FAQ
Water Treatment Questions. Answered Honestly.
32 years in the industry means we've heard every question. We'd rather answer them here.
Pricing
How much does commercial water treatment cost in Houston?
Cooling tower programs in the Houston area vary based on system size, number of towers, chemical demand, and service frequency. We provide exact pricing after a free site assessment, because a number without a system walkthrough isn't a real number.
For context: the number that drives pricing is your system's cycles of concentration — the ratio of mineral concentration in your circulating water to your makeup water. Most systems in Houston run at 2–3 cycles when the chemistry can safely support 5–6. Running below optimal cycles means flushing more treated water to drain than necessary, which raises chemical cost. A properly run program costs less to maintain month over month than a poorly run one.
Boiler and closed loop pricing varies by system. All pricing confirmed after the free site assessment.
Is it worth paying for a senior technician instead of a national chain?
National chains send a senior expert to close the contract. After that, the account goes on a route. A different technician most months, reports written in chemical notation, no one calling to explain what was found. You're paying the same rate for a different service level and have no practical way to tell the difference month to month.
The relevant cost question is not what you pay per month. It's what deferred problems cost when they finally surface. Scale on a heat exchanger that could have been caught at year two costs substantially more at year five — in repair bills, in replacement schedules, and in the accountability question that arrives with the inspection report.
Why don't most water treatment companies publish their pricing?
Most pricing in this industry is a function of chemical volume. The more water a system uses, the more chemical the vendor supplies, the more they earn. Publishing a rate doesn't account for that variability.
Battleground WTS uses solid chemistry — fixed monthly cost, not tied to water volume. We publish what we can and confirm the specific number after a site assessment. No reason to hide it.
What is the real cost of ignoring water treatment?
For a cooling tower system: reduced chiller efficiency from scale on heat transfer surfaces, accelerated corrosion from inadequate inhibitor programs, Legionella risk in the basin, and unclaimed evaporation credits from an uncalibrated submeter.
In practical terms: equipment rated for 15 years often fails in 8 or 9 when water treatment is inadequate. Add six years of missed evaporation credits at $450–$2,750 per month and the hidden cost of neglect is substantial before any equipment visibly fails.
Problems and Warning Signs
What are the three main problems commercial water treatment prevents?
Scale. Cooling towers evaporate water, which concentrates the dissolved minerals left behind. At high enough concentration, those minerals — primarily calcium and magnesium compounds — deposit as hard scale on heat transfer surfaces. Scale is an insulator. A small amount significantly reduces efficiency and forces equipment to work harder to move the same amount of heat.
Corrosion. Metal in contact with water corrodes without an inhibitor. Closed loop systems are particularly vulnerable because the same water recirculates indefinitely. Without a proper inhibitor program, corrosion pits heat exchanger tubes and eventually causes leaks.
Biological growth. Cooling tower basins are warm and slow-moving — ideal conditions for microbiological growth, including Legionella. Untreated, biological fouling builds in the basin, reduces heat exchange efficiency, and creates a public health liability.
What is Legionella and how serious is the risk in commercial buildings?
Legionella pneumophila is a bacteria that grows in warm water systems — cooling towers, hot water tanks, and decorative fountains. It spreads when water containing the bacteria is aerosolized and inhaled. In commercial buildings, cooling towers are the most common source.
CDC estimates 8,000–18,000 hospitalizations for Legionnaires' disease each year in the United States. Facilities that fail a water management audit for Legionella face significant liability and potential closure.
The risk is manageable with proper chemistry: maintaining biocide levels, controlling temperature, minimizing stagnant water in the basin. The question is whether someone is verifying it monthly and documenting the results in a form the building owner can read.
What are the signs my current water treatment vendor isn't doing their job?
The clearest sign is a service report you can't read. If the monthly documentation comes back full of chemical notation with no plain-language explanation of what was found or what it means, the vendor isn't treating you as a stakeholder in your own building.
Other signs: you've never met the technician who actually services your equipment. You've never been told what your current cycles of concentration are running at. You've never received a number that tells you whether your chemistry is on target or off. And no one has ever mentioned whether your facility qualifies for an evaporation credit.
What happens when a closed loop system loses water?
Closed loop systems recirculate the same water. When water is lost to a leak — even a small one — one of two things happens: the system is topped off with fresh untreated water, or the water level drops until something fails.
Fresh makeup water in a closed loop has no inhibitor package. It dilutes the existing treatment and raises the fresh mineral load in the system. If the leak is slow and the top-offs are frequent, the inhibitor program gradually becomes inadequate. Corrosion accelerates without a visible external failure. The first indication is often a leak that turns out to be corrosion-related on an internal component.
A monitoring program that tracks inhibitor concentration catches this early. Most closed loop reports don't include it.
What are cycles of concentration, and why does it matter for my utility bill?
Cycles of concentration (COC) is the ratio of dissolved mineral concentration in the circulating water to the concentration in the makeup water. When a cooling tower evaporates water, the dissolved minerals stay behind. COC measures how many times more concentrated the circulating water has become compared to what came in from the supply.
Most programs in the Houston area run at 2–3 cycles. The chemistry can safely support 5–6. The difference matters because blowdown — the deliberate discharge of concentrated water to prevent scaling — accounts for the cycles you're not running. At 2 cycles instead of 6, your system discharges two to three times more water to drain than it needs to. That's higher water consumption, higher sewer charges, and more chemical per gallon treated.
Optimizing COC is one of the first things Doug assesses on a new account. Almost no one is running it correctly when he arrives.
Choosing a Vendor
What should I ask when comparing water treatment companies?
Five questions that separate programs from proposals:
- Who performs the monthly service visits after I sign? Is that person the same one I'm talking to now?
- What does your service report actually look like? Can I see a sample?
- What does your chemistry program do at high cycles of concentration for a system like mine?
- Do you monitor my City of Houston evaporation credit submeter calibration?
- What is your guarantee if scale develops on a system under your program?
Most vendors will have a prepared answer for 2 and 3. Few will have a straight answer for 1, 4, or 5.
What's the difference between a national company and a local provider?
National companies run route-based models. A senior technician closes the contract. A junior technician handles ongoing visits. The route tech may service dozens of accounts and rotate between them. Reports are written for internal documentation, not for your facilities team. Account management is handled by people who don't perform the actual service.
The advantage of national companies is coverage and resource depth — they can handle any system size, have internal labs, and can respond across a wide geography.
The disadvantage is the senior-junior handoff. You meet one person and get another. The person servicing your equipment may have been at the company for a year. No one calls to explain what was found.
Local providers vary. Some are single-expert operations with deep technical credentials. Others run the same route model at smaller scale. The question is not how large the company is. It's who performs the service.
What is solid chemistry, and why does it matter?
Liquid programs supply chemicals in proportion to your water consumption. Vendor revenue scales with how much water your system uses. There's a financial incentive — conscious or not — to run your system at lower cycles of concentration, because lower COC means more makeup water, which means more chemical consumed.
Solid chemistry dissolves in a controlled-release format at a fixed dose, independent of water volume. Program cost doesn't change based on how much water your system uses. The financial incentive that affects COC optimization doesn't exist.
Battleground WTS uses solid chemistry for every cooling tower program.
What should a water treatment service report look like?
At minimum: date of visit, readings taken (conductivity, pH, inhibitor concentration, biocide levels, COC), treatment actions performed, findings and observations in plain language, and any recommendations or flags for follow-up.
It should be readable by someone who is not a chemist. If the report says "all clear" and nothing else, or lists numbers with no context for whether they're good or bad, it is not a useful report.
You should receive one after every service visit, in writing, the same day or within 24 hours.
How We Work
How do I know if my current vendor is actually doing their job?
Request the last six months of service reports. Read them as if you're new to water treatment. If you can't tell from the documentation what was found, what was done, and what it means for your equipment, the reports aren't written to inform you.
Then ask for your current cycles of concentration. If your vendor doesn't know or gives a blank answer, that's the answer.
For cooling tower facilities in Houston, also ask whether your evaporation credit submeter has been calibrated in the last 12 months. If your current vendor has never mentioned the credit program, they're not monitoring it.
Who is your first apprentice?
Trenton Harris came to Battleground WTS with no commercial water treatment experience. Doug trained him for a year on system mechanics, field protocol, water chemistry, the full job, and helped him place at Dow Chemical. He's still there.
In his words: "I learned so much about water treatment and testing that I had a lot of confidence once we were done. I felt that I was better prepared for the next step in my career."
That placement is the standard we hold every service visit to. The kind of work that goes on a technician's record and follows them into a career.
Does Battleground WTS have a guarantee?
Three of them: senior technician (Doug) on every visit, 1-hour callback every time, and scale remediation at no additional cost if it occurs under an active program. Full details on the Services page →
The Evaporation Credit
What is the City of Houston evaporation credit, and why haven't I heard of it?
City of Houston Ordinance Sec. 47-129 entitles commercial facilities with qualifying cooling towers to a monthly credit on their sewage bill for water that evaporates off-site through the tower. That water never enters the city sewer system, so you shouldn't be paying sewer rates on it.
For qualifying facilities, that's $450–$2,750 per month. $5,400–$33,000 per year.
Most facilities haven't heard of it because water treatment programs are scoped to chemistry. Utility billing is a separate category. Most vendors aren't looking at your sewage statement when they're testing conductivity and biocide levels. It falls in the gap between departments and rarely gets surfaced.
How do I find out if my facility qualifies?
The basic requirement is a qualifying cooling tower connected to the city sewer system with a functioning submeter that tracks evaporation volume. Doug evaluates credit eligibility as part of every free site assessment for cooling tower facilities.
The submeter must be calibrated once a year. If it falls out of calibration and you miss a credit month, that's $450–$2,750 gone — no equipment failure, no vendor error, no obvious explanation. Battleground WTS tracks submeter calibration as part of every cooling tower service program.
What does Battleground WTS include that most programs skip?
Chemistry and written reports are the baseline — most programs do those. What gets missed: COC optimization (most systems in Houston run 2–3 cycles when the chemistry supports 5–6), evaporation credit monitoring with annual submeter calibration, and direct expert access with a guaranteed response time. See the full program breakdown →
Still Have Questions? Call Doug.
Commercial Water Treatment — Houston Metro and Gulf Coast
1105 Jerry Street, Richmond, TX 77469
281-309-2351
Serving Harris County | Fort Bend County | Montgomery County | Brazoria County
Battleground WTS is a DBA of Battleground Ministries — a nonprofit sports and trades ministry.
Your building exists to serve others. Your water treatment vendor should too.