451 Building a Culture of Innovation and Customer Service with Frank Lecrone
Scaling UP! H2O
What happens when you build a company around one niche, listen obsessively to customers, and never stop improving? In this episode, host Trace Blackmore finally sits down for a full-length conversation with , Founder, President, and CEO of . What started in a small 60' x 60' space in Hanover, Pennsylvania, with three employees, maxed-out credit cards, and endless Staples runs has grown into a 300+-person organization serving industrial water professionals around the world. Frank shares how AquaPhoenix became “the booth everyone wants to be next to” at...
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450 Wastewater Advocacy and Innovation with Robin Deal
Scaling UP! H2O
“The More You Know” - Robin Deal A million-gallon-a-day perspective, distilled into actionable steps. , AquaPure Product Manager at unpacks how seasoned pros can squeeze more performance—and less sludge—out of industrial wastewater systems without compromising compliance or plant uptime. From “clear water in a jar” to stable discharge in the field Robin details a practical jar-testing workflow: start from upstream processes, target pH using hydroxide/sulfide solubility curves, choose the right coagulant (aluminum, iron, calcium, lanthanum, or organics),...
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449 Michael Bourgeois on AWT Partnerships and Professional Growth
Scaling UP! H2O
Get stuck in – Michael Bourgeois, CWT How do standards get written in ways that working water treaters can actually meet? In this conversation, AWT Past President, current Related Trade Organization (RTO) Committee Chair, and Chemco Products Company Operations Manager, , explains how AWT’s liaisons collaborate with peer organizations, so guidance reflects field reality—operations, risk, and achievable compliance. From Field Bags to Board Rooms: Why RTOs Matter Bourgeois outlines the purpose of AWT’s RTO structure: volunteer liaisons track and influence work at groups...
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448 2025 Halloween Special
Scaling UP! H2O
Holidays don’t usually line up with release day—but this year they did. In this Halloween special, Trace uses the horror-movie trope of the “scary boiler room” to deliver practical, field-tested reminders for safer sampling, clearer thinking, and better decisions in high-heat, low-light spaces. Boiler Rooms, Myths, and Real Risks From Nightmare on Elm Street to Tower of Terror, pop culture loves dim steam, tight corridors, and clangy pipe-labyrinths. Trace contrasts that imagery with what matters to pros: light, ventilation, a stable work surface, and time for...
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447 Unlocking Team Potential with Culture Index with Randi Fargen
Scaling UP! H2O
Hiring in industrial water is slow, specialized, and expensive to get wrong. In this conversation, executive advisor explains how a two-question, 5–7 minute Culture Index survey becomes an ongoing management and coaching system—not just a hiring screen—so owners cut turnover risk, speed onboarding, and improve day-to-day communication. From “assessment fatigue” to a usable language Most teams dread long assessments. This survey takes minutes and measures four primary traits—autonomy, sociability, pace/patience, conformity—plus three...
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446 Leveraging the Culture Index for Business Success with Danielle Scimeca and Conor Parrish
Scaling UP! H2O
How do you make “right person, right seat” a repeatable system—not a hope? ’s (President) and returning guest (Chief Growth Officer) share how the Culture Index became a decisive tool for coaching, hiring, and a company-wide restructure. If you lead field service, customer service, or operations in industrial water, this conversation offers practical patterns you can apply the next time a role feels misaligned or a 1:1 stall on surface-level updates. From intuition to instrumentation Trace opens with the origin story and quickly moves to why Danielle and Conor adopted...
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445 Industrial Water Week 2025: Careers Friday
Scaling UP! H2O
Industrial Water Week 2025: Careers Friday brings the celebration back to first principles—mentors, disciplined training, and field diagnostics that go beyond the screen. Trace reflects on the people who invested in his craft, recognizes guest contributors across the week, and issues a practical challenge to invest in one new professional before the day ends. Foundations that Compound A candid mentorship story anchors today’s episode. Trace recalls how early-career intimidation turned into decades of teaching fundamentals and math at AWT—proof that asking better questions...
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444 Industrial Water Week 2025: Wastewater Thursday
Scaling UP! H2O
Wastewater isn’t an endpoint—it’s a decision point. On Wastewater Thursday, host Trace Blackmore, CWT sharpens the operator’s toolkit with field-tested lessons: dose by mechanism, verify by sampling discipline, and use wastewater’s fast feedback to protect quality, cost, and permits. Sampling discipline protects credibility Trace recounts an early-career moment when an inspector sampled the wrong location, triggering alarms. Immediate, methodical resampling—guided by logs and a clear process map—proved the system was in spec. The leadership takeaway: embed verification before...
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443 Industrial Water Week 2025: Cooling Wednesday
Scaling UP! H2O
Cooling Wednesday is about performance, protection, and proof. Trace Blackmore invites the Nation to get hands-on with cooling equipment and share field photos while offering a practical reminder: learn to navigate the chiller’s user interface—because it’s your fastest route to actionable diagnostics, documentation, and energy impact. Reading the Chiller UI—From Intimidation to Insight Modern microprocessor interfaces reveal real-time and historical data that matter to heat transfer: temperatures, loading, and power trends. If you’ve avoided the panel out of fear of...
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442 Industrial Water Week 2025: Boiler Tuesday
Scaling UP! H2O
Boiler rooms reward clarity: how many BTUs from the flame actually arrive in steam—and stay there to do useful work? For Boiler Tuesday, Trace Blackmore, CWT, treats boiler care as heat-transfer management across the full train, from feedwater and deaeration to distribution and condensate return, with dry steam as the operational benchmark. Heat Transfer Is a Leadership Metric Dry steam isn’t a detail; it’s throughput. Steam on its worst day carries ~1,150 BTUs while hot water on its best day carries ~180 BTUs. When carryover creates wet steam, production loses energy at the...
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Boiler rooms reward clarity: how many BTUs from the flame actually arrive in steam—and stay there to do useful work? For Boiler Tuesday, Trace Blackmore, CWT, treats boiler care as heat-transfer management across the full train, from feedwater and deaeration to distribution and condensate return, with dry steam as the operational benchmark.
Heat Transfer Is a Leadership MetricDry steam isn’t a detail; it’s throughput. Steam on its worst day carries ~1,150 BTUs while hot water on its best day carries ~180 BTUs. When carryover creates wet steam, production loses energy at the point of use. Treating “BTUs-in-steam” as a shared KPI aligns maintenance, operations, and finance around the same outcome: efficient work.
The Steam Train: Protect the Interfaces
Trace maps the sequence—pretreatment → feedwater/DA → boiler → steam lines → condensate return—and explains where heat transfer is taxed when fouling or poor practices creep in. Recover condensate BTUs, verify deaerator performance, keep tube interfaces clean, and protect dryness at end users. Each interface preserved is energy returned to work.
Field Perspectives & Safety
Concise greetings from global practitioners reinforce fundamentals and vigilance. Barry Higgins underscores soft, high-quality water for “fluffy steam.” Ivan Morales contrasts OTSGs with conventional boilers and the implications for steam quality. Ben Frieders offers a memorable safety reminder: disciplined restarts and gasket integrity are non-negotiable in steam environments.
Boiler Tuesday is a call to manage heat-transfer efficiency, not just chemistry. Protect interfaces, speak in BTUs, and make dryness measurable where the work happens.
Stay engaged, keep learning, and continue scaling up your knowledge!
Timestamps
02:20 — Welcome and IWW25 context; Boiler Tuesday focus (why: frame the professional lens for the week).
03:46 — “Heat transfer efficiency managers”: defining the water treater’s job (why: reframes role beyond chemistry)
08:13 — Technology parity; execution and knowledge as differentiators (why: invest in people and practice).
09:59 — The train: feedwater/DA, boiler, lines, condensate return (why: systems thinking prevents local optimization)
12:52 — Guest greetings begin: international and cross-industry viewpoints (why: broaden operating context).
14:04 — Barry Higgins: soft water for “fluffy steam” (why: pretreatment quality → steam quality).
16:18 — Ivan Morales: OTSG vs conventional cycles and steam quality differences (why: choose tech with eyes open).
17:36 — Ben Frieders: post-inspection restart incident and safety lesson (why: operational discipline in steam).
20:19 — Detective H2O: The Case of Having The Blues
25:07 — Boiler Tuesday call to action: share photos, use IWW25 hashtag (why: community and practice sharing).
Connect with Barry Higgins
Phone: +353 87 987 8606
Email: bhiggins@aquachem.ie
Website: www.aquachem.ie
LinkedIn: in/barry-higgins-bagrsc-59030225
Connect with Ivan Morales
Website: www.ecolab.com/nalco-water/
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ivan-morales-mba-06793b5/
Connect with Ben Frieders
Phone: (317) 719-1452
Email: bfrieders@zinkan.com
Website: https://www.getchemready.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminfrieders/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/getchemready/
Links Mentioned
AWT (Association of Water Technologies)
Scaling UP! H2O Academy video courses
Industrial Water Week Scaling UP H2O Resource Page
353 Steam Boilers: Essential Checks, Part 1
354 Steam Boilers: Essential Checks, Part 2
366 Produced Water: Expert Perspectives and Practical Tips
420 Tapping Into Tech: How Ben Frieders Uses AI to Elevate Water Treatment Marketing
