Cooling tower & evaporative condenser water treatment

Your tower is warm, wet and full of air. Bacteria love that.

A cooling tower or evaporative condenser works by evaporating water. That's brilliant for rejecting heat, but it concentrates everything in the water, scrubs dust and organic matter out of the air, and keeps the whole lot at a temperature bacteria are very happy in. Left alone, you get scale on the heat exchangers, corrosion in the pipework, slime on the fill and, worst of all, conditions where Legionella can grow and be carried out in the drift.

A water treatment programme is how you keep a lid on all four. Under ACOP L8 and HSG274 Part 1, anyone in control of a wet cooling system needs one, and it needs to be monitored, recorded and reviewed. We set it up, supply and look after the dosing, visit on a fixed schedule and tell you straight away when something drifts out of range.

Already got a contractor and not sure the programme's right? We're happy to review what you have. See also our dosing and biocide control and monitoring pages.

• Water survey and system review

  We look at your make-up water, system volume, materials, heat load and how the plant actually runs before choosing any chemicals.

• Scale and corrosion inhibitor

  Chosen to suit your water and metallurgy, with a target reserve we check on every visit.

• Two-biocide regime

  Usually an oxidising biocide plus a non-oxidising one, alternated so bacteria don't get comfortable.

• Bleed and conductivity control

  Set so the water is cycled up enough to save water without tipping into scaling.

• Agreed visit schedule

  Weekly, fortnightly or monthly visits depending on your risk assessment and on-site resources.

• Clear reporting

  A short report after every visit: what we tested, what we found, what we changed and what's next.