In an effort to cut costs, a large university purchased its water softening chemicals online and relied on unqualified staff to manage the school’s extensive water treatment system. Chemicals weren’t tested, water quality tests weren’t performed, and the staff wasn’t properly trained. Eventually corrosion and scale accumulated in the boiler tubes causing catastrophic pipe leaks across campus. The boiler also had to be retubed. Basic training and simple quality measures could have avoided the problem.

A large hospital was working with a water treatment company that lacked the expertise to manage its boilers and extensive condensate return system. Because corrosion inhibitors weren’t added to the system, severe corrosion and system fouling plugged the pipes and caused corrosive water to flood the hospital’s mechanical rooms. The hospital spent tens of thousands of dollars to replace corroded pipes and fix the damage. Then they hired us to develop a smarter plan. We pinpointed the problem and implemented a corrosion protection program. Fouling and corrosion stopped and the system is working smoothly.

Three plumbers were working full time to replace the corroded pipes in a hospital’s condensate return system. The previous water treatment company assured the hospital’s facility managers that the condensate return system didn’t require treatment. But alkalinity in the boiler’s make up water created corrosive carbonic acid, which caused the pipes to fail. Metal dissolved from the corroded pipes was also being deposited in the steam boilers. The hospital hired us to solve the problem. We implemented a scale clean up program for the boilers and started a safe condensate corrosion protection treatment plan for the facility.

The facilities team at a food manufacturing plant was unlicensed and untrained in water treatment so they neglected to test the water softeners used to pretreat the makeup water fed into the plant’s boiler. The team also wasn’t running tests on the boiler or conducting regular blow downs to remove sludge. The result? Hard water created sludge build up and scale deposits that completely blocked the tubes. After retubing its boiler, the plant hired us to take over their water treatment program.

A mountain town receives its water from snowmelt, which contains small amounts of highly oxygenated, corrosive solids. The town didn’t have a water treatment expert overseeing the system, so the water wasn’t treated with corrosion inhibitors. As the water flowed through the town’s cast iron pipes, it quickly degraded the metal and caused the pipes to break. There’s an easy solution to this problem: apply an NSF-approved corrosion inhibitor for drinking water systems.

A refinery relied on another water treatment company to manage seven miles of condensate return piping. When the refinery’s boilers began to fail, the facility manager turned to us for a second opinion. This piece of pipe from the system shows classic signs of pitting corrosion from oxygenation. We analyzed the system and discovered the other company was trying to resolve the issue with chemicals rather than following best practices by operating the system under pressure, which keeps corrosive oxygen out of the pipes. We recommended injecting steam to pressurize the system and prevent oxygenation. They hired IWE to take over their water treatment program. The corrosion stopped, the refinery avoided costly repairs, and we saved them tens of thousands of dollars annually on chemical treatments.

The pipes from a university’s steam system run through hundreds of acres of campus and through the heat exchanger in the school’s Olympic-sized swimming pool. The exchanger leaked hard water into the boiler system, overwhelming the chemical treatment process and generating 30 pounds of sludge build up a day. While conducting on-site tests, our Certified Water Technologist detected the problem and advised the client of impending pipe failure. The university failed to act. Eventually, pipes burst in this classic “fish lip” rupture. The school had to re-tube the system and repair the heat exchanger.