When it comes to water treatment equipment, preventative maintenance is key — because the proper care and upkeep can make all the difference between things running smoothly and things shutting down. Why is preventative maintenance such a big deal? How do you care properly for your facility’s water treatment resources? What goes into proper preventative maintenance and why? To help answer these questions, here’s a look at preventative maintenance for water treatment equipment, along with why it matters and how to do it well.
Benefits of Preventative Maintenance
Regularly caring for your water treatment equipment is more than a good idea, it’s a strategic one. When you practice consistent, ongoing maintenance on your equipment, you extend your equipment’s life and save your business money. Consider these benefits:
- Prevent Unforeseen Problems: All water treatment equipment needs regular maintenance to ensure strong performance, especially when you’re talking about large water treatment equipment. The more your equipment is being used, the greater its chances of breaking down. By regularly checking and updating your equipment, you can prevent problems before they start.
- Reduce the Costs of Repairs: Taking ongoing care of your equipment also lowers the amount you need to invest in repairs. Again, by catching problems before they can develop into emergencies, you keep yourself from getting stuck with costly repair work down the line.
- Minimize Production Shutdowns: Nobody has to tell you that when the water treatment system stops working, you’ve got a major productivity problem. Production stalls, which means profits stall, which hurts your business’ bottom line. By caring properly for your system, you minimize the chances of your water treatment equipment shutting down, keeping your business processes running smoothly.
- Extend the Life of Equipment: Taking proper care of your equipment is the best way to make it last longer, meaning you cut the costs of repair as well as needing to replace equipment.
What Goes into Preventative Maintenance?
When you see the value in preventative maintenance, it makes sense to implement practical preventative maintenance strategies to protect your business. Here are some tips to consider:
- Regularly Replace Filter Cartridges, UV Bulbs and Filtration Media: Just like homeowners know to regularly update their light bulbs, anyone using water treatment equipment should plan to regularly replace filter cartridges, UV bulbs and filtration media.
- Calibrate Water Quality Monitoring Instruments: To ensure that your equipment is working at its fullest capacity, make sure you calibrate your water quality monitoring instruments on a regular basis.
- Document All Component Operations: A crucial part of preventative maintenance is monitoring. Track everything that happens with your water treatment equipment in order to quickly detect warning signs of trouble.
- Sanitize Systems: Regular system sanitization is part of any good preventative maintenance program. By properly cleaning and caring for the various components of your equipment, you protect it from wear and tear.
Whether your industry deals with power plants, hospitals, chemicals, pharmaceuticals or textiles, making the most of your facility’s water treatment equipment means taking preventative maintenance precautions. The program you implement may be annual, biannual, quarterly or monthly, but what is most important is that it’s consistent. By regularly, faithfully examining and caring for your water treatment equipment, you save yourself a lot of headaches down the line.
Jeff Maree is the Product Specialist at Commercial Industrial Supply an online supplier of Eaton filtration products for a wide range of liquid handling and filtration needs including industrial strainers and filter cartridges.
