Category Archives: Cooling Tower

post

Care For Your Epoxy Floor, Love Your Epoxy Floor

Posted on by

Aesthetic appeal can go a long way when it comes to presenting your business and maintaining a positive flow in your work environment. Many establishments use the setting to frame whatever products or services they showcase and many of them augment that ‘framing’ with a nice, classy looking epoxy floor. Having a quality epoxy floor installed is a sizable investment and it would greatly benefit your bottom line if you thoroughly take care of your floor. Epoxy flooring is easy to take care of so there really is no excuse for not keeping your floor maintained and presentable.

The first step in this process is the installation. Using a reputable epoxy flooring installation company is very important because a floor that is improperly installed will not last as long or be as easily maintained as a floor that has been efficiently and thoroughly installed. Spending a little more up front can save you from having to spend a lot more to redo the process later on.  All Kote Lining Inc in Phoenix, AZ  is a leader in epoxy flooring in Arizona and guarantees your satisfaction with their epoxy floor installations.

Keeping your floors clean will help lengthen the window of maximum efficiency and the overall life of your epoxy coat. Liquid spills should be quickly tended to when they occur as they are can do more damage than almost any other form of wear and tear that an epoxy coated floor will see. Certain types of liquids can quickly damage the coat if not cleaned up immediately, like milk for example.  Removing residue from tire marks is also important. General every day upkeep is also needed so the shining coat of the epoxy can be maintained.

Keeping your investment in your epoxy floor performing at the level you desire is a matter of taking some time out of your day every day to keep it making your facility and products looking as good as they should! Your flooring is a major part of any presentation of any product or service that you offer and the condition of it could be the difference between growing your business with new customers and watching people walk by or come in before leaving shortly afterward. Epoxy floors require minimal maintenance, so why would you not take great care of your epoxy flooring?? It’s easy and almost effortless and the benefits of doing so far outweigh any benefit you can gain from saving a few extra minutes instead of attending to your flooring. Love your floor.

post

Concrete and Foundation Repair

Posted on by

Foundation Repair

Our years of experience have led to us becoming the premier provider of foundation repairs in the Valley of the Sun. We can mend your existing foundation and bring it to a ‘like new’ state ensuring exponentially longer life and peace of mind for you, the home owner. Foundation settling is one of the most potentially devastating things that can happen to a foundation and, by extension, the entire structure. If settling is allowed to progress unchecked, it can lead to the overall failure of the structure.

Stained Concrete

Upgrade the interior of your office or facility with beautifully stained concrete. Add color, designs and personality to your flooring with the vast selection of available finishes and colors that are available to coat your concrete floor. All Kote can provide you with a number of gorgeous coatings that will take the aesthetic appeal of your spaces to the next level.

Grinding / Leveling

One of the ways you can ensure that your desired coating, new overlay, or needed repair adheres to the surface of your floor is profiling your floor with grinding. This technique is also great for removing coatings that may be in need of replacement or are no longer wanted. Profiling your concrete floors is recommended for both applying and removing coatings from an epoxy floor.

Polished Concrete

Polished Concrete is the result of a multi-stage process that includes using bonded abrasives along with grinding, honing polishing the surface of your concrete floor. The process is customized to achieve the desired level of gloss that the floor will display. This process also yields the most durable finish and will be as low maintenance as a concrete floor can get.

Concrete Polishing Contractor Phoenix Arizona

We offer some of the most efficient concrete floor polishes available and can equip you with a top rate, low maintenance floor.

Polished concrete floors are becoming more and more common and are often included in the construction plans for new buildings. The reason for its popularity is the combination of clean and dynamic appearance along with low maintenance requirements to keep your floor clean and functional. Another reason for its popularity is its versatility and ability to enhance so many varied environments. Public spaces, museums, government facilities, air plane hangars, auto dealerships, repair shops, in home, and garages are among the many places that can benefit from the presence of a polished concrete floor. If you run a display based business, having a elegantly polished concrete floor will add a degree of appeal to each and every one of your displays. In places like schools, polished floors help with the effort to keep the facility clean and sanitary which is vital as schools are a major focal point of public health issues. Another benefit these floors bring to schools is the fact that they are low maintenance. Schools are struggling for funding and resources across the country and saving money on maintenance costs will save precious time and money. Last but not least, polished concrete is environmentally friendly in comparison to other flooring types.

Concrete Grinding Contractor Phoenix Arizona

All Kote Lining Inc are experts at concrete grinding services provider in the Phoenix, AZ area. Interiors, exteriors, driveways, patios, porches, decks, foyers, and entry ways are all areas that may need concrete grinding in order to achieve the flooring you desire for your home or facility.  Whether you are looking to level the surface of your floor or looking to apply a new coating, our concrete grinding services are exactly what you need.

We grind driveways, patios, sidewalks, and all types of miscellaneous concrete slabs. We grind down trip hazards, and prep floors for new acrylic and epoxy coating overlays. Our grinding services are performed quickly and dust free.

Floor Grinding, Leveling

After the initial grinding of your concrete the next step is to apply whatever coating or repair you are in the market for. The benefits to grinding a floor before applying a new coating are a higher, shinier level of gloss finish, easy to clean, low maintenance and enhanced appearance. Concrete grinding is extremely beneficial for any concrete flooring in any facility.

All Kote Lining Inc is your go to company for any of your concrete flooring needs in the Phoenix, AZ area. Our floor grinding and coating services are second to none and we guarantee that you will be satisfied with the results of our work. Polished concrete is extremely beneficial to install in your home or business and you can reap all the benefits that come along with polished concrete flooring. Streamline your cleaning and maintenance process while enjoying the enhanced look that our floor coatings provide. All Kote Lining Inc has all of your flooring needs covered from top to bottom. (Really, no pun intended)

post

Legionnaires Disease 101

Posted on by

If you are the owner or a perspective owner of cooling towers, one risk that you should be fully aware of is the potential for the development of Legionnaire’s disease in the pools of your towers. With the water disaster in Flint, MI (which is absolutely tragic and inexcusable) awareness of Legionnaires disease is on the climb because so many are currently being affected by it. While the development of Legionnaires disease is easily avoidable, understanding the disease is still important.

Bacteria:

Legionella is the bacteria that involved with outbreaks of Legionellosis, which can develop into Pontiac Fever or Legionnaires disease. While Pontiac Fever tends to pass through your system on its own, Legionnaires disease is a form of pneumonia that requires a hospital stay to eradicate. The mortality range of Legionnaires disease is 5%-30% which is alarming enough to take every measure to avoid its development.

Spreading Legionnaires:

The most common way that Legionnaires Disease is transmitted through water that has been aerosolized, which is why cooling tower owners need to be educated and aware of this disease. A less common way that it can be transmitted is via drinking water. While it is possible to become fatally ill, most people who actually come into contact with the disease do not fall ill and the disease cannot be passed from one person to another.

Legionella occurs naturally in fresh water, but it isn’t pervasive enough to cause illness. It’s when Legionella starts to prop up in artificially heated and contained bodies of water. These environments accelerate the growth of Legionella and are almost ideal for it to develop enough to become problematic for humans.

Performing regular maintenance on your cooling tower is the easiest and most effective way to avoid experiencing any problems related to Legionella, especially Legionnaires Disease.

post

Keeping Up Your Chiller Tubes

Posted on by

Chiller tubes can use an incredible amount of energy, up to 50% of all energy used at a facility at peak times.  That can be an astronomical number and can effect your margins greatly if you aren’t getting the most out of the energy going into your chiller tubes.

Chiller tubes cans see up to a 35% reduction in overall efficiency if your cooling towers are poorly maintained or dirty. That is important for a couple reasons; A) You are losing a lot of money by paying for energy that isn’t necessarily being used effectively and B) You are making your chiller work harder than necessary to achieve results it could reach much easier if maintained which can drastically reduce the lifespan of your chiller tube. Maintaining your cooling towers does cost a good amount of money but the amount pales in comparison to the cost of replacing chiller tubes or entire cooling towers. That is the kind of expense that can cripple a business.

Keeping maintenance consistent is key as having as much data about your towers and their current condition can help you catch problems in their early stages instead of when they mature and become potentially problematic to other components in the cooling tower/chiller tube.  Legionnaire’s disease is commonly found in the pools of poorly maintained cooling towers along with other organisms that quickly breed and can potentially clog the system.

Make sure your waterways are clear as they can bring in sediment and particles from outside of the tower and introduce them into the inner workings of your towers. Keeping the water ways from collecting build up is important when it comes to keeping your pools clean and water clear of contaminates. It may seem like a lot to maintain your chiller tubes frequently, but it is well worth it to keep them working as close to 100% efficiency as possible.

post

Cooling Towers 102

Posted on by

Cooling tower class is officially back in session, welcome to Cooling Towers 102! Before moving into new material, we will start with a review of basic cooling tower function. Cooling Towers are used to extract heat from water that is sprayed along fills that line the tower’s interior. The natural process of evaporation is artificially enacted and the extracted heat is passed out of the tower through the top in a cloud of steam. There are different types of cooling towers that use different fills and water/air distribution systems. No matter the methodology, cooling towers all serve the same purpose to extract and expel heat from water so it can be sent back into the main facility for use.  Cooling towers can also be used for air conditioning in certain scenarios.

Cooling towers effectively serve as main components for air conditioning, heating ventilation and industries that use large amounts of water for cooling, ie power plants. They are desirable because they are very cost effective for the purpose they are used for. Thousands of large scale facilities use massive amounts of water for cooling purposes. Large buildings use cooling towers in order to effectively cool and heat the entire structure.

There are risks associated with cooling towers that need to be kept in mind if employing the use of one. Cooling tower pools are prone to growing the Legionella bacteria if they are cleaned and maintained routinely and efficiently. Legionella loves heat and thrives in warm and moist environments and cooling towers provide and ideal environment for the propagation of Legionella which can cause Legionaires disease if the bacteria is breathed in. Making sure cooling towers are cleaned and maintained is of the utmost importance.

This concludes Cooling Towers 102, we shall return in time with Cooling towers 201 next term. Until then, happy cooling, students.

post

Cooling Tower Cleaning is Important!

Posted on by

Cleaning cooling towers is an enormous undertaking that involves steps that could include having to shut down your entire operation. When cleaning one of your towers it would be ideal to be able to divert the water flowing through the tower that is being cleaned to another tower where the heat extraction process can continue. If it is not possible for you to divert the water flow to an adjacent tower then you most likely will have to close operations until the cleaning of your tower is finished.

If it’s been a good amount of time since you cleaned your tower you most likely will have sludge build up present as well as mineral deposits that have developed. The sludge can be especially odorous and is a testament to why regular cleaning and maintenance are highly recommended. Delaying proper cleansing can also lead to issues with internal components of your cooling tower which will lead to slowed production and ultimately less money coming in. Aside from a possible drop in production, if pushed out too far, your cooling tower components could outright fail and need to be completely replaced which would both further the delay of your operations resuming and cost you a good amount of money.

Cooling towers are a major part of any operation that they are a component of and if they are present, it is because they are necessary for the process being carried out. If a cooling tower experiences issues, the entire operation is experiencing issues. Regular maintenance for not only your cooling tower, but all components of your facility is necessary in order to maximize production, efficiency and profitability. Pushing back cleaning and maintenance may seem like a smart move to save money in the immediate, but you may see the consequences in the future. Do it when it needs to be done, you’ll never regret it.

post

Floor Coating Options For Various Traffic Levels

Posted on by

Light Traffic

Industrial floors in areas that experience relatively light traffic then a liquid seal coating may be the appropriate choice for you and your floor. Liquid seals are good for protecting your floor against chips, scratches, flaking and damage from water. No need to overspend on a coat that does more than you need it to. Accurately assessing your needs can save you a lot of money.

Medium Traffic

If you have a floor that sees moderate or medium level traffic then you may want to consider the same liquid seal described above to get the base protection from chipping, flaking, scratching and water. Liquid seals can also protect against various chemicals, acids and sugars. Another option that should be considered are multi –layered floor coatings. These coatings add augmented levels of protection against the same elements as the liquid seal coat. Multi-layered floor coatings come in a variety of styles to enhance the aesthetic appeal of the space that they occupy.

Heavy Traffic

In areas or facilities that see heavy duty traffic should consider thick resin coatings. These coatings are 2-3 millimeters thick and off a tough, super resistant and resilient surface that will protect against chemical spills, chipping, flaking, acids and sugars. There are hygienic options that can kill bacteria available for sensitive facilities. There are options that can withstand extreme tempereatures and wear and tear from things like tires, preventing  marks from vehicle traffic. There are options that can be as thick as 9 millimeters.  These coats will last for a very long time, especially if they receive regular maintenance and upkeep.

There are many options available in the realm of floor coatings, including custom coats that can host designs as well as provide long lasting protective service for your facility. Do your research and you will find the right flooring option for you.

Cooling Towers 101

Posted on by

Cooling Towers seem pretty self explanatory when you listen to their name, but there is a lot more complexity than indicated by their simple moniker. Complex both in function and deployment, cooling towers are fascinating machinations that synthetically recreate a natural phenomenon, evaporation.

The core function of cooling towers is to extract heat from heated water and disperse the extracted to heat into the surround environment outside of the tower. This evaporative process is maximized when as much air as possible flows over as much water surface as possible. There are different methods of heat extraction as well as several types of cooling towers  that are used depending on where the facility is and what it is used for.

Two very common types of cooling towers are crossflow and counterflow towers.  Crossflow towers use splash fills to expose descending water to air flowing across is at is falls in order to extract the heat. Counterflow towers the air is moved upward against the downward flow of the descending water as opposed to across the water in order to achieve the same heat extraction. While these are the two most common types of cooling towers there are definitely more styles that are used.

Mechanical and Natural Draft are two styles that are used as alternatives to cross flow and counterflow. Mechanical draft towers use mechanized methods to push the air across the water, usually in the form of fans. The mechanized components can vary, but they ultimately serve the same purpose. Natural draft towers are tall and chimney like and use the buoyancy of heated air to provide the flow of air over the water. These are the iconic looking towers often seen on nuclear sites. Their shape promotes the natural flow of warm air out of the top of the tower.