I work on chillers and if the cooling towers float valve isn’t adjusted right and it’s constantly pushing water out for a year without someone catching it, you would loose potentially 500,000 gallons a year or more, and that’s just one part. Granted it goes back into the city’s system but that’s our clean water that has to go into a treatment system taking time and resources. Every place is different but here in Arizona I would assume they use a similar commercial setup. The water to the building from the plant is a closed loop but that’s harder for the cooling towers to the chillers since it’s
evaporative, which you don’t loose a lot of water but that’s assuming that everything is in working order and well maintained, and a lot of commercial facilities are cheap on maintenance and don’t like to fix things until it becomes a big issue. To be fair I think industrial only takes up 6% of water use but it’s still precious here.
I work on chillers and if the cooling towers float valve isn’t adjusted right and it’s constantly pushing water out for a year without someone catching it, you would loose potentially 500,000 gallons a year or more, and that’s just one part. Granted it goes back into the city’s system but that’s our clean water that has to go into a treatment system taking time and resources. Every place is different but here in Arizona I would assume they use a similar commercial setup. The water to the building from the plant is a closed loop but that’s harder for the cooling towers to the chillers since it’s evaporative, which you don’t loose a lot of water but that’s assuming that everything is in working order and well maintained, and a lot of commercial facilities are cheap on maintenance and don’t like to fix things until it becomes a big issue. To be fair I think industrial only takes up 6% of water use but it’s still precious here.