Libsyn Directory

443 Industrial Water Week 2025: Cooling Wednesday

Release Date: 10/08/2025

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...

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),...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

More Episodes

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 “shutting something down,” ask a chiller tech to walk you through the specific unit on site. Once comfortable, log key parameters on every visit and use the trend history to spot changes before they become outages.

Proving Value with Clean Heat Transfer and Measured Energy

For new or troubled accounts, record energy use during dirty conditions, then maintain the same measurements as the system is cleaned and stabilized. Month-over-month comparisons at similar loads become hard proof that treatment quality translates to lower operating costs—and that contract value aligns with measurable savings.

Cooling Wisdom from the Field

Guest greetings highlight real-world lessons: avoid shipping sample bottles in flimsy packaging (they’re heavier full than empty), respect the complexity of cooling treatment by breaking it into critical actions, and remember that underfeeding biocides invites biofilm—and problems like foaming—while proper dosing and verification (e.g., dip slides) restores stability.

Celebrate—and Document

Share your favorite cooling tower or chiller photo with #IWW25 and #ScalingUPH2O. Then, turn celebration into discipline: capture UI data, maintain trend logs, and use the numbers to defend decisions, budgets, and results.

Listen to the full conversation above. Explore related episodes below. Stay engaged, keep learning, and continue scaling up your knowledge!

Timestamps

02:01 — Kicking off Cooling Wednesday and the #IWW25 photo invite (show your cooling towers/chillers). Why it matters: community learning and pride in craft.

03:22 — Why cooling matters: performance, protection, livability. Why it matters: framing the operational stakes of heat transfer.

03:46 — Willis Carrier’s 1902 humidity control origin story. Why it matters: cooling began as a manufacturing quality solution.

09:54 — Guest greeting: Juan Menezes (Nalco Water, an Ecolab company) on a low-pH excursion and recovery. Why it matters: pH control and response discipline.

11:13 — Guest greeting: Michael Lowenstein (QLabs) PSA on shipping Legionella samples securely. Why it matters: sample integrity = valid data.

12:22 — Guest greeting: Mike Standish (Radical Polymers/MFG) on complexity, simplifying actions, and predictive AI. Why it matters: clarity first; analytics next.

17: 11 – Detective H2O: The Case of Unwanted Foam Party

29:20 — Wrap: keep celebrating; post your cooling equipment; Wastewater Thursday is next. Why it matters: momentum through the week.

Connect with Juan Meneses

Phone: 337.309.9619

Email: jmeneses@ecolab.com

Website: Reinventing the Way Water is Managed | Nalco Water

LinkedIn: Juan A. Meneses | LinkedIn

Connect with Michael Loewenstein

Phone: +1 513 207 4943

Email: MLoewenstein@qlaboratories.com

Website: Scientific Consulting for Q Labs LLC

LinkedIn: Michael Loewenstein | LinkedIn