Business parks, campuses and hospitals
Surrey's cooling plant is mostly commercial. There are corporate headquarters and business parks along the M3 and M25 at places like Weybridge, Staines, Egham and Camberley, office and research buildings around Guildford, Woking, Leatherhead and Redhill, and a good spread of hospitals, private clinics, universities, hotels and conference venues. Most cool with chillers, and the larger sites reject heat through rooftop or ground-level towers.
Surrey business parks have one particular quirk: the neighbours. Plenty of them back onto housing, footpaths or schools, and a tower in the corner of a car park can be closer to someone's garden than to the office it serves. That puts extra weight on drift eliminators in good condition, sensible siting notes in the risk assessment and treatment that keeps counts consistently low.
Comfort cooling and the winter lay-up
Many Surrey towers serve comfort cooling. They work hard from late spring to early autumn and may be turned down or switched off over winter, and that on-off pattern is where trouble tends to start. HSG274 Part 1 expects a system idle for between a week and a month to be dosed and circulated at least weekly, and one idle for longer to be drained and properly recommissioned before it runs again. We write the lay-up and restart into your scheme so it isn't left to memory. Our post on restarting after a shutdown covers the sequence.
Cleaning frequency follows the same thinking. For a typical comfort-cooling tower, HSG274 Part 1 suggests at least twice a year as a guide, with the real figure set by inspection, your treatment history and the tower's surroundings. A park next to a building site or a busy road will foul faster than one surrounded by lawns. See how often a cooling tower should be cleaned.
Four water suppliers, one county
Surrey is shared between several water companies. SES Water supplies much of the east, including Redhill, Reigate, Leatherhead and Dorking. Affinity Water covers parts of the north-west such as Woking, Staines and Chertsey. Thames Water and South East Water supply other parts of the county. Most of it is hard, but because two sites a few miles apart can be on different supplies, we never copy a setpoint from one Surrey site to the next. We test the make-up water at each, and you can check yours on your supplier's postcode checker.
Travel and access
From Chiswick, north and east Surrey are a short drive down the A316, A3 or M3, and the M25 takes us round to the rest. Access is often easier than in central London: there's usually parking on site and the tower may be at ground level behind a fenced compound. Roof-mounted units on older office buildings can still mean fixed ladders, hatches and a permit to work, so we check the arrangements before the first visit.
Notification in Surrey
Environmental health in Surrey is run by the district and borough councils, such as Guildford, Woking, Runnymede, Spelthorne, Elmbridge, Reigate and Banstead, and the others across the county. Under the Notification of Cooling Towers and Evaporative Condensers Regulations 1992 you notify the council your premises are in. Contact your local council's environmental health team for the form.