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today’s episode is sponsored by the rising tide Mastermind the rising tide Mastermind is where people just like you
get together every week to help each other with issues let’s face it issues
are hard so why start from square one when somebody can tell you what they
done with a similar issue if this sounds like something that’s interesting to you
go to scaling up h2o.com for/ Mastermind to see if the rising tide Mastermind is
right for [Music] you 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 host of the scaling
up H2O podcast and folks this is episode 353 I am always amazed by being in the
mid 300s now and I remember what it was like when I started out on episode one
and had no idea if this thing was going to work had no idea what I was doing in
front of this microphone and I have a microphone stand so I wasn’t lifting the
microphone but folks let me tell you that microphone should have weighed 5,000 pound it was one of the hardest
things that I ever did and I’m sure glad I got over that because I cannot think
of anything I look forward to more than coming to you each and every week with
this episode with the next episode with all the new episodes that we bring I
love doing this podcast and not too many years before I started this podcast I didn’t even know what a podcast was so
all that to say there is a passion inside you and you have not found it yet
I guarantee it and there’s things that I’m going to love doing 20 years from now and I haven’t even learned about
those things yet and how cool is that life just has a way of giving you new
Pleasures you just need to be open for them so be sure to keep your eyes open
be sure to keep your ears open what’s the next thing that you are going to do that you are absolutely going to love
one of the things I love is being in the water treatment industry I was so fortunate my father introduced me into
this industry and because of that I have never been bored a day in my life in
this industry so how fortunate are all of us within the scaling up nation that
we are in the best job in the world and and I just love that I get to host the
podcast that serves the best job in the world well some of the things that I
look forward to each and every year is seeing so many of you at some of the
events that uh we might collectively be at and one of the things that I get told
time and time again when we do meet in person is how much people enjoy us
letting them know you know what is going on in the future because let’s face it
there’s a lot going on we are busy working daytoday job by job customer to
customer returning phone call to phone call all of those things it is very
difficult to keep up with what is happening in our industry so we make that easy for you our team makes that
easy for you and here’s something that’s coming up just next week and I’m so excited about this this is the Frisco
Texas version of the awt Technical Training seminar yes we’re going to be
in Frisco Texas I will be in Frisco Texas that’s going to be March 6th
through 9th and I hope to see you there I get the privilege of teaching the
sales training I do some courses in fundamentals and applications I do my
math course and a lot of times I get the honor of filling in when somebody is not
able to make it so I guarantee if you are at this training you will have me as
an instructor but don’t just sit in the audience come up introduce yourself to me I love getting to meet people within
the scaling up Nation so I hope to see you there if you’re going to be in Texas
next week and if you’re not maybe you’re going to Cleveland Ohio the following
month and that’s going to be April 17th through 20th and I’m going to be
teaching the exact same things there so I will see you if you are in the
audience and of course if you want more information about these we’re going to have that on scaling up h2o.com go over
to our events page and we will have everything you need to know and links on
how to know even more also coming up is World water day and World water day is
taking place on March 22nd and something we do each and every World water day or
within the week that that falls is we talk about World Visions Global 6K and
this is the goal to end the Water Crisis within our lifetime so we are going to
be talking about the global 6K when we are in World water day now if you want
to learn more about the global 6K that is scaling up h2o.com for SL 6K why is
it a 6K instead of a 5k because the average person that does not have access
to clean accessible drinking water has to walk 6 kilomet in order to get that
water that means they’re not in school that means they’re not doing other things and unfortunately really horrible
things can happen while they’re walking to and from getting water so by bringing
water to to their communities it just opens up so many opportunities for
individuals all over the world and team World Vision is just a great organization but we’re going to talk
about that more once we are at World water day March 22nd but if you do want
to put on your calendars May 18th is when we are all doing the global 6K and
I hope you join team scaling up Nation because that is where we all come
together share pictures and we do a global 6K wherever you are in the world
we’re coming together as the scaling up Nation to hopefully in the world Water
Crisis another conference that’s always well attended you talk about an amazing
trade show this is the American boiler manufacturers Association conference and
expo in Denver Colorado May 1st through 2nd of course our friends from where
boiler will be there they are some of the most fun people and they have an
amazing exhibit Booth so if you’re there by all means check out what they bring
to the exhibit hall and Richie is always great for t-shirts so he’s got some
amazing t-shirts there and folks if you have not heard Richie wear and Steve
Taylor of wear boilers that was a fun episode that was episode 318 and then of
course is who I was just referring to to so by all means go over to episode 318
and you can see how much fun you will have if you see them at a trade show also coming in Beijing China May 27th
through 31st the 15th International Conference on hydro informatics is taking place so we’re going to have all
the information you want to know about this conference and everything else we
mentioned heck we’re going to have things we didn’t even mention because we have the entire year up there on the
events page how do you get there you go to scaling up h2o.com events or you can just navigate over to
the events page once you get to our web page and you will see we have a complete
calendar we can even assist you with putting things in your calendar by
simply clicking it will then download a file to you to put everything into your calendar so you can plan the entire year
and there’ll even be links that open up how you can register the staff here at
scaling up H2O is amazing and they’re making it easy for you to continue your
service day and drive properly with hands on 10 and 2 or 9 and three or
however they’re teaching that now I just taught my son to drive last year and I
know I was taught at 10 and two it does not say that anymore it says the hand
position is supposed to be 9 and 3 I’m sure it will change Again In Our
Lifetime but anyway now you know I just updated what the manual said to you I
don’t know why they change it I I’m trying to remember where I actually keep my hands on the steering wheel I’m a
very safe driver so I I will pay attention to that maybe I’ll report that to you when you’re at the awt next week
but with that I want to introduce our next guest we’re going to talk a little bit about the awt we’re going to talk a
lot about boilers I know you are going to love this
interview my lab partner today is Barry Higgins of Aqua Kim Barry so excited to
have you as my lab partner today how are you very good trace excited to be here
it’s been listening to you the whole every week in my car driving around and now to be here talking to you it’s a
complete honor my half well it is my honor and uh we’re going to talk about
some things in this show but something I do want to point out is your accent is a
little different from my accent you are from Ireland I am I’m from Ireland yep
and I want you to know that when you put in your Rising tide Mastermind
application I was actually in Ireland but we didn’t know each other at the time I could have done an in-person
interview with you you had I known that I know it’s crazy because I think you were only back when uh you contacted me
then and we had the initial discussion and it was like crazy because you were like going I was in Dublin I was in cark
I was in Dingle I was like I’m mad it’s not like I have to say Ireland was one of my
favorite trips we did Scotland a couple years before so we could we could see
kind of over the water where we were going to be a couple years later but oh oh my gosh the the people there were so
genuinely nice and just so green so beautiful we went all over we we did
like a 360 from Dublin uh we went we went down up and then back down and then
flew out over about a two we period but just so many incredible things there I
am so envious you get to live there you’re probably because you’re living there you probably don’t the preciate as
much as really you see these things every day you’re driving from account to count and go oh that’s lovely Mountain
that’s lovely sea but you’re probably not really kind of ret from which you’re going wow this is beautiful this is
spectacular and I need to kind of take it in a bit more myself well we’re going to talk about all things water treatment
today specifically with the boiler but before we get there I would love it if
you could introduce yourself to the scaling up Nation who is Barry hi
scaling up Nation uh Barry Higgins here I live in Ireland as we kind of
discovered earlier I’m married to Jennifer my wife she kind of gives up
all the sacrifices to make sure that I can be on the roads and be at home and
do her own job as well and I have two boys Finn and stanta Finn is 11 and stanta is 10 I’m a coach uh with their
soccer team I’m a coach with their GIC football team which is a kind of a mix
it’s a unique thing in irand it’s a mix it’s a r Ball but it’s a mix between rugby and soccer so you can pick up a
ball and kick over the bar for a point or it can kick into n for a goal and
it’s very unique um we have it in our then it’s one of these kind of you have to be here to see it well as a as a a
child middle school and a little bit in high school I played soccer and some friends invited me to a rugby game oh my
gosh that is so different than soccer and I really got bruised up very
different game so uh I wanted to talk talk a little bit so uh you and I have been meeting over zoom on The Mastermind
calls for about 2 years now and we had the pleasure to meet each other in
person at the recent Association of water Technologies conference in Grand Rapids so I want to talk about that
before we got started about boilers I’m curious why did you feel that it was
worth traveling all the way to Ireland to Grand Rapids which I can only imagine
was not a direct flight no we it’s something that I wanted to do I haven’t
actually never been to the awt meetings before and something that I want to experience myself uh firsthand and
myself and Robert um who works me to this decided we we would go and we trying to kind of make the best of it
for the week so we kind of landed on the Tuesday we flew into Chicago and then got the small plane up at the ground
Rapids and that was an adventure and a half going across the Michigan legs talk
about turbin I’ve never experienced turbulence like that before it’s like hold on to your seat sister p and he
really meant it the plane is like it was probably like uh priming in the boiler it was like so rocking the whole way
across it was funny and then we got there and it’s just kind of blew me mind
uh being in ground Rapids had never I looked it up and had kind of done a bit but it was just kind of so kind of funky
of a city and then we got down to the conference and the first person we met was Angela Pike and again I Converse
around true email and stuff it’s only when you meet her person and go wow you are a force you know it’s just the uh
what what a Brant lady and woman she is likeing Barry one of my favorite things
I think I heard at the entire conference was when you and I ran into each other and you told me you finally met Angela
and you said oh she’s Scottish everything makes sense now yeah it’s guess because like when
you’re on the email you don’t hear people’s action so like nobody knows where you’re from I it’s just like you’re conversing an email and then you
meet somebody go wow you’re excellent you’re Scottish it’s h funny so you get
to the awt it’s the first time you’ve ever experienced it what was that experience like it was good it was kind
of yeah just meeting all the different suppliers meeting people and people not
trying to sell you so which you know it’s a good thing you’re meeting people and there we met met lots of people from
The Mastermind as well and everybody’s just out to have a chat like and you’re talking to people and some these trade
shows you go to and all those people want to do stud they where and you know don’t really want to explain what their
what’s happening in their industry what they see the predictions are and you’re getting a really good kind of conversation of different people on how
they see the or dreamed industry or how they see the software industry or how to see their controllers industry going
like so it’s not just like here’s my new controller will you buy it off me you know there’s a really kind of in-depth
conversations with people I found yeah will you come back definitely yeah I’m
I’m hooked on it now so it’s uh it’s probably going to be an annual trip for me uh just the jet killed me I just
couldn’t get over to the uh the jet like the first day the second day and by the third day I just want to be glued to the
bed I was like going pleasee just give me energy let’s it’s about a five hour difference you and I have from east
coast to where you are yeah five hours difference yeah so so that would have been a sixh hour difference and that’s a
big part of the day I just say because like even at 8:00 in the evening ground rer time was probably 2:00 our time uh
in real term so but I’m usually gone to bed by 9:30 at night time so real listly
I should have been going to bed you know like two o’clock in the day um you know but then I would missed all the fun so
jet lag is real when we went on that Scottish trip uh I can’t sleep on airplanes doesn’t matter how tired I am
I just don’t fit in the seat uh you and I are both tall what by the way I didn’t
know until I met you in person it’s funny you you somebody over Zoom for 2 years and you’re like oh I didn’t
realize you were so tall because you know we’re sitting on on Zoom so but anyway I can’t fit into seats so there’s
nothing I can do to make myself comfortable to sleep on an airplane so didn’t sleep on the airplane of course
we we get to Scotland and where we left at night it’s now morning and we we knew
we couldn’t go to sleep cuz that was going to ruin our entire trip and we were doing the most active things that
we could do just to stay up we hiked Arthur’s seat instead of uh coming back
and taking the little trolley to our hotel room we walked back and as I I I
told my wife that hey I’m just going to close my eyes for five minutes before dinner and I woke up the next morning so
anyway jet lag is a real thing I feel your pain on that well Barry I I wanted
to ask uh before we get off the awt is there anything like the association of
water Technologies over in irland no uh there is in the UK um there’s the water
Society uh management society and again it’s kind of geared at independent
companies but again it’s not like they don’t really do much training like they have got better and they do they are
putting some training on and they are kind of getting a bit better getting back to kind of something like the awt
like the awt is brilliant for your training even your online training just general kind of information that send
out and books and stuff like that but the UK it’s really kind of really more legislated towards Legion Legion seem be
like if you don’t kind of want to know about Le you don’t want to be an expert in Le it doesn’t kind of seem to want to
you know kind of can’t really fit like there is other things but it’s really Legion and heat and Sh close systems uh
is the two the Tre kind of babies that they kind of really pushed the whole time so I think the A2 is a whole more
it’s more industrial center more kind of industrial for boilers cools waste water there’s a lot more uh of that for sure
I’ve heard people refer to the Water Management Society is whim sock yeah just rolls off the tongue whim
sock Barry how did you get into the water treatment industry okay this is uh
I definitely wasn’t born into it I fell into it when I was in college there was um a guy Shane Coleman who was in
college with me and his father was working for Grace Dearborn at the time and he’d be talking about oh my dad
works in water treatment and I was like what the hell is water treatment um I had no idea and I finished College went
to America for a few years worked in bars restaurants came home to and got a job selling stay inless steel I was out
celebrating and I met Shane again I hadn’t seen him in 10 15 years 10 years probably even last seven years and he
was saying oh my dad set up his new water Cham company and he’s got a job in Cork I was like no cork too far um sorry
but he said give me a number and we’ll uh keep your mind and six weeks later got a phone call uh to say there was a
job dou would would be interesting I well I’ll come and talk to you I go went me them and go wow I love this I love
the sound of what you do um so got the job handing my notice old work the new
work that I was already after getting wasn’t too happy obviously because it was only there six weeks and I was gone again and within three weeks I nearly
got sacked because aquam had a rule at time where you can’t send anything
technical for six months is to protect yourself and protect the company and I
rushed send something out the customer went crazy rang King the boss give out
but it actually turned out it wasn’t too far wrong from what he actually needed but he just the way I written and the
customers a bit cheesed off that he had to pay 20,000 for T after unit when he
thought he was going to get something more cost effective but it turned out anyway like it worked out well for me so
I got my six months over I got fully very probation out of the way and then
18 years later I’m still here so so what is the day in the life like for Barry at
aquim it varies this is what I love about war training like there’s no two days the same like one day you could be
working on a tender for20 Euro the next day you working on tender for 100,000
Euro and in between then you could be doing servicing you could be doing training you could be out the field
support um you know so there’s no like that’s what I love about war like you even Trav wise you don’t go to the same
place every day you’re meeting different people you’re making mad characters you’re making people who you would go
the extra mile because you know that they are passionate about their business and their plant and that they care about
like so you kind of you know want to row in behind them and help them as well so yeah I don’t know it just there that’s
that’s what I love about it’s just a variety of it like there’s never never the same happen that all over again
I couldn’t agree with that more and you mentioned characters I’m thinking back at some of the customers that I still
know and they need to make movies about these people it’s like you cannot make characters like this up and um I’m sure
everybody has the story about that one guy nice as he could be but he’s just a character and how he uh how he talks or
whatever so our job is never boring if you do it right agree with that oh 100%
yeah you have to be always learning and you have to be always kind of like pushing the boundaries I I describe it like mcgyver because you have to be like
trying to fix stuff um that might even be broke yet but in your head you’re kind of going if this goes wrong what
you do here and you’re kind of you’re doing chemistry physics maths Irish
English you know you’re you’re kind people people correct you for saying stuff and you send a report and go I
don’t like the way you wrote that report could you take that out maybe or you know does sounds a bit harsh and uh was
the truth yeah I I I can’t imagine a better industry Barry I wanted to ask a
couple of months ago you all put out a social media post and our executive
producer Karen who does an amazing job on the scaming up H2O podcast she saw it
and thought it was one of the most comprehensive but yet simplistic ways to
look at a boiler and I thought we would talk about boilers using using that post
as a as a guideline yeah yeah perfect yeah well I can’t take all the credit for that Lorio Don who works in our
marketing department this is Lor’s beautiful skill as well she’s able to take very technical stuff and do a
lovely curated draw and put everything together and even though it’s still very technical and still loads of information
in it she just has this beautiful Knack of making everything look simple but yet
it’s still all the nuts and Bol surve about it well scale up Nation we’re going to have this drawing this PDF on
our show notes page so you can you can go on scaling up2.com and go to this
episode and we will have all of that there we’re going to talk around it the thing I like about it is it’s almost as
if we just opened the door to a mechanical room we walked in there’s the
boiler and now you took us through each different part of a boiler and and some
top items that we need to check for so Nation if you’ll just follow along in
your mind’s eye you just walked into a boiler room and Barry you just walked
into a boiler room what’s the first thing you go look at pre-treatment and
the water the source of the water where is your water coming from so it’s invital to know where your water is
coming from so if you’re a new rep coming into a site the first thing you want to do is analyze the water find a
river City Town rainwater reuse water you know that’s that’s your critical
starting points to know what what what’s in the water first and then everything else follows from that then you know
your pre-treatment comes after us but your critical is to find out source of the water and any impurities hardness
all that kind of good stuff that would be a initial starting points so if
everything’s fine I’m assuming you would move on let’s say you find something wrong with your pre-treatment let’s say
you find that the softener is not working what would you do next being Barry I would want to investigate is
there salt in the first day obvious like check the obvious is their power not uh get the operator ask them have they
noticed anything strange with a numbers flashing up on the on the dial you know talk to The Operators because they’re
usually a really good sound theboard they’re lads who are on site most of the day they’ll see problems you know so you
talk to the operators ask them have they not understand if that happens then do a quick check in through the um menu to
see if there’s any Diagnostics flashing up if not then it’s service when was the
last service done and then you know like that from that it’s probably a fact finding then what what’s actually
causing it a lot of us will go in we’ll just do a grab sample is it soft is it
hard we’ll move on to the next test my father taught me to do a composite sample where you’ve got a 5 gallon
bucket and you just let the thing kind of drip over an entire shift and then you go back and test for it do you ever
do anything like that sometimes yeah they road slowly and then take your sampl so I’m I’m amazed that uh a lot of
things that the generation previous to us taught us aren’t being practiced as
much as they once were same thing over in irand definitely same and even the
way when I started first 18 years ago nearly every butter house had at least you know one one dedicated
but man and some of them even had a b man that was there full-time and that that was his job like taking more
samples doing analysis Tiding up the and you could eat your dinner off the floors like they’re that clean and within I’d
say about four or five years they’re all vanished and even that skill is lost on most the sides like you know there’s
people they come in and their job is to maybe check Sal but they’re not really a border house person in in the old sense
yeah so there definitely a skill that’s been lost down through my generation
even totally agree with that and and unfortunately that’s the same over here as well I remember my dad taught me this
industry there were always people that were Manning boiler rooms and mechanical rooms and I can’t remember the last time
somebody had a dedicated job that that’s all they did normally they’ve got 15
other things and when they have time then they might look at the boiler exactly and you know it’s the unmaned
problem then you know this is you know what we’re saying it’s all reg or it’s all M the bers are so good now don’t
need any look after them but of course they do like you know stuff does go wrong it’s when it’s not picked up then it becomes a major problem well after we
look at the water quality with the pre-treatment what next I would always
go into your feed water samples and I would have a look at my feed water samples I’m very tactile so I want to
kind of smell it I want to feel it I want to see what it looks like I want to look for Clues before I can do any
testing I want to check my temperatures on my feed tank uh I want to see is the
deor working if there is a deor um I want to check use my ears for noise I
want to see if there’s any pumps making crazy noises when I’m taking my samples and then do my test see look for Trends
again anything out spec anything crazy gonna throw out of kilter they’re Al these in the ratio choroids crazy just
general kind of observation yeah I love you’re using all your senses I’m curious
what smell stories do you have for us in buts more so in the actual but itself
when you know there’s a gas or there’s ammonia or there’s some kind of a I have a brilliant sense of of smell I can
smell chlorine a mile away I can smell stuff that every other people go there’s no smell that go there definitely is a
smell so I don’t know why I can sense gases I can smell that kind of uh I can
get a trigger and go whoa there’s definitely something not right with that and even the feel like I can when I’m doing a b sample I would more feel it
first take up my gloves feel it see how silky it is feel it like how rough it is so you know like just hardness if
there’s a really high like out you just know the kind of the feel and I’m coming off the
sample James McDonald came on one time and he did a segment on the five senses
being used in water treatment and I’m pretty sure I shared this story back then but I remember I was working at the
company my dad was working with and they had invited me to come down and really learn the lab and how that worked and I
was working in the lab and somebody out in the field called in and I was in my early 20s at the time so I just wanted
to prove myself that’s the only thing I cared about was proving myself and he said there’s something wrong with this
product so I know what to do I grab the retain sample I ran all these tests and
I couldn’t find a thing wrong with it of course what I should have asked was well what do you think is wrong with it why
are you actually calling me so finally I called him and I asked him and he said well it just doesn’t taste right I don’t
know what to do with that but he had this QC that this person would actually stick his finger on a drum of chemical
and taste it and he said it didn’t taste right I advised him not to do that anymore and I went on to my next task so
maybe not so much taste in this industry would you say yeah I don’t think so no but I I actually have seen a guy when he
was doing a butter uh descaling with the absorbit acid and like that tasting I’m
like whoa what are you doing like no that’s just no don’t do that so scaling
up Nation Public Service Announcement if you are using taste as one of the things
that you are uh testing your water treatment wees with just stop don’t do
it please all right where do you go next Barry um I would then I would look for
my condensate sample and then I will be checking to make sure your phes your
conductivities are in Copper chlorides as well and again General smell General
look looking for bits of grit that come out in the sample um again using your eyes making sure that there’s no lugs of
air coming with the sample so it’s kind of again really kind of using all your
is to make sure that you’re taking everything in when you are taking your sample so you would check for chlorides
in a condensate sample to see if you’re getting any sort of carryover let’s say you find it what do you do next so you
run to the Border itself then and sometimes because the way Ste works as
you know like you’re you’re kind of taking a snap shot in that one moment in time so you check your border and it’s
actually okay you don’t there something not not adding up but then you go to talk to the plant manager and it’s
they’re running a batch at the moment so that means then that there’s kind of say slower coming back uh in the system so
then you know like there’s a Time lap so then you were able to kind of pinpoint that potentially an hour or two hours
ago you were having the surge in the border and because they’re able to some
place they’re able to go and they’re able to track and they’re able to go back in and look at the uh BMS system and check to see their pressure on the
system go oh you’re actually right we did have a spike so it’s kind of more than getting them to know what the
pressure is in the butter and getting to know what loads they’re using and is the butter under sized oversized so all
these little clues that you’re looking for we have a problem over here where people think they’re saving energy so
they’ll turn their boiler down or off and then all of a sudden they need to do a run so they get it up as high as they
possibly can as quick as they can and of course that’s causing surging and priming and we’re sending all sorts of
boiler water into the system cuz there’s that vacuum that gets created there how
should an operator keep their boiler during low load periods and if they get
a sudden demand what should they do I would say yeah you’re better off keeping it at the pressure that it needs to be
at keeping under load and then letting it go off nice and slowly building up um
because priming you know is the but and shaking inside the butter and then that
potentially could turn into foaming or you as you said it’s you they water hammer in the system so it’s kind of
yeah you want to try and avoid major kind of like everything else it has to have some control on it so if you’re
letting it go ying and yanging up and down you’ve lost that control so you want to try and take the control back so
can the control would be you probably when you work it out you’re actually not saving any money by tur off starting
again dirty cycle dirty steam going off so it’s yeah it’s better off to have a
control and the control would be to keep it under pressure yeah my dad always said boiler water should be in the
boiler and condensate should be in the condensate line and if you find boiler water in the condensate line there’s a
reason for that and and nine times out of 10 it’s the boiler is not being operated properly but nine times out of
10 we will always get blamed first yep it’s your chemicals Trace you put your
you put too much Al into this B it’s always too Al too much alkalinity that’s what everybody says nothing got to do
with the 7,000 conductivity the B but yeah that’s that’s a side note so let’s go back to the condensate
so you said you always check for metals like copper and iron what do those
things tell you again if you like most hospitals we would even some food
factories in the should all have stainless steel but some of them over the years with issues and problems have
put in Copper and so you know like when like your steam cools down you have your
H2O and then you have when alkaline you have high alkalin in the alal the two of
are going to combine in your condensate to form carbonic acid and then that carbonic acid it can be very mild and
weak you might need to notice it because it wouldn’t affect the pH too much but when obviously there’s the high load of
Al in the higher the carbon dioxide is then the carbonic acid becomes an issue
because then the pH can be down at 4.5 which is lovely acid run around your steam system and if you’ve got copper
mild it’s going to eat them it’s going to groove them and then you’re going to see oh I’ve got a mad Spike here in my
copper levels what could be causing this maybe I remember I was 17 years old my
dad took me out on an inspection that they actually cut out some sections of condensate and he showed me and he used
the term it looked like an inchworm just bued its way through the bottom of the
condensate line and I’ll always remember that image and and he asked me he goes why isn’t it on the top why is it on the
bottom and at the time I couldn’t answer but now we know hey that’s gravity that’s where the water is that’s where
the carbonic acid is so you’re you’re testing to make sure that those metals are staying in the pipe and not
liberating out into the water yeah exactly because you don’t want the metals going into the B and then
becoming plate and out on the metal especially copper because then you’re going to get ganic corrosion it’s bad
enough getting piton corrosion inside in the but you don’t want to be another lovely set of Cs and anod happens a
lovely little party for themselves and a corosion party you want try and app all them croser parties if you can bar in
the condensate lines there’s a steam trap and hopefully the steam stays where the steam stays and the conate stays on
the opposite side occasionally we get leaks what’s your favorite way to test for that on the steam traps I I’m always
mad into pushing people to do maintenance on steam traps at least once a year having them checked the much
money that they can save on energy by having their steam traps in good condition as opposed to fou not running
letting pure steam life back letting the wet condens set back not taking all the gases out like doing the proper job that
they are and it’s very it’s a very simple process to do but some customers just don’t see the real uh benefit to
think oh I bought a a steam trap 20 years ago and it’s it’s perfect and there no Whistling noise no that’s the
way that it’s meant to work so yeah uh and I actually got a very funny joke about steam traps I’ll tell you will I
please yeah how do you stop a runaway steam Bower how do you stop a runaway
steam boiler with a steam trap there we go get Sean to add a sign
of sound effect to that one it’s more of a d joke I love it that’s awesome so with
that we’re we’re talking about condensate um you know talking about steam traps I remember I got a ladder
out to check something and somebody said why are you doing that I like well there’s no other way to check it it’s
way up there and they said yeah you’ve got a thermometer with an infrared laser on there just shoot it up there and and
and they’re fairly accurate but if you’ve got way different temperatures normally that steam trap is working if
it’s the same on both sides it’s not working no I most of our Cloud you know so it’s very hard even when you using
them infrared thermometers as well because it just bounces off the um bounces off the cladin and you’re not
going to get a true reading as well so sometimes it’s very hard to actually read them well I guess some of ours aren’t as insulated as they should be
and maybe that’s why it works over here so there we go we need to learn from Ireland and do more insulation over here
in the states then we got to get that ladder back out all right Barry so now we’re moving
on into the boiler what are you looking for in the boiler again you’re looking
for smells you’re obviously not going to try and taste it on this occasion you will feel it you’ll be looking for how
hard it feels how silky it feels you’re going to be doing you’re running your test you know if you’re using sulfide
you going be checking your sulfide your phosphate if you’re using a phosphate using cant you want be looking for
different ratios with your P alkalines your M alkalines your o H’s you want be
checking TDS and making sure that you’re within the manufacturer’s recommendations you’re rides as well so
you want to be able to look at your numbers through from your makeup order to your feed through your condensate and
make sure that the all kind of tell you up and that you’re not getting a crazy Spike somewhere and again it’s a
holistic approach looking at the whole normally like we’re using the uh Aqua
Phoenix e service system so the beauty of that is once you set it up with your controls each time you go in you’re able
to put in your input your data and you can look back on tree you can see the last tree result so so it’s perfect you
can go wow yeah last time was actually a problem as well you know so you’re not trying to guess you’re not going back to
the old papers rumage around so like it’s very useful too as well that you can physically see your results in front
of you and what the kind of the gaps was or what the the problems were the last three times as well trending data is so
important especially during seasonal shifts where um you know how did it look
last year and are we doing the exact same Trend as last year and then maybe
we can do an improvement maybe we can talk to the operator get them to actually operate the boiler in a more
preferred manner maybe we can add something so when it goes from one season to another we adjust a chemistry
maybe that’s that’s something that we do but we all know that because we’re looking at Trends and so many people
just look at what they have in front of them and that’s a limited Viewpoint don’t you agree absolutely yeah it’s
like the whole point of doing the test is that you’re trying to get data points and then improve you know for a customer
customer paying you to be their eyes and ears and they their experts onsite so you want to go in both and Beyond and
just not come in and and test you want to be able to show them look at you’re wasting money here guys or you’re you’re
saving money here and it then it becomes that account becomes your account because no some El just can’t come in
and allow for 10% reduction the customer goes no actually I’m pretty happy with the service aquam for give me and
they’re actually helping me save money whereas you guys are just going to come in cut them by 10% but not actually do
anything for me so customers see that value when you try and put that extra effort in to try and help them and it it
pays for itself and blowing I love that because I preach that so many times on
this podcast if you’re not telling the customer the value that you bring a lot
of times they’re not going to see that because they’re busy doing so many other things so it’s fine toot your own horn
let them know all the great things that you do but more importantly let them know why you’re doing it for them and
what it means to them but saving money um for customers really is it or or
making friends I don’t know yeah customers uh
it’s just my nature I want to help people and I want to kind of solve problems I love solving problems and if
I can see a problem solve it and you know if it costs a customer money today
but he’s going to get a a return on investment very quickly I think it’s a
very it’s a win-win for everybody yeah it’s kind of I don’t really have one in particular but it just that would be my
general way of uh going about the day Barry you brought up the service report
so a lot of people will just send an email service report what’s the proper
way to go through a service Report with the customer you have to meet them you have to explain to them what you’re
finding and how they can improve it and the same way if the side are doing their own daily tests and weeks there’s no
point in having just a black and white sheet and them filling out they have to have controls and they have to have what
to do if these controls are out of spec like action points so take these four
items and you will get it back into spec like so if your TDs is up to
7,500 and they’re at their any blow down there is going oh will bar be back in in 30 days uh we need for him 30 days is
two on so we are trying and train the people bring them along with us on the journey and the whole thing of knowledge
is key you know you’re better off owering people and showing them giving them uh documents on what to do if this
thing is out of spec and how they can you know so sometimes I see people and they go and they they’ll test the the
Ste B and they find in these 4 or 4,000 or you know for arum sake and they start turn the pump down and then they might
get called off and the forget to do the rest of the the the bother but the real problem is that the TDs is crazy and
they haven’t actually gone and done the rest of the test and go just turned down the alal pump that’s that’s my problem
solved um you know and then they come back a few days later or somebody else comes back a few days thereat and does
it as well so it’s kind of it can become pH Hardy then as well so you need to have a plan you need to have an action
plan of what to do if stuff out back earlier you mentioned e service reports
there’s so many programs out there where we can have our customers log into the
same system that we’re using so now their data becomes part of our data is
that something you do as well yeah we try and encourage allot of Christmas because I can sell it as a tool to them
you know that it’s having remote monitoring without having remote monitoring like they’re actually
physically doing the test anyway so they’re putting in to and we get alerts we can set up alerts to say if this
suspect please do this if that’s I expect please do that and again it’s a kind of beds and braces for the customer
as well because they know like that somebody’s watching them and help them with their water treatments when when went out there just the other day we
were looking over some operator logs and we saw that the readings just weren’t
making sense all all of them were off and they were consistently off and we
were like okay something’s going on here well there was a new person that they say hey you you got some extra time you
go figure out how to run those boiler tests and he was not running them properly so that allowed us to come in
show value actually show everybody how to run the test and something we’ve done
as a company because we can’t be everywhere we want to when the customer needs us there is uh we’ve done videos
so we gave them uh access to all the videos that we’ve done so now in their training program they can see yours
truly actually run some of the the test on videos and as soon as we did that we
now started seeing the right number numbers on there we wouldn’t have known that if we weren’t getting them to put
that data in there and like you said it would have been 30 days and we would have had so many more problems to deal
with in 30 days well I think yeah you hit the there in the head about giving people training because it dilutes the
message I think like you know if you give an operator a trainer onside in ter
they have learned something from you but they haven’t learned all your experience so like it’s wrong for them to think
that they can just pull it off on some else and give them 20 minutes training and say here you go blah blah blah do do
your testing now whereas it’s makes more sense for the water people who have been
doing this for years to go in and explain to the person the nuts and balls of why they’re doing this and how to do
it properly it you know pays back because I I’ve seen this over the years it’s just it just gets Lost in
Translation and Del deled them because some people have so so bad habits this quick quick Holden droper upside down
all it wrong I think people delete still on and squeeze Now doesn’t work with the
lid on it you you save on reagent that way but it doesn’t do very well in the test no Barry I will say so this was the
newest person in that entire facility and he now learned more about the test
that he was running and more importantly the why he is now in charge of all that
testing and he’s actually training other people to do that or or that’s what his boss said that they want him to do
because he got training probably more training than the other people got because they assumed that they had it
and they turned us down for years so I felt like we made a good connection to a
young engineer and as we all know Engineers like to go other places and hopefully when he’s the engineer to 15
buildings he’s going to take us with him hope it is you know it’s like it is it’s all about trending it’s all about
treating people right and giving them the right to because there is people that are very smart and you find that
with um cooling terrorism people just really get involved in them um because it’s a legal requirements Ste bers it’s
not so much IL legal even though it is legally requirements people sometimes don’t love them as much as the would
equal to high definely finds I am envious because we do have
some laws around boilers but nothing as you have over in Ireland uh we pretty
much just have to have them in expected on an annual basis and the hopes that
nothing nothing happens in between what are some of the laws that that you’re speaking of in Ireland again it’s well
they’re more regulated to the UK than they irand we kind of semi- adopt them but we don’t fully take them on in in
the UK you have to do a risk assessment on your steam baller again everybody who works on the steam baller has to have
training by the British standard guidelines and one of the simp is that
they cannot train another operator on that site it has to come from a water
treatment or a professional body to train them we there’s loads of British standard guidelines on how to run a
steam baller how you have to do your insurance low alarm check once a week
and you have to bring it down to the very low level alarm and make sure that all your alarms are working so there’s
yeah there’s a lot more kind of robust regulation about them um in the UK we in
our we kind of semi adopt some of the stuff but uh because it’s not um in law
here you try and encourage customers to to take up as much as they can but
because it’s not a legal requirement it can be sometimes we have stone BL to try and get them to do it they know it’s
there and they know it’s best practice and they kind of go we will get to some of it but uh you know there there is
some up taken it but it wouldn’t be a legal requirement to do everything let me ask is it a legal
requirement to have a sample cooler on all your boilers as a head and safety it
definitely is but again we have a few customers who view it as a luxury and
expect people to take a sample from a 10 bar pressure unit coming out with their
bare hands and you go no I’m sorry we will not and they go but the other War
company did it good for them but unfortunately we will not it’s you know a is not safe and B it’s that’s enough
it hurts bottom line it hurts put a sample cooler on there yeah Barry we’re talking
about the boiler how do you look at sampling whether the boiler is a water tube or a fire tube okay yeah so you
would look at them completely different we’re mostly water tubes uh in Ireland
there would be a few for tube it’s mainly War chip and again so you go by the British standards you go by your
sulfite levels your F fate levels you know your kind of General tenants that
kind of uh range on [Music] them Nation I am so glad I met Barry a
couple of weeks ago and I know you enjoyed that interview and I know you cannot wait for part two well
unfortunately you are going to have to wait until next week and we will bring
part two with Barry Higgins to you on that episode you’ll just have to wait
part two is just as good as part one and I have to say I love being able to talk
boilers with people and to just say hey this is what’s going on or what do you
do if this happens and somebody can answer you that is a water treatment
nerd’s favorite conversation so we’re going to have a lot more boiler nerdity
next week but until next week I know you cannot wait another week until we hear
from James McDonald so here’s a brand new drop by drop with
[Music] James welcome to drop by drop with James
the podcast segment where we wonder explore think about imagine and learn
industrial water treatment you guessed it drop by drop
together this week’s episode is a challenge for for you I challenge
you to focus on cleaning up your customers water treatment areas for the next week practicing Safety First wipe
down those controllers dosing pumps tops of softeners membrane housings testing areas and so forth throw away any
garbage remove extra buckets and drums these items are often the first thing in
enduser sees when they check out your areas of responsibility you certainly want that impression to be a positive
one also you never know when it could be used to sell against you as a picture in your competitor’s presentation or even
posted on social media take pride clean it up and be
safe I’m James McDonald and I want to encourage you to be like water by forming bonds with those around you
dissolving new knowledge and making worthy ripples drop by
drop as always thank you James and thank you scaling up Nation for listening as I
said we’re going to have part two of Barry next week and of course next week I hope to see so many of you in Frisco
Texas for the association of water Technologies Technical Training if
you’re there please come up and say hi and if you’re considering going I am
going to try to push you over that line that you were trying to figure out and
say if you are in the same type of water treatment that I am and you have the
opportunity to go you should say yes because it is amazing all the
information that you will get in a week now maybe you’re thinking I’ve already been I’ve already checked that box maybe
even got the T-shirt I was giving out t-shirts one year maybe you have a scaling up H2O t-shirt well folks I have
to tell you I have been going to these things for well over a decade I learned
something new each and every time I am there because the amazing people that
teach there are just a wealth of knowledge and it’s just amazing to
listen and learn with all the things that they’ve experienced and as they experience new things they are changing
what they are teaching enhancing it each and every year so if you’ve already been
you have only tasted a small amount I like to say it’s like drinking from a fire hose you got some water but there’s
plenty of water left to go back and drink I am inviting you to drink from
that hose once again nation if you are traveling to Texas have a safe trip and
of course be safe wherever you are I will have another episode for you next
week where we’re going to continue with our interview with Barry Higgins have a great week
folks scal up Nation I believe there are so many potential cwts out there but
they just haven’t sat for the exam and I know that that is a daunting exam I
remember when I told people I was taking it and I was so worried that there would
be people that knew if I did not pass it and I truly believe it’s that fear that
so many people don’t even sign up to take the exam well I am here to help
because we built a course designed to build your confidence so you can sit for
that cwt exam and prove to the world Your Excellence in this industry go to
scaling up h2o.com cwt prep once again that’s scaling up
h2o.com cwt prep and start building that confidence to take your exam
today [Music]