The following transcript is provided by YouTube, mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode click HERE.
today’s episode 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 scaling up h2o.com
Mastermind welcome to scaling up H2O the podcast where we scale up on knowledge
so we don’t scale up our systems my name is Trace Blackmore get to host this fantastic podcast and I get to be part
of the scaling up Nation welcome Nation so glad that you are here and it truly
is one of my favorite things to do to bring this podcast to you each and every
week and of course as you can imagine bringing a podcast to you each and every
week leaves me looking for interesting things to talk about on each and every
podcast now several of you have helped me with topics and guests and thank you
so much for doing that Nation you may not know this but you are smack dab in
the middle of national handwashing awareness week yes that is a real thing
and it takes place the first full week of every December and of course
coincides with flu season and one of the number one causes for people getting the
flu is somebody touches something somebody else that had the flu touched
or probably did more than touch they sneezed or coughed on it and then you
took your hand and you touched your face you touched your eye and that’s how that
virus can get into your system so wash your hands and you wash all of those
things off now I am a student of washing
my hands I’m not OCD but I just watch people wash their hands as I’m washing
my hands when we’re in a public restroom and I’ve noticed that some people don’t
wash their hands some people pretend to wash their their hands some people don’t use soap and they just put water over
their hands so I think we all know how to wash our hands and you are doing
yourself a favor if you do it properly I’m really good friends with a chickfila
operator and they actually teach everybody in the restaurant to wash
their hands with soap and water they show them how to scrub their hands and
they have to mentally sing Happy Birthday twice as they’re scrubbing with
soap and water and only after they do that that’s when they rinse so maybe
Chick-fil-A can help you with your handwashing and yes it was my pleasure
to share that with you if you were at the association of water
Technologies conference just a few months ago go you might have seen the
presentation of Andy Ry of HOH share how to dry your hands this was a TED Talk
that he shared with us and if you want to see this Ted Talk we are going to
have that linked on our show notes page you can get that by going to scaling up
h2o.com and this is episode 341 so we’ll have that listed there but in that TED
Talk entitled how to use one paper towel by Joe Smith Joe explains how much waste
goes into our landfills because we don’t use one paper towel on average we use
five paper towels on average and just think of all the people in the United
States alone let alone the entire world washing their hands using five paper
towels now of course you’re going to go on the show notes page and you are going to watch this Ted talk but I’m going to
give you the cliffs notes so what you do after you wash your hands in the fashion
we just spoke about you are then going to shake your hands 12 times to flick
all the water off of your hands or most of the water off of your hands and he
says the Reon reason you do it 12 times is because that is the largest number
that is a single syllable so there you go so you shake your hands 12 times in
the sink and let me tell you I’ve been doing this for a while and a little tip is make sure you’re aiming at the sink
otherwise you’ll get it all over the mirror and I always feel bad when I make a mess for the janitorial staff to come
back behind me so you get a better technique as you do it so 12 times
you’re shaking your hands in the sink and then you go over to your paper towel you grab one paper towel and then you
fold it and you use that folded paper towel to dry your hands and I will tell
you I get my hands drier quicker by
using this method and I don’t have time to stand under one of those blow dryers
for 3 minutes to try to get my hands try this is a fantastic method because it
actually saves me time and while I’m saving time I’m not wasting paper towels
and if you watch the Ted Talk he talks about how many millions of pounds of
paper towels that actually saves each and every year so think about it
something that we never think about before we wash our hands correctly hopefully we stay healthier
and now we’re going to save time drying our hands folks you never know what you
are going to learn on this scaling up H2O podcast as I mentioned we’re going
to have that Ted Talk on our show notes page and it’s a fun Ted Talk I hope you
enjoy it and I hope the next time you wash your hands you’re a little quicker
you’re a little bit cleaner here are a couple of events that I want to share with with you that are coming up there’s
the Rural Water rally taking place in Washington DC that is on February 6
through 8th and the Rural Water rally provides an opportunity for supporters
of our industry to make their case directly to their elected officials so
if this is something that interests you by all means go to our events page on
scaling up h2o.com and we’ll have all of that information for you another item
you might want to check out while you’re there is the clean tech Forum North America taking place in San Diego
California January 22nd through 24th this is where you could learn from
analyst and each other about Trends and innovations that are driving the
ecosystem forward so we’ll have all of that and more about that conference on
our events page I also want to remind everybody about the hang the Hang is one
of my favorite things that we do because I get to meet so many of you so if you
will Mark January 11th on your calendar and we’re going to have that hang at 6
p.m. eastern time for exactly 1 hour and you can find out all the information you
want to know and register by going to scaling up h2o.com hang that’s h n G and
the last one I’ll mention is the 2024 ahr Expo and that is taking place
in Chicago Illinois January 22nd through 24th and this is where you can keep up
on industry changes that are affecting your business and career such as AI
controls decarbonation Plumbing hydronics heat pumps refrigerants
Workforce Development Business and Professional growth and so much more
this is put on by ashray and Ahri that is the air conditioning heating and Refrigeration Institute all
of that and more and I mean so much more because the great staff here at scaling
up H2O is Jam packing that events page so you only have to go to one place to
see everything that is going on in the water community and that is scaling up
h2o.com Nation I am always looking for new
guests to interview and teach all of us within the scaling up Nation new items
that we need to be aware of and I have no doubt that you are going to enjoy
this interview my lab partner is Richard
Becket of global Water Solutions welcome to the scaling up H2O podcast Richard
than thank you very much it’s uh very nice to be here Trace do you mind telling the scaling up Nation a bit
about yourself absolutely like you said I work for a company called Global Water Solutions and I’m the global OEM
relationship manager we’re a manufacturing company we have manufacturing operations in Boston USA
and in China and in Taiwan we sell our products primarily expansion vessels for
Water Systems both hot cold chilled Etc uh globally so but I look after all of
our large OEM customers how did you get into this industry well many years ago I worked
for a number of different originally chemical companies who were looking at
and we producing something called biocides which helped to clean out cooling towers or get rid of the bugs
associated with cooling towers and there’s a natural Affinity then to link
into the expansion vessel Market I knew the guy the CEO sha nataraj and I knew
him who started the company I knew him many years ago when he first started the company and he he he said I wanted
someone over in Europe to look after the majors so um we just got together and uh
we’ve had some fun every August we do Legionella awareness month and there’s so many
people out there that are just learning about Legionella bacteria and legionary
disease and there there are other peop out there that know about it but they they don’t know how to discuss it
properly or have the conversation with the people that need to make decisions so I think today’s conversation we’re
going to be able to bring in some of the things you have to do over in the UK that are very foreign to us over in the
states and talk about some of the things specifically that your company is doing and I thought what we could do is maybe
start out with defining what a dead leg is
okay so basically what we have in a hot water system is the use of a a cylinder
a cylinder which will store hot water for use in that building whether that
building is domestic or commercial it doesn’t really matter you either have instantaneous hot water or you have
stored hot water if you have stored hot water then more often than not you will
have what we call a thermal expansion tank connected to that cylinder and the
thermal expansion tank is there just basically to take up the the pressure
that is associated with the water as it goes from ambient 5° 6° 7° up to 65 70°
stored water so one particular dead leg which I’m very familiar with and I have to say is
extremely prevalent is associated with the thermal expansion tank and what
happens is the the plumbers are not forced to connect the expansion tank
correctly they just connect it onto the incoming main next to the hot water cylinder and then it just takes up the
pressure so it actually does its job but the problem is there’s no water
flow there’s just it’s almost like in our in our human terms it’s like the
water is breathing so you breathe in you breathe out you breathe in and breathe out that’s exactly what’s happening in
an expansion tank and a dead leg is basically anywhere on a water system
where the water is not flowing so that could be as simple as let’s take I don’t
know a school let’s take a school where they want to remove one of the faucets
or they want to they want to remove one of the sinks or one of the bathrooms what do they do usually they’ll just
blank off the pipe and then remove the faucet from that blanked off pipe to
whever the pipe is connected that’s now your dead leg and what will happen in
there if the temperature is correct you will get microbial growth definitely and
you might if you are unfortunate you will get Legionnaire as he growing so a
dead leg is anywhere on a water system where water is not flowing and I’m
particularly aware of the Dead leg associated with the thermal expansion
tank because these are going in literally everywhere in the world well
let’s expand on that so can you explain the world workings of a thermal expansion tank so a thermal expansion
tank is there to as I said take up the pressure that is
generated from the water that is being heated for use in the building now when
you heat water approximately for it will expand by about
4% and and that expanded water it has to go so somewhere you know water can is
not compressible so it has to go somewhere so where does it go and it
goes into what we call a thermal expansion tank if it’s a sealed system
which many many systems are designed to be sealed systems so what happens is one
half of the expansion tank is full full of air full of just dry air under
pressure and then it’s separated from the water system using a
diaphragm and then the water system is connected to the hot water so the hot water now as it’s going from you know 5
degrees 10 degrees ambient water temperature but just your air temperature as it’s heated up during the
day it gets to around 60 65 70 degrees stored water and you’re you’re talking
celsus for the people over here in the states that are following along I am talking Celsius now so basically what
happens then is the water expands by 4% if if you don’t accommodate that
expanded water you’re going to blow a pipe somewhere something on that system
is going to give it has to give because there’s that much pressure involved so
what the thermal expansion tank does it already has a pressure side and then the
water side allows the diaphragm allows the expanded water increasing pressure
to just almost like grow into the air chamber and then the pressure increases
under control and everything is is absolutely under control and that’s what
a thermal expansion tank does and your expertise is realizing
that that is a dead leg we are not getting water flow through that system
we could have the potential of growing Legionella bacteria there and you’ve created a better mousetrap can you talk
a little bit about that yeah so basically what we have done is well just
to give you a little nugget of of of information we we it is estimated just
in the United Kingdom 65 million people 23 million homes it’s estimated that
there are about 10 million installation s right now which are sat there in dead
legs that are now generating microbial growth now the thing is if you are a
human being and your immune system is pretty good if you get sick you’ll get sick but then you will get better so
don’t get me wrong Legionnaire as ease is quite difficult to catch it’s it’s not very very common because we’re not
testing for it all the time it’s not like a flu virus or anything like that so basically what we have done is we
have taken the concept of the thermal expansion tank and we’ve designed what
we call a flow through device and this flow through device fits onto the
connection which goes onto the water connection and then every time every
single time that the property draws hot water so has a you know draws it down
into the sink into the bath having a shower using the faucet whatever the case is it will automatically via the
cold water coming in it will refresh into the expansion vessel fresh water so
there is an automatic method of cleaning out the
dead leg and there there are also some engineering shall we say some good
practice engineering Plumbing principles which must be adopted uh for to to
minimize this risk you’re never going to get rid of it I mean Legionnaire is a ubiquitous bacteria all over the world
it’s in every single freshwater location it doesn’t Thrive but it doesn’t it’s
not it’s not in Sea waterer but it is in all fresh water and the problem is we
draw that fresh water into our properties we store that fresh water under pressure and under temperature
because we we want the water at the right pressure and temperature in our homes and in our schools our colleges
our hospitals and our etc etc we are demanding that and we create we’ve
created the problem so we’ve we’ve come up with a very simple solution very very
low cost called the flow through and that that will fix it problem is there
there are no government laws saying you will fit flow through it it just doesn’t happen because that would impinge on the
manufact Ur rights to manufacture the unvented cylind the the hot water cylinder but yes we’ve come up with a
simple device so you mentioned primarily residential systems but could these also
be put on closed loop heating systems as well so the closed loop heating system
this is the heating system for your listeners the heating system which is taking the very hot water around in in a
closed loop that’s not the dangerous Loop that’s not a problem it still needs
an expansion tank on it a heating expansion tank but that’s because it’s closed loop by nature of the fact that
it’s not potable water uh or drinking water it’s not a problem it’s only on
the thermal the thermal expansion so that’s good trace what you’ve said there
is that the closed loop circuit is a is a completely protected hot water supply
circuit circuit revolving around the domestic and Commercial commercial properties to get rid of Legionella and
to be worried about Legionella you’re only worried about the portable side of it which is uh the open loop because
it’s open because you have a shower and when you have a shower you can only as I
know you quite hot on Legionnaire so you can only catch Legionella Legionella
bacteria by breathing in the droplets so having a shower uh having a spa going
past a fountain in a shopping Mall anywhere which is generating aerosols or
small droplets is a potential danger and I’ve seen now when when you know around
the world this these misting there are now misting devices which are blowing
very fine droplets over fresh fruit and vegetables in the shopping malls and
places and even in restaurants to cool you down in the hot countries they’re blowing over you misted potentially
quite dangerous water now here in the states they have this thunder and lightning that goes off in
the produce section to warn you that it’s getting ready to miss the produce is that something they do in the UK as
well well they don’t warn us they it just it just Mists it they missed it you
know I mean obviously the smaller the smaller the the the retailer the smaller
the grosser the bigger potential the big the big supermarkets then clearly I’m I
would hope I would hope that they are doing the correct dosing regime and they
have the correct but I’m pretty certain that they’re not because I we also as a company we manufacture very large
expansion uh thermal expansion tanks up to 10,000 liter and I know for certain I
know 100% that a lot of these are sat in dead legs and these are going into hospitals schools where the you know in
a hospital the immune system of a patient is compromised anyway so it’s a big problem
and there are guidelines there are recommended guidelines around Europe and
I’d be amazed if there aren’t guidelines in the states as well recommending but only recommending how plumbers should
deal with the thermal expansion of hot water systems uh I I believe there are
recommendations and what I would love to do is move the the the conversation forward so that turns into not not just
a recommendation but an naturual requirement and it wouldn’t be difficult in UK and Europe we have PL things
called la8 which is a law which you know you have to do certain things when you’re putting in a a domestic and
Commercial heating system and cold water and posable system you’ve got to do it in a certain way I think we should just
add in there the fact that that that flow through should be a Dei a device and we’re not the only company by the
way I mean I’m not just blowing our own Trump in there’s not many there’s only a couple of companies is so but you know
let’s get it out there and let’s install these damn things because it’s really important that we protect the consumer
and the public I will say from my experience the states is way lagging
behind any legislation if we look at the UK If we look at Europe we look at Australia New Zealand they have a lot
more legislation regarding Legionella bacteria and uh trying to limit
Legionnaire’s Disease you see what’s happened and is happening more and more is that now the
insurance companies have now tagged on to this and we’ve now got what what we
call uh ambulance chasing insurance companies who are uh making a lot of
money on people unfortunately who have either gone on holiday into what hot
countries and come back and and have contracted and have contracted Legion it
takes about a fortnight two weeks to to actually for it all to you know populate and colonize and then start to affect
you so this is also driving the topic to
the the Forefront of people’s minds because our health authority our health
industry over here is is run by what we call the National Health Service NHS and
the NHS is being sued all the time we have lots of different pockets of NHS
you know London Edinburgh Glasgow Manchester Liverpool n they’re all different NHS but they’re all under the
umbrella of the NHS and they’re getting sued they’re getting sued because they are the duty holders in a hospital or a
school and they are not looking after the public because they are not insisting on the correct equipment being
installed correctly but it still isn’t law uh and in the states if you’re lagging behind then basically what’s
happening is people are getting sick and I don’t know whether the insurance companies are catching up but boy oh boy
they will do and it’s huge business just on the insurance side of it in a legion
prevention program where people are implementing testing say they’re testing
their hot water system and they’re trying to figure out where the Legionella is coming from in your
experience as they’re tracing the system what’s the percentage that’s coming from
this thermal expansion tank there are no statistics so unfortunately I I can’t give you and
I won’t estimate it but suffice to say when we have done our research with the
facilities management companies who look after all of these and we’ll talk we’ll
we’ll say commercial properties now rather than domestic but on the commercial property side so schools
colleges nursing homes daycare centers Sports Halls Etc and these are are the larger tanks
these are this the the these FM companies are going in there and they are replacing failed tanks okay when
they replace the fail tank the microbial growth that is within the tank that is
being taken taken out is so dangerous they’re having to mask up it’s
unbelievable a bit like when you see it on your shower head if your shower head
hasn’t been cleaned for a long time you’ll get all you’ll get black usually
well it’s always black deposits that’s microbial growth and within that could be
Legionella so the percentage is very difficult to to ascertain but definitely
it is coming from there will be a source coming from the thermal expansion tank and people need to be aware of that and
people need to to be asking the plumber to install the flow through uh and
install it correctly and and and at the end and certainly as part of this podcast there will be resources that we
can give you the listeners to to go to find out where they can get the devices from because like I said they’re very
low cost you’re not having to rip the whole system out and put a new valve in it’s not like that it’s a very very
simple device but yeah it’s a considerable problem I know that for certain and increasing by the way Trace
because if you go to the that in Europe there is they’re monitoring this now
there’s a Legionella monitoring disease for sensory control bit like the states and they have all the stat
statistic every government have to publish the statistics every single month so you can look at what’s
happening and the detection rate is increasing the numbers are increasing and unfortunately the deaths are
increasing it’s really bad you mentioned proper installation I know each area has
their own building guidelines on how they want things installed but generally
how are these most commonly misinstalled because for decades now the expansion
tank which is a very very old technology because it works the expansion tank has
been connected to the cold water supply to the unvented cylinder or the hot
water cylinder using the pipe using a 1 in pipe or inch and a quarter or 20 you
know 25 mil if it’s in metric Etc and so long as the so long as the is no there
is nothing in between the thermal expansion vessel and the hot water cylinder so in other words the water
when it expands can expand into the thermal expansion tank then there’s no problem and it will do its job so in
other words the homeowner or the commercial property owner won’t see any
problem it’ll just carry on working all day long all night long no problem week in week out the problem is like I said
at the beginning the water is just breathing it’s like expanding
and Contracting every day so it expands once in the morning and then expands and
contracts every time water is drawn from the hot water cylinder but that’s not water flow the only flow is coming along
the incoming water pipe straight into the hot water cylinder so the dead leg
now is all the way up the the pipe and this pipe sometimes can be 3 or four
meters away from the from the thermal expansion tank and it could be an 18 24
35 L tank so a 35 L expansion tank this is on a sort of semi domestic or large
house a 35 liter tank will have 17 18 19 20 liters of water in there plus the
pipe which is going nowhere for the life of its installation so we’re now talking
you know 25 L of water at the right temperature above 22° and below 50° C
with a nutrient source which is unfortunately the the rubber membrane or the diaphragm inside the actual
expansion that’s the nutrient source for the bacteria to grow so it’s sort of
like it’s like a little microbial Farm a farmyard we’re growing the damn thing so
that’s where we are now and that’s how the installations are being installed right now and the problem is engineering
wise Plumbing wise fluid dynamics wise everything’s working microbial wise we have a problem here so
you mentioned hospitals and schools and Office Buildings how large do these
systems come in is there a limitation to these flow through thermal tanks that uh
you can only go up a certain size no not really not really I mean some of the biggest installations biggest hotels in
the world the heating systems are the way I’ve described them so they have to
be they’re either instantaneous using ple heat exchanges which do away with
the problem but the problem with that they ALS they also have other issues as well uh or if they have hot water
storage then the thermal expansion tank with flow through can accommodate it and
and and we do we we do up to 450 liter flow through but if you need double that
you just put them in parallel so you know there’s no issues with that let’s arm the scaling up Nation with how to
have the proper conversation so I I will admit the thermal expansion tank is something that I rarely thought of but
you’re right it’s a dead leg it it’s harboring bacteria so now we’re going to be more cognizant of that what should we
be saying to our customers to help educate them well the customer when they’re
having a heating system installed and I’m now talking about I don’t care whether it’s a domestic customer or
whether whether it’s a school Governor or whether it’s a hospital or a dental
surgery or whatever the question has to be posed to the plumber are you fitting
my hot water with anti-legionella Device now probably the plumber will
just go oh my goodness I don’t know what what on Earth are you maybe they’ve heard about Legion but they will
certainly have to do some uh research now now what will happen then is the
plumber will have to go to their supplier the merchant and then ask the
question and all of the manufacturers they all know about these devices but
because historically they’ve not done anything about it they aren’t going to do anything about it now but they can
get a hold of them like I said there’s only a handful of companies who are manufacturing this type of device the
flow through device but there are a handful of Manufacturers who are doing it so and they’re in the States and
they’re in Europe they’re everywhere all over the globe so we’re we’re all over the globe our flow through tanks are
manufactured in Boston Massachusetts and we ship them all over all over the globe
and they have all of the relevant certification and their approve for drinking water Etc so there is no reason
whatsoever why everybody in everybody in the states everybody in the world should
not be fitting these things on every single hot water system so the the question needs to be asked when you’re
getting a price for your hot water supply I don’t care whether it’s domestic or commercial please install
anti-legionella flow through that’s it now how does that answer change when we’re talking about
retrofits well the ret it’s a bit it’s a bit more difficult it’s already in there
they have to isolate the uh expansion the thermal expansion vessel um probably
the system the hot water supply system will have to be isolated because there won’t be the correct isolation valves to
allow the building to be online permanently while you’re doing this retrofit but
unfortunately yes they’re going to have to isolate the building drain the system
down and then fit the correct device because it’s a retrofit and then and and
the devic is a flow through expansion vessel yeah absolutely there’s nothing we can do about that and then bring it
back but it shouldn’t take long I mean if it’s a commercial premises if it’s off for half a day I would say that’s
probably maximum I’ll make sure that we have some information on our show notes page so people can actually see the
diagrams of how these work we have very good videos showing people what is
actually happening inside actually inside the tank you can almost see the growth occurring it’s a bit morbid but
it’s there what’s the one message you want to get across to to our listeners
more than anything else start talking about it every single person that’s at
home and going to a sports Hall having a shower going to the swimming pool having
a shower going to hospital a dental surgery Etc listen if there’s a if
they’re delivering hot water into these buildings potentially they’re also delivering microbial atmospheric growth
which is which is potentially Janella this is not good so start talking about it educate yourself get on the Internet
it’s all available because until we drive this subject more and more to the
four it’s always just in the background and the ultimate goal here is for the
hot water cylinder people the manufacturers the people who are manufacturing the hot water cylinders
the storage cylinders it’s really incumbent on those people to supply the
because they always they nearly always Supply the thermal expans expon tank along with the hot water cylinder the
the hot water storage tank it it comes hand in hand just to be cheap and just
to make it really simple they should be demanding that the homeowner the duty
holder should be demanding that they fit a flow through expansion vessel device
along with the actual uh thermal expansion tank so that’s what has to happen Richard I want to thank you for
coming on the scaling up H2O podcast and getting us to think about all parts of the system not just little stubs little
dead legs that we normally think of but also the thermal expansion tanks I think you’ve helped a lot of people in their
thinking and I think that’s going to help a lot of people not get Legionnaire’s Disease thanks so much for
coming on the show you’re welcome scale up Nation some of our most
downloaded episodes take place in the month of August where we do Legionella
awareness mon month that tells us that there’s so many people out there that
just want to learn more about Legionella and what their responsibilities are and
we’re always trying to bring you the scaling up Nation more information about that but I have to tell you I have never
thought about expansion tanks of course when we do surveys we kind of list those
but we don’t really have any alternatives for them so when I saw this
this I knew I wanted to bring this to the scaling up Nation so if you want to
learn more information about what Richard was sharing with us we’re going to have lots of information and links on
our show notes page so you can better educate yourself and we are now looking
at the system in its entirety and that’s what we want to do each and every time
we look at whether it is a domestic water system or it is a hydronic system
we want to make sure that we’re looking for every potential area where we are not getting water flow now a dead leg is
described as anything that’s longer than 3 in so I don’t know if you’ve really
thought about that in terms 3 in is not very much and when you think of systems
and how things get abandoned maybe sinks get abandoned maybe pieces of equipment
get abandoned and they just simply valve or cap off that line well that is a dead
leg and that’s something that we need to look into each and every time we do a
survey and see what we can do to eliminate that dead leg get some flow
through it or maybe we can just cut that pipe out all together but that’s one of the things that we want to do when we’re
doing our inspections now something fun to help you remember dead legs is our
friend detective H2O here he
is the case of seeing the
dead as he stood looking out the rain spattered window of his office in downtown Waterville Herbert Henry
oxidane Pi cwt cracked a sideway smile when his black rotary phone sprang to
life on the third ring he answered detective H2O here the best water
treater this side of the Ohio solving water problems drop by drop what you got Mr oxidane I mean detective oxidane or
h2o whatever your Monica is this is Charlie Beck originally from Savannah Georgia but I
now live in Waterville and I work at Carlile industrial Incorporated I got
your name from a friend and I thought I’d drop a dime on you I see well since
you got me on the blower why don’t you spit it out I charge by the minute paying cabbage is no problem if you can
come on out here and solve our problem we have this process Loop you see and it
keeps getting loaded up with those microbial Critters I tell you what despite all our best efforts why don’t
y’all come on down here and I’ll give you the full scoop all right you’ve hooked me I’ll get my rust bucket
started and be out your way within the hour I might have to fill up the old mirror first since you’re uphill most of
the way and she gets Mighty thirsty in her old age fantastic detective H2O
we’ll be ready for you y’all come on down you
hear and as if on demand the delug of rain slowed to light drizzle as
detective H2O pulled to a stop in his Rusty blue Ford water was in his blood
and weather like this always soothed his soul Charlie bexter met him at the front
gate and escorted him to his office in the middle of the plant the detective had never been here before a
multinational water treatment company had this account buttoned up for years it was telling that he was being invited
here now something had them perplexed and solutions weren’t forthcoming this is
quite the complex operation you have here Mr bexter pipes running everywhere from every direction it seems some water
and some not oh please call me Charlie and what should I call you detective H2O
was the Bland reply oh of course Charlie quickly recovered you are quite right
detective H2O this facility looks like a bowl of spaghetti and in fact people
accuse us of getting willly Wonka to design it every nook and cranny has a
purpose to get the final product out the door but it ain’t an easy task keeping it all going and you can take that to
the bank tell me about this process Loop that’s giving you the headache that you mentioned on the phone Charlie looked
out at the facility and said you see the main process Loop provides cooling water
to several critical processes in the plant it’s a completely closed loop all
clammed up with no open water to the atmosphere we had some failures in some
popping and even a heat exchanger upon inspection all the reports said
mic or microbiologically induced corrosion that is this comes as no surprise since the
metal samples we took even fell slimy I see what did you do next next you
mentioned taking action on the phone earlier first we tested the system for microbial activity and boy did we find
them then we added a non oxidizing bide that seemed to Ward them little suckers
off for a while but they soon came back we tried a few more times but it was the
same old story it was like a broken record then we moved to an oxidizing by
side and we flush the system before and after we added that by side that’s not
an easy task with the loop this large plus we had to add fresh water treatment
chemicals those Critter came back again sometimes you can even smell those
suckers in the water just over a month and a half ago we repeated the oxidizer
drain and flush again and of course we had to put new water treatment chemicals in too you can probably guess what
happened after that that they seemingly return from Beyond the Grave to resurrect themselves once again that’s
where you come in our experts are out of ideas Charlie said dropping his head the
detective eyed the poor sap and replied well you got quite the story to tell there that’s a lot to take in but I do
my best to get this Canary to sing first what is the chemical treatment program you use in the main process Loop n try
now I know where you’re going with this because we continually see our nitrite
levels drop as then bug counts keep going up that’s why we also did a
preflush prior to adding the oxidizer since we didn’t want the reaction
between the two becoming part of the oxidizer demand yes very good nitrate
can be a bug food and we’ll take that into consideration nitrate is an excellent corrosion inhibitor and is
used successfully in all kinds of applications without the issues you are experiencing we won’t discount its
impact but let’s get the lay of the land first I need to see your testing logs
disinfection reports and whatever other details you can show me regarding the actions you’ve taken we’re an open book
around here detective it’s already laid out on that table Over Yonder y’all going over there and help
yourself as detective H2O perused through the files he took notes pulled
out his near advocus calculator to confirm a few things and peppered Charlie with questions anything Charlie
didn’t know he pulled his guys into answer Charlie procedurally I can’t poke
hes in your story it does appear the disinfections were by the book with enough oxidizer for enough time thre out
a multitude of checkpoints in the system to be effective in most applications it
would have worked there’s more to find out though can you walk me through the system next I want to see everything
from where the makeup water comes in to the pumps heat exchangers side stream filters chemical addition points Vents
and drains not a problem and I know where to just start this little trip y’all come
on now you hear Charlie took detective H2O through a maze of piping stairs and
highways all the time the detective kept his eye on the main process Loop piping and sketched a process flow diagram as
they went along they tracked down every te open the pot feeder inspected the bag filters
Etc as they stood at what Charlie said was the end of the road detective H2O glared at his hand sketch process flow
diagram and said okay this is the last jump off point from the main line just
above our heads it’s the same diameter as the primary flow of the main process Loop quite large where does it
go well that’s there for for future expansion plans so we can connect those
operations to the main process Loop it ends just beyond that wall over there it
ends you say can you show me Charlie led the way through a door into the next
room where the piping simply ended with a blind flange peering up at the stunted
piping detective H to knew he’d found what he’d been looking for all
along
so tell me Charlie when you did your disinfection draining and flushing the system did you do anything special with
this part of the piping well no we didn’t as a matter of
fact I really ain’t getting it no mine until you just brought it up right now
I’m sure it drained with the rest of the system detective H2O gave his trademark sideways slightly unsettling smile in
claimed that’s a dead leg my good fellow a what a dead what a dead leg not a
zombie apocalypse but an area within a system with low to no flow it can be a
leg of piping Dead ending like this one or even an offline system such as a chiller not only can settlement slowly
collect in these areas but so can microbiological activity such as biofilms because of the lack of
sufficient flow water treatment chemicals cannot reach far enough into them to be effective the bug set up home
in these dead legs safe from your biocides and disinfection activities each time you tried to clean the system
they simply waited and reinoculated the bulk water all over again I believe this
is our Smoking Gun w a dead leg who of
th but what you say makes sense I tell you what I’m tired of taking the fall
for these little guys what can you do about it detective in your case I think you need
to disinfect the system one more time unfortunately but this time the entire
system if you can’t remove the whole dead leg you’ll at the very least need to install a drain line at the end that
you have to open on a regular basis to establish flow remove any settlement and expose the piping to the water treatment
plus I’m curious to see what’s inside the pipe it will need to be cleaned out let’s walk the system again to make sure
we’re not missing any other such dead legs and then I’ll work with you to develop a plan for a thorough
disinfection this time all righty then let’s get started we’ll have them
Critters sleeping with the fishes before we know it one month 2 months 6 months
and a year later Charlie bexter called detective H2O to give him an update on the main process Loop there was no noted
microbiological activity detective H2O has saved the day once again again and
was paid all the Cabbage he was
due in the underbellies and Pen houses of the Metropolis of Waterville where the boilers percolate and cooling towers
fog there is one man who works tirelessly to end corrosion stop scale
fight lowlife microbes and conserve water that man is detective h 2 best
water treater the side of the Ohio solving water problems drop by
drop I love that James puts those together and I love collaborating with
James and apparently the only accent that I can do is somebody from Savannah
James gave me fair warning for next year I am working on a new accent so
hopefully my accent chops will be a little bit more up to par when you hear
that next year during industrial water week and if you’re wondering industrial
water week is going to be the second week of October we’re going to be celebrating October 7th through 11th so
mark your calendar so we can all celebrate together not only are you
going to get a brand new episode of scaling up H2O each and every day that
week you are also going to hear a brand new detective H2O Nation if you want to
learn more about what you need to know to do water management plans I.E doing
surveys on systems I.E finding dead legs
I cannot recommend more about getting your assc
12,080 certification there’s so many wonderful courses out there that
actually go into what you need to know and prepare you for answering questions
with your customers and doing that survey that we keep talking about well
we heard from James McDonald once we’re going to bring him back one more time here’s 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 barium what should you do with all my chemistry jokes
barium how could barium cause issues in a water system does barium combine with
carbonate sulfates or other groups to cause potential problems how do you test for barium in water have you analyzed a
water sample for barium at what concentrations could barium cause issues
if barium is an issue what tools do you have available to control it 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 learned to social media and tag it with #w t23 and # scaling up
H2O I look forward to learning more from you Scout Nation when I was at the
association of water Technologies conference the number one question that I received was how do I get caught up
with periodic water table with James well we made that easy we have links on
our web page so you can go back and see each one of those challenges of course
we would love it if you listen to every episode that we aired this year and
listen for James’s challenge but either way that you do it we have got you
covered and that way you can be 52 times smarter by the end of the year on the
chemistries that we work with each and every day nation I truly enjoy bringing
this show to you each and every Friday and we’re going to have a new episode for you next Friday as you’ve come to
expect and if you have an idea of something you want to hear on the scaling up H2O podcast please let us
know about that by going to scaling up h2o.com going over to our show ideas page and letting us know that
information something else you can do for us is the next time you are on your favorite podcast player go ahead and
leave a comment about this podcast that helps us get a little bit higher in the ranking which allows people to find us a
little bit easier and every time we get a new member within this scaling up
Nation I truly believe that we not only expand our community but we help raise
the bar in the industrial Water Treatment Community and that’s what it’s all about we want to leave everything
that we touched a little bit better than when we found it and we are all helping
make that happen have a great week
folks SC Nation it’s my hope that whatever you do in the industrial Water Treatment Community that you do it with
excellence and if you’re in the same type of water treatment that I’m in I do that by maintaining my certified water
technologist designation I know so many of you out there are studying for that prestigious certification and I’m here
to help I’ve answered each one of the the mock exam questions letting you know
the logic behind how questions are asked and also doing all the math to show you
how to set things up so you can easily find the right answer and make sure you
don’t select one of those sneaky wrong answers go to scaling up h2o.com
cwt prep again that’s scaling up h2o.com cwt prep to sign up
today