke coming out of your boiler that is
a severe problem in the the oxygen gas content mixture we don’t mess with that
but there again it indication that something’s not firing right in that border and so you service
doesn’t start when you walk in your service starts as you’re driving up looking around because just like you’re
looking at the plume on a da from the outside you’re looking at the stack on a ball or as you’re coming in and in tres
you’re right we know what this that temperature normally is at a certain pressure of the bore and one of the nice
things about a baller if it runs at 70 psi in the winter it’s going to run at 70 psi this summer and
and so it the stack temperature should always be fair to consistent the only thing I will say is is you do need to
remember that if your boiler is on low fire and high fire you’re gonna have a
little difference because it’s a fire you’re really pushing the gas through there and so your temperature will be a
little higher so normal operations normal operations should be fairly consistent but I will say that is if you
know what’s going on then you should know what your results are gonna be
yes sir that’s a great point and I like how you added the fact that you know we’re treating the water side but we may
be the only conduit between communicating to that boiler and that customer that the fire side is actually
suited up and they need to take some action or it needs to be tuned up because that flame doesn’t look right absolutely our second question is how do
you know if you’ve had a softener upset and I’m assuming the softener upset means that sometime before you were
on-site that the softener was letting hard water go through the boiler so your
sample is showing a sophomore yeah right here this at this point in time you’ve
got a soft water sample but how do you know it’s always been so in trace that’s a great question because every test we
perform is right now at this time at this moment in time these are our
results and what we’re having to do is to assume what our values have been continuously so your software is soft
however you know you’re gonna test your feed water if your feed water has any
hint of hardness and here’s the thing if if your softener past hard water and
your heart is in your feed water or your de tank is is is high or very consistent
with what your feed water or your soft water is that’s a good indication it just passed hardness if it’s if it’s a
lot lower it’s either a lot of return condensate or it may have been a little while but your feed water tank your deer
and your heater is a dilution of your softener and your kindness a example so any hardness in your feed water tank
either came from your softener over the last period of time or from your condensate so that’s great way to check
a little longer period is by testing your feed water okay how are you be getting hardness in your condensate you
get a process leaks if you’ve got a heat exchanger that heats up water and there’s a leak is your biggest way from
bringing back hardness all right and then you would just backtrack the condensate lines that you figured out where that source yes you know you’re
gonna go from there and notice if I got probably kind of safe then you’re gonna start saying okay I’ve gotta kind of set
receiver here there there and there I’ve got one of my hospitals have six different condensate receivers and I can
go there and and I can narrow it down and then from there I go to where those kind of safe samples come from well
there you go so that doesn’t specifically answer this question but it’s a great troubleshooting technique
for if you are finding hardness in your feed water da where it’s coming from so let’s say this person is running their
tests and they they run the hardness test and it’s soft they’ve run the feed
water test and it’s soft and we still don’t know if it’s been soft for a long
period of time because all that water in the tank might have just gone to the boiler so what can they run or how can
they tell from other tests that they’re running that they are maybe having some hardness leak through before a
regeneration period if you are running a phosphate program then your water may be
cloudier turbid however a lot of programs are there are all polymer programs and etc and so one of the
things that I’ve noticed is when I run my health plan D test my P alkalinity will performance as natural as normal
and then when I run my total alkalinity the the sample will go from green a little brownish brackish before it
finally turns to the pink or purple and if I let that sample sit and it goes back
to brown or back to green what we’re doing the calcium carbonate is joined together and by adding alkalinity
titrant of sulfuric acid ivory dissolved that calcium carbonate which is elevating the pH back above the point
but back above that 4.3 and and it’s raised my pH so it changes the color
back add a few more drops of the a plant action it goes back pinging and stays pink so therefore I know that I have
passed some hardness and those reactions that need to take place have taken place yeah Marv I love that answer because
that shows that you are not just simply running the test and getting a result you understand one the chemistry of the
tests what’s going on and by not doing anything extra you’re realizing what’s
going on because you understand that test you know another thing that I’ve picked up on is if you have had a
softener upset you will notice that your alkalinity will decrease and if you look
at your trends you’ll see that the alkalinity is perfect it’s exactly where it needs to be and then all of a sudden
it started dipping and normally if everything else is equal normally that points back to you’re getting some hard
water in between that softener regeneration I’ll even throw one more example left there for you because I’m
kind kind I’m nice and stuff like that what I’ve noticed also is your pH of
your condensate drops a little and the reason for that is this the heat will break down the calcium carbonate and
release more carbonate back into your steam system which would require more I mean to neutralize it when it condenses
back to just to kind of say so so if you got a funky color if you’ve got in your
alkalinity got low PHS and you’re kind of say and everything else seems to be normal it may be a softener problem I
you know we we talked a lot around knowing your tests from this question and I think it just goes to show the
more you understand the tools that you are using and what they’re doing to get their result the more information
they’re gonna tell you so whoever whoever wrote that question and thank you for writing that in it allowed us to have this discussion
next question what is the difference between a separator and a sand filter
and I’m assuming they’re talking about a cooling tower yeah I wouldn’t I would assume the same and you know the biggest
difference there between the two is a separator is going to spend the solids out where the solids will fall toward
the bottom of the like a lake Oh separator to our sand filter actually performs a layer that the water has to
pass through and then you know there’s a couple things that you got to understand a separator will only filter down so far
60 microns I believe 60 microns 50 60 microns is what I’ve heard a sand filter
will normally get you down to somewhere in the 5 or less 5 or less so depend
upon how clean you want your water and how much space you’ve got how much maintenance you want to do on the system but I will say is as important as it is
to have the right filter the other part of any filtration system in a cooling
tower are your what they call sweeper jets the purpose of a sweeper jet is to move as much water through across the
basin of the cooling tower to to push any dirt and debris in one of your words
to breast Deborah’s yes difference to push that Deborah’s into the middle of the tile same debris so that it can be
sucked up through the suction lines of the filter so and there’s many different
configurations I’ve seen alternating links of the sweeper Jets so we pushed
from the eggs in a little bit and then there’s a longer jet towards we’ll pick up from there pushed more to the middle
but you’ve got to push the debris from the the basin of the cooling tower into the middle to where the suck yeah keep
everything store everything sturdy you know speaking of sweeper jets something that we have seen you know it’s not hard
anybody can put sweeper jets on the end of some PVC but at the beginning where
those Jets are they’re gonna get the lion’s share of the water volume and then by the time it goes all the way to
the end of that line there’s no flow so Jay farmer actually taught me this and
we started doing this and recommending this that you put valves right before each one of your sweeper jets and that way you can
throttle each one so you’re getting that constant flow through your entire basin in just in case you don’t know a sweeper
jet is very similar to a venturi you know where all your we’re talking about flow here and what a sweeper jet
will do is take take one or two gallons per minute and by sucking water in from the sides venturi effect it will take
one gallon and turn it into five gallons and you’ll have five gallons of flow pushing with only one gallon of pumping
and so that’s the best advantage of having a sweeper jet versus just a nozzle with a little sprayer on its
brain in all right let me go back to the original question and I truly feel that a sand filter is more appropriate on a
cooling tower than a separator because it does filter more out and if you think
about what our job is is to keep a system clean and when we have upsets in the system of course this depends on how
stressed your water is but if we have more deborah’s if you will even less
than the the 60 micron that can create a nucleation site so the cleaner we can
get the water the better we can treat that water so if I’m given a choice trace would you rather have a separator
would you rather have a sand filter I will always pick a sand filter but the
customer doesn’t necessarily like those as much because there’s a little more maintenance involved yeah obviously a
separator is better than nothing but I truly feel that the sand filter is the best filter media for a cooling tower
and I would agree all right so our last question is is a sock filter or a
pleated filter better on a closed-loop system the well the two things you’re
looking for here is you’re looking for coverage your surface area and micron size and so with with those two you know
which one is better whichever one you have is what I’m going to say some of the factors that you’re going to take in place is is is what’s
available you know can I can I step it down can I get a 25 micron filter a 5 micron filter down to a 1 micron filter
if those socks are available great and if you have a sock filter feeder then
that’s great if you don’t can you just put in a canister if you already have a shot feeder maybe your customer will
just buy a canister to hold a pleated filter I mean sometimes it does come down to cost to put in a sock filter
you’ve got a buy a filter feeder you’re looking at a cost of somewhere around seven hundred eight hundred bucks to buy
that filter feeder if you’re looking for just a cartridge housing you’re talking
about a hundred bucks so so what it is cost is this surface area it’s how often
you know you want to change these things how quick you want to clean something up how much surface area but any filter is
better than no filter but it comes down to what’s available and what you you have on your system
well mark I definitely know how you feel when you were talking in our earlier segment where you’re putting your heart arms up and down and waving to say but
mark you didn’t talk about this and you didn’t talk about that so I’m gonna do that exactly like you were doing to me
my arms were waving up and down you guys can’t see that so that being said I wholeheartedly think that the bag filter
is hands down the best filter to put in a closed-loop system I want to tell you
why one it is such a great show and tell all the particles get caught in that bag
filter you can pull that sucker out and you can show the customer I asked you to
invest money to trust me and invest money in this filter look at what’s coming out of your system look what we
don’t have to contend with anymore that we’ve filtered out so that’s one of the good reasons another one is the pleated
filter I absolutely hate I think they work great in pools but I think they
even have limitations and pools as they start clogging up they start folding in on themselves and you mentioned that
surface area is so important well when they start collapsing in on themselves they start losing their surface area so
I never use a pleated filter if the if the device they have only takes the
pleated filter and not a bad filter what I will do is I’ll get them a spun a solid core fill
because those are never going to lose their surface area because they can’t compress anywhere and they might be a
little bit more than a pleated filter but you’re going to get some more mileage out of them but I gotta say there’s just something to pull that
dirty filter out when it’s a bag filter and show them all the stuff that’s in there and I think they’re the cheapest
of lemaitre’s maybe your systems are just a lot more dirtier than money well
there you go I guess I deserve that well well mark was this a better pinks and blues did you feel better about this
one you know tres I think this has to be one of the best person boosters that never been presented on scaling up and I
hope that you had many more just like this one well tres I know that I kind of stole the show from you and this is fun
questions and so but thank you for allowing me to steal your show but I do
think that sometimes people need to hear the trace Blackmore and who he is and what he is and what he’s thinking and
why he’s thinking – under fully understand this show and so that’s why I kind of took over so I want to thank you
for being on the show today being my partner and and maybe one day you’ll be
invited back on the show as it is well I hope so I can only hope so and thanks thanks for having me on the show mark
thanks well folks that was definitely interesting I’ve never been a guest on
my own show before I will say it was great to have another opinion on pinks
and blues and I think this leads to something I think everybody knows already but I’ll say it anyway
I do the best job I can to understand the questions that you submit to me with
the information that you give me with those questions but that’s all I have if
there is a huge issue then I’m hoping that you’re reaching out to me directly
and let me know that you’re you really need some extra help on something and then maybe we move to a more advanced
consultative type approach but that being said please don’t take pinks and
blues as I’m doing consulting work I’m just giving you my opinion on things that are going on and it was so good to
have a second opinion on pinks and blues and Mark Lewis gave us of course his
opinion which he never has any issue doing that being said I have had people
contact me directly either via email or phone dialogue or even had had me come
on-site when they’ve had other issues now when they do that I’m able to ask
them so many more questions so we’re just not looking at the surface of that
issue we’re making sure we get down deep into the roots of that problem and since
mark mentioned this on pinks and blues it got me thinking many of us out there in the scaling-up nation have never had
the opportunity to work with the consultant to help find a solution to a
problem that they were having and a lot of people are intimidated by that because they think oh my goodness if I’m
not perfect somebody’s gonna come and steal my business so I thought based on
Mark’s revealing of this that it might be a great show to have to have one of
the people that I’ve worked with come on the show and tell you about the process
and it’s not that I want you to hire me but I want you to start thinking that
the water treatment community is just that we are a water treatment community and most of us have no issues helping
each other and I know that’s hard to believe everybody thinks that they’re out for themselves but those people that
are truly invested in the water treatment community they want to make sure that the water treatment community
is the best that it can be so I’m gonna try to arrange that for you nation I’m gonna try to make sure that I get one of
the people that I’ve worked with on the show so you can see what that process is like and it might allow you to contact
somebody that you know and ask them questions more freely producing the show
has really turned into something I look for – week after week especially when I hear
from members in the scaling-up nation or when they come to events like the AWT Technical Training and they tell me how
much they look forward to every other week when this show comes out when they
tell me how much this show has helped them on a particular issue or when they
tell me what their favorite show is or they tell me that this show has been
that slight push to make them better in this industry and since I started the
CWT challenge I have heard from over a hundred people that have told me that
they are committed to getting their CW teased folks that is the very reason that I
started this program and I am so glad that you are taking advantage of it like
I hoped that you would so folks out there in the scaling-up nation I want to thank you for listening today’s episode
and I can’t wait to talk with you again next time on scaling up
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