Eastman Management, a division of Eastman Companies, is a highly respected Class A commercial real estate management firm in New Jersey.  They are constantly on the lookout for new ways to operate their properties more efficiently, to give their tenants the best office conditions possible, to provide optimized return on investment to the property owners, and to offer exceptional service to both.  In June, 2001, Ron Thomson, Facilities Manager for Eastman, was requested by The Prudential Insurance Company, one of Eastman’s tenants in a Livingston, NJ office complex, to assist with the installation of several TWT Deposit Control Systems in their Prudential Cafe.  The Deposit Control Systems were purchased to replace water softeners and chemical treatment in the Prudential employee food service operation, which suffers from scale buildup and operating inefficiencies when their water supply is left untreated.   The existing water softeners were being removed or by-passed because they were expensive to use, because they prevented the water from receiving treatment on a continuous basis due to frequent downtime and maintenance needs, and because the use of softened water sometimes led to corrosion in pipes and equipment.   In addition, from a health conscious viewpoint, Prudential also wanted to avoid  the increased probability of leaching in the plumbing infrastructure that softened water is known to promote, as well as to avoid passing along increased sodium intake to café customers.

Mr. Thomson provided the requested assistance, and in the process was introduced to TWT’s patented deposit control technology.  A skeptic at first, Mr. Thomson quickly came to recognize the value of TWT Deposit Control Systems when the results achieved in the Prudential cafeteria were demonstrated to provide superior treatment and lower costs, with no maintenance requirements.

 Based on these results, Mr. Thomson and his associates at Eastman speedily decided that a test of the TWT systems was in order.  Their first purchase was for treatment of one of their commercial facility hot water heaters, followed by another system for one of their cooling towers, the maintenance of which was the source of a great deal of man/hour expenditures and of materials and chemicals expenditures.  As well, existing conditions presented the need for constant monitoring of the cooling tower to prevent bacteria growth.  Eastman purchased a TWT system to treat the tower, installed it, and waited to see what would happen.  Within one month, results were visible in terms of the lack of scale buildup, the decreased chemical costs, and the decreased manual maintenance and supervision man/hours that were needed.

 Over the next few months, Mr. Thomson and his associate, Robert Clark, Chief Engineer, continued to see pre-existing scale disappear, to see decreased chemical costs and handling safety issues, and experienced no downtime due to the need to clean the tower, nor need to replace parts that might previously have corroded due to either biofilm buildup or from chemical treatment.  Said Mr. Clark, “the tower looked as clean as it did when it [the tower] was installed.” 

 What they also saw over that time period surprised and pleased them very much . . . decreased water and energy usage.  Here’s why: the TWT Deposit Control System allows a cooling tower to operate at higher TDS ratios than are the norm with conventional chemical treatment, easily reaching levels of 7 to 8, and even higher, if desired.  This means the blowdown for the tower is significantly reduced, providing immediate water savings and sewer charge reductions.  The energy savings were also significant, because the equipment could now operate as it was designed to, and did not have to “work as hard” to meet the building’s needs.  According to information from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Building Technology, State and Community Programs, cooling tower treatment and optimized operation can be expected to account for as much as 50% of the energy savings obtained at a given facility in relation to the Department’s standard set of identified energy wasting conditions; in other words, when assessing targets for achieving energy savings, cooling towers are a very high priority and almost always yield very significant reductions in consumption.  So, this simple installation is estimated to pay for itself in less than 20 months, and will continue to provide energy and other savings, year after year.

 Labor savings, chemical savings, energy savings, water savings, sewer charge savings, reduction in downtime, extended equipment lifecycle, and enhanced equipment performance, have all added up to a most positive experience for Eastman Management, which looks forward to rolling out the TWT systems to many other of the properties they manage.  “We’re extremely pleased with the reduction in required maintenance interventions, and with the fact that we no longer have to use chemicals or have our personnel be exposed to them.  The cost reductions also allow us to deploy our resources in ways that are more visible and which tenants and owners can better perceive and appreciate.  We have already expanded the TWT treatment program to 11 more towers, and we have plans to install them on many more over the coming months”, stated Mr. Thomson.

 TWT looks forward to completing the rollout of systems across Eastman-managed and owned properties, and to helping provide continued significant results.  For more information on how TWT can help your company obtain similar savings and efficiencies, or to find out more about individual user experiences, please click here.

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