Chillers & Cooling Towers

Because water is getting back to the plant without having done any work. The usual causes, in the order we find them: three-way valves or bypasses left open, two-way valves failing open or leaking through, coils fouled so the air cannot pull heat out of the water, pumps oversized or riding a fixed speed, and a differential pressure setpoint holding the whole loop at too much flow. Low delta-T makes the plant run more machines than the load needs, so it shows up on the energy bill long before anyone is uncomfortable.

At minimum, a full basin drain and clean at start-up and again at layup, with inspections through the season. Towers in dusty, leafy or industrial settings need more. The interval is really set by what the water is doing: if conductivity is climbing, the inhibitor is short or the biological counts are moving, the tower needs attention regardless of the calendar. Sediment in the basin is not just dirt — it shields bacteria from biocide and it is the first thing to fix.

Central plant machines routinely run twenty-five years and more when they are maintained, so age alone is not the argument. What decides it is the refrigerant it uses and whether it can still be supported, the condition of the tube bundles under eddy current testing, how the approach has trended, and whether a modern machine with a variable speed drive would pay for itself against your actual load profile. We will lay out a repair path and a replacement path with what each one buys you and what it does not.

Three jobs at once. Stopping scale, because evaporation concentrates minerals and scale on a condenser tube is an insulator. Stopping corrosion, because the same concentrated water eats steel. And controlling biological growth, because a warm aerated basin is an ideal habitat. The programme runs on measurement: conductivity control to set the bleed and cycles of concentration, inhibitor dosed to a target, biocide rotated so nothing adapts, and routine sampling with the results kept on file.

Yes. Air-cooled machines skip the tower and the condenser water loop entirely, which removes the water chemistry work and adds coil condition, fan control and ambient head pressure control instead. They are common on smaller buildings and on roofs where there is no plant room. Everything on the chilled water side of the job is the same.

If the tower is shut for the season, it gets drained fully — basin, distribution, pump suction and any exposed piping — and left dry with the makeup isolated. If it has to stay in service through winter for process or data cooling, freeze protection becomes an active job: basin heaters proven, sump level maintained, fan control set to keep water off the fill in cold weather, and a bypass path so flow never sits still in an outdoor pipe.

Yes, and on any occupied building we plan it before the shutdown date is set rather than after. Temporary chillers, spool pieces and connection points get identified in the assessment so the tie-in is a planned hour and not an improvisation. Hospitals, labs and data spaces get the tie-in tested before the permanent machine is opened.

It can, and on a central plant it is worth doing. Machine alarms, chilled and condenser water temperatures, pump status and tower fan operation reported continuously means a drifting approach or a stuck valve is an email on a Tuesday rather than a hot building in August. See remote monitoring.