Cooling Tower Maintenance Checklist

Cooling towers are an essential piece of HVAC equipment for large commercial buildings. Preventative maintenance is crucial for keeping a cooling tower system running at peak efficiency and avoiding costly repairs. We will cover this critical piece of HVAC maintenance and guide you through creating an effective cooling tower maintenance checklist to ensure the proper operation of your cooling tower systems. 

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ServiceChannel offers helpful advice on different types of preventive maintenance for facilities and assets.

Understanding Cooling Tower Systems

Cooling towers help to reduce the temperature of an indoor environment by drawing any heat from condensation water and expelling the heat outside. The tower then recirculates the cooled water into chillers to cool a facility's interior. 

Cooling tower maintenance is critical for all kinds of industries. Even hospitality facilities incorporate HVAC cooling towers into their hotel maintenance routines. Facilities typically use one of the following types of cooling towers in their HVAC systems:

Counterflow

A counterflow cooling tower system works by spraying pressurized water from above onto incoming air traveling upwards from below. The air absorbs heat and discharges it into the outdoor air while the water flows downward into a chiller to cool the interior air.

Crossflow

A crossflow cooling tower system uses gravity flow to drop water vertically from above while air moves horizontally across the water. Fan blades force the warm air into the outdoor air while the cooled water feeds into the chiller.

Open Loop Cooling Tower

In an open loop cooling tower system, water passes through a filter medium and falls into a chamber below, through which air flows. The water makes direct contact with the air, which draws heat from the water and exits through a top vent, while the cooled water recirculates back into the chiller.

Closed Loop Cooling Tower

A closed-loop cooling tower system keeps the air and water separate as the water passes through the filter medium and air flows around it to draw out the heat.

Troubleshooting Cooling Tower Issues

Cooling towers come with their own unique set of issues to look out for. Poor heat transfer, reduced efficiency, water leaks, and microbial contamination are a few common issues you may encounter. Here are some tips to help keep your cooling tower running efficiently and effectively.

Creating a Cooling Tower Maintenance Checklist

Establish cooling tower upkeep protocols and create a maintenance checklist to lay out detailed steps. These steps will help you create a cooling tower maintenance checklist that suits your facility's needs.

1. Understand Cooling Tower Type

Identify and itemize the types of cooling towers your company utilizes. Tailor a preventative maintenance checklist to fit each type of cooling tower your organization uses. 

2. Collect Manufacturer's Guidelines

Review the manufacturer's recommendations for cooling tower maintenance on their specific equipment. Individual tower maintenance needs may vary between different models of cooling towers.

3. Cleaning Cooling Tower

Regardless of the type of cooling tower a facility employs, cleaning is an essential maintenance task. Remove debris buildup, algae, and scale accumulation from the tower's fill material, cold water basin, drift eliminators, and other interior cooling tower components.

4. Water Quality Inspection

Routinely examine, test, and treat the water as part of cooling tower maintenance. Regular tower water treatments help prevent scale, corrosion, and biological contaminants from accumulating in the cooling system. 

5. Fan Maintenance

Every cooling tower maintenance checklist should include fan inspections and upkeep. Ensure fan blades, motors, belts, and bearings are properly lubricated.

6. Check Drift Eliminator

Drift eliminators help prevent water from discharging into the outdoors with the air. Check for damaged or clogged eliminators, which can obstruct water flow and reduce cooling tower efficiency.

7. Test Control Systems

Ensure proper operation of control systems, sensors, and valves. Repair or replace any damaged or worn components. 

8. Inspect the Tower Structure

Examine the internal and external structural components for signs of damage or wear. Gaps in the body of a cooling tower can allow the introduction of debris and biological contaminants.

9. Sample for Legionella

Legionella is a harmful bacteria that thrives on water droplets and can be introduced into a building's environment through HVAC systems. Regularly sample cooling tower water and test for Legionella.

10. Keep Detailed Records

Diligently record all cooling tower maintenance activities. Track dates, personnel, and completed tasks. Maintenance records include inspections, test results, repairs, and water treatment adjustments.

Establish a Regular Maintenance Schedule

A regular cooling tower maintenance schedule ensures consistent upkeep and optimal equipment performance. These steps will help guide you through setting up a plan for proper cooling tower maintenance, as well as other critical facility assets.

1. Create an Inventory of Assets

Itemize and catalog all essential facility assets and equipment. A cooling tower inspection checklist will often include attached utilities and connected pipes.

2. Prioritize Criticality & Usage

Assess the impact of each asset and establish a hierarchy of importance. Equipment that's essential to operations and safety should take the highest priority. Many industries rely on the environmental control of HVAC, and cooling tower maintenance will be high on their priority lists.

3. Identify Maintenance Triggers

Determine which situations and asset conditions trigger preventative vs. reactive maintenance. Reduced efficiency, odd sounds, and strange smells are some occurrences that commonly trigger cooling tower maintenance.

4. Develop an Asset Schedule

Design a preventative maintenance schedule and task list tailored to each of your assets. While cooling tower maintenance tasks may vary between types of cooling towers, they all benefit from weekly, monthly, and annual routine maintenance.

5. Use PM Software

Facility management and preventative maintenance (PM) software can streamline many high-level maintenance tasks. A robust preventive maintenance platform such as ServiceChannel can tremendously help with routine cooling tower maintenance scheduling and history tracking. A PM platform also provides condition monitoring and powerful analytics, which can examine data and recommend predictive maintenance tasks before issues present themselves.

Benefits of Preventive Maintenance for Cooling Towers

Monitoring and inspecting all cooling tower components, from the fan blades to drift eliminators, ensures you'll have ample warning of any impending cooling tower problems. Routine cooling tower maintenance safeguards against breakdowns and optimizes energy consumption. Organizations with conscientious preventative maintenance programs tend to enjoy longer equipment life spans and greater operational efficiency, which leads to noticeable cost savings for the company.

Ensure Longevity with Cooling Tower Maintenance

Heating and cooling are staple technologies in facility management and maintenance, and innovations emerge daily. Look at ServiceChannel's take on sustainable thermoelectric cooling to glimpse the future of HVAC and refrigeration.

ServiceChannel is a top-notch facility maintenance and management software solution that empowers organizations to monitor and maintain their assets more easily. Follow the checklist above to help ensure your cooling towers run efficiently and reliably, and explore the ServiceChannel software platform to take on many of your maintenance tracking and scheduling tasks. 

When thinking about where you can improve operational efficiency, facility managers rarely jump to cooling towers. This however, can be a hugely inefficient part of your operation. We find cooling tower maintenance is a great way to improve operational efficiency as well as extend the life of your equipment.

Cooling towers are heat exchangers that are commonly used to remove heat from water leaving the chiller or air conditioning condensers. There are many different styles of cooling towers, such as cross flow, counter flow, induced draft and forced draft. These units will have slightly different maintenance requirements so be sure to always follow your manufacturers recommendations.

Start-Up Cooling Tower Maintenance Checklist

For starting up a cooling tower in the spring time, follow these maintenance steps:

• Clean and remove any debris, such as leaves and dirt from the air inlets.

• Flush the cold water basin (with the strainer screens in place) to remove any sediment or dirt.

• Remove the strainer screen, clean and reinstall.

• Check mechanical float valve to see if it operates freely.

• Inspect water distribution system nozzles and clean as required. Check for proper orientation.

• Check to ensure drift eliminators are securely in place and in the proper orientation.

• Adjust fan belt tension as required.(Replace Belt Annually)

• Lubricate fan shaft bearings prior to seasonal start-up.

• Turn the fan(s) and pumps by hand to insure it turns freely without obstructions.

• Visually inspect the fan blades.

• Verify if any stagnant water remains in the system including 'dead legs' in the piping.

• Manually fill the cold water basin up to the overflow connection.

• Adjust mechanical float valve as required to the proper water level.

• Unit basin should be filled to the proper operating level.

• Verify fan is rotating in proper direction.

• Measure voltage and current.

• Adjust bleed valve to proper flow rate.

• Sliding motor base ' Inspect and grease as needed.

• Clean pan strainer.

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• Clean and flush pan.

• Check bleed-off valve to make sure it is operational.

• Inspect operating level in pan and adjust float valve if necessary.

• Check water distribution system and spray pattern.

• Check drift eliminators.

• Inspect the fan blades for cracks, missing balancing weights & vibrations.

• Check sheaves, bushings, fan shafts and fan hubs for corrosion.

• Check fan screens, inlet louvers and fans. Remove any dirt or debris.

Cooling Tower Routine Maintenance Checklist

Here are a few maintenance tasks that should be completed in the summer.

• Clean pan strainer (summer)

• Clean and flush pan (summer)

• Check bleed-off valve to make sure it is operative (summer)

• Check operating level in pan and adjust float valve if necessary (summer)

• Inspect water distribution system and spray pattern (summer)

• Check drift eliminators (summer)

• Check the fan blades for cracks, missing balancing weights & vibrations (summer)

• Inspect sheaves, bushings, fan shafts and fan hubs for corrosion (summer)

• Lubricate fan shaft bearings (summer)

• Check belt tension and adjust (summer)

• Check fan screens, inlet louvers and fans. Remove any dirt or debris (summer)

Cooling Tower Fall Maintenance Checklist (Shutdown)

As you get ready to shut down your unit for the colder months, follow these steps.

• Drain the evaporative cooling unit cold water basin

• The cold water basin should be flushed and cleaned with the suction strainer screens in place.

• Clean and reinstall suction strainer screens.

• The cold water basin drain should be left open.

• Lubricate the fan shaft bearings and motor base adjusting screws.

• The water make up valve needs to be closed.

• All water make-up, overflow and drain piping needs to be drained.

• The finish of the unit should be inspected.

• Clean and refinish as required. Energize motor space heaters. (if equipped)

Cooling Tower Maintenance And Water Flow

We have encouraged a number of facilities to let us examine the flow rates on their cooling towers units. Fortunately and unfortunately for these facilities, we have a high success rate at finding issues. We often find some zones are overflowing, some zones are under flowing and air side velocities are all out-of-whack. This results in units that get nowhere near nameplate performance!

For organizations like ethanol plants and other industrial facilities where summer production is limited by cooling tower output, this can be a huge problem. By re-balancing flows to cooling towers, they will not only increase unit efficiency, but also production capabilities.

In large commercial buildings, inefficiencies in cooling tower performance results in increased cooling bills. This means small tweaks and improvements can result in BIG savings on energy bills.

To measure the water flow, you have to start by using an ultrasonic flow meter. Ultrasonic flow meters work by transmitting ultrasound between two sensors. These offset sensors measure the time it takes for sound to travel between them and determine flow speed. From there you can adjust the flow to meet the requirements of the entire system.

New factory units are sometimes set up to over amp. In fact, we see this in the field all the time! When you're looking to increase efficiency, cooling tower flow rates are a surprisingly good place to start. We also recommend checking flow rates on any main unit AHU, pumps, cooling towers or chillers on a yearly basis. This will ensure you are getting the performance your unit is designed to achieve.

Legionnaires' Disease And Maintenance 

Legionnaires' disease is a severe form of pneumonia and has a death rate of 1 in 10 according to the CDC. The disease is most commonly spreads through cooling towers, hot tubs, showers, faucets and water features. By performing routine cooling tower maintenance you can spot stagnant water, perform proper chemical bacterial treatment and help reduce the risk of this disease.

According to an article written by Chardon Laboratories,

'Microbial growth causes numerous problems for your system and your employees. In warm conditions, bacteria and algae proliferate in uncleaned water. Biofilm, a physical film filled with bacteria, can cause micro-biologically influenced corrosion. These mats of bacteria can also harbor disease-causing microbes, such as Legionella. In addition to ongoing use of a bio-dispersant to break up this biofilm layer, a cooling tower cleaning can protect your system from these problems.

OSHA recommends cleaning your cooling tower at least twice a year to prevent the growth of Legionella bacteria. Following this schedule is critical because most evaporative cooling towers maintain warm water at the ideal temperature for bacterial growth. (Between 68 degrees Fahrenheit and 122 degrees Fahrenheit.) Additionally, due to the evaporation of water into the air nearby, workers in the area could breathe in Legionella bacteria. Putting them at risk for the disease.'

COOLING TOWER INSTALLATION

We can help you with your next cooling tower install. We can install natural draft, mechanical draft, crossflow and counterflow cooling towers. Installation will vary depending on size and type but here are a few common installation practices:

• System Evaluation And Appropriate Cooling Tower Selection

• Site Prep And Demolition of Existing Tower (If Present)

• Offload Components of Cooling Tower

• Setting Basins Followed By Installing Sump Boxes

• Setting Uppers Followed By Installing Corner Brackets

• Install Cell Redirectors And Louver Panels

• Install Handrails, Ladders, Conduit And Wiring

• Finally Install System Piping

And just like that, your system is ready. Call us today with any of your cooling tower questions at 1-800-237- or reach out online. We are help to help improve your cooling tower efficiency.

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