Christoph Lohr: Welcome to The Authority Podcast: Plumbing and Mechanical. When talking about the built environment, we would do well to remember: We shape our buildings, and afterwards, our buildings shape us. Therefore, on each episode, we’ll discuss the latest trends from my approach in plumbing and mechanical safety, sustainability and resiliency. Join me, your host, Christoph Lohr, and together we’ll explore the ways we can make our buildings shape us for the better.
And welcome back to The Authority Podcast: Plumbing and Mechanical. For this week’s episode, we’re going to be talking about water quality and construction practices for potable water with Tim Bartrand, Ph.D., an executive director of ESPRI, and Gary Burlingame, senior scientist with ESPRI as well. Tim and Gary, welcome to the show.
Tim Bartrand: Thanks, Christoph.
Christoph Lohr: Tim, can you tell our listeners a little bit about ESPRI and what ESPRI stands for, and maybe introduce yourself and Gary as far as background goes?
Tim Bartrand: Sure, thanks. Esprit is the Environmental Science Policy and Research Institute. We’ve been around. We’re a nonprofit, and our sweet spot is the connection between the water from water utilities and the water in buildings; we’re trying to build that bridge. We’ve been around since about 2016, founded by Jennifer Clancy, who is still with the with the group.
And like I say, we’re quite interested in that that boundary in kind of getting the water in good quality and as customers need it from the source all the way to fixtures, and that’s sort of a sea change in the industry right now because the water treatment folks, the utility folks typically get it to the meter and then there’s not a whole lot of oversight after the meter.
I’m the executive director. My colleague Gary Burlingame, he joined ESPRI recently after 40 years plus I think with the with the Philadelphia Water Department. And he’s brought a lot of energy and certainly a lot of knowledge into ESPRI.
Christoph Lohr: Well, I was going to say, I've gotten a chance to work with you, Tim, on a number of initiatives over the years and the expertise and holistic thinking you guys bring to the table is definitely something that I think the industry is starting to take note of. I know I took note of and IAPMO took note of, and I think especially the first collaboration project we had, which is the Manual of Water Quality for Plumbing Industry Professionals and Building Managers.
That document, that was created, I think, as you mentioned, initially by Gary did a lot of the legwork on; really, really amazing document. Really insightful. And now that's made its way in as an annex to the Construction Practices for Potable Water Manual that IAPMO produced. And that document I actually sat for on a recording day here, January 18th, is set for release for public review, and really want to discuss both documents with you, but let's start with that Manual of Water Quality for Plumbing Industry Professionals and Building Managers. And I guess I'll point this first question at Gary. Let’s talk about Water Quality 101. Just the basics. Can you provide maybe sort of a simple overview of the concept of water quality and why it's important for the public to understand that that concept?
Gary Burlingame: Sure. There are three aspects to water quality that would be of interest to understand. One is that water quality relates to safety of the water. Is the water healthful to drink and is it meeting all the federal and state requirements defining safe water quality? The second is the aesthetics of water. The way it tastes, smells, is there sediment in it? Is there a color to it? Is there anything that would make it, maybe it's safe, but maybe it's not acceptable or pleasant to consume. And the final aspect, which is really important for buildings, is water quality can be an indicator, an indicator of good operations and good design and practices in in the building plumbing system.
So those three aspects — safety, aesthetics and as an indicator.
Christoph Lohr: Excellent. And, obviously, before we touch on, Tim, the construction practices for potable water, let's talk about the manual specifically for water quality for the plumbing industry professional and building manager. Why is that an important document? Why is that such an important annex now just by itself?
Tim Bartrand: To some people within the building community, their job is to get water at the right pressure and the right temperature and in the right volume to fixtures, and there is an understanding that water quality is important, but perhaps not necessarily, as deep an understanding as somebody like Gary, who has been on water quality within a utility for years, has.
The truth is that that water quality changes, sometimes significantly, within buildings, and so if you think of the building as just a continuation of the treatment process, knowing what the water quality changes are, how to measure water quality and how to adapt, how to mitigate changes, how to get that water all the way to the fixture, I think that's the main impact. It's providing education to people who are going to be designing and operating and using buildings that is going to help them get the water through that last leg.
Christoph Lohr: Tim, I think you hit on a key point there, education. Speaking as a design professional, mechanical engineer that has focused on designing plumbing systems for a decade-plus, water quality is really one of those kind of concepts that we really haven't focused a lot on in terms of our education. I think that word education is a really important one that you mentioned there in terms of what they should know.
Because again, there's just a lot of room for that. There's a lot of question marks there. So in the document, in that manual, in that annex, it covers the impact of certain water quality parameters on plumbing systems. I was going to say for our listeners, could you explain in layman's terms how things like pH, alkalinity and chlorine — and others, potentially — affect drinking water in homes and buildings.
I'll start with you, Gary, and then Tim, if you want to add on.
Gary Burlingame: Sure. When I talked about indicators, pH and alkalinity would be a good example of indicators. Alkalinity is the buffering capacity of the water. How readily the water exists changes in pH. The pH determines whether the water tends to be basic or acidic in nature. A pH around 7 is a neutral pH. A lot of water utilities, public water utilities with corrosion control may be increasing their pH up to even 8 to impart a calcium scale onto the pipes inside the building to protect the pipes from corrosion due to the water.
So a pH maybe between 7 and 8.5 might be very typical for public water systems. And if the pH is changing, then that's an indication that the water quality is not stable or something is having an effect on the pH that needs to be looked at. So they’re good indicators, but they're strongly related to corrosion control.
Tim Bartrand: I’ll pick up where Gary has left off and talk a little bit about disinfectant. The disinfectant is important. The disinfectant in the in the water, it can impart a taste, but it’s what the utility is providing the customer to help them maintain the water quality. The disinfectant is a bacteriostatic agent; that means that it’s a preservative. It’s in the water to keep that water safe and to prevent growth of pathogens and other problematic organisms in the water.
And so that that disinfectant is there for good purpose, but it doesn't stay forever. It can decay over time. There is demand. And so if if water is left stagnant in buildings, then that disinfectant goes away and the protection is lost. So from the building owner/operator/consumer perspective, knowing what type of disinfectant is in the water is important and knowing, and there are a couple of types that are typically used, that are almost always used. One is free chlorine or bleach. And then the second one is monochloramine, which is a more stable disinfectant. Knowing what your disinfectant is is going to help you know what it's going to do in your system. It's also going to help you know how to measure it.
And then knowing what typical concentrations are at the point where the water enters the building is going to help you know how frequently you might want to turn over the water in the building. It will help you assess what difference there is between where the water enters the building and at a distant fixture, if there's a lot of demand between those two, OK, something not great is going on in there. Chlorine has those effects; a negative effect of chlorine is that particularly for free chlorine, there are compounds that are regulated called disinfection byproducts that can form when the free chlorine in the water has reactions with organic matter in the water that in the organic matter could be just resident in the building system.
It doesn't have to come in from the utility. By and large, you think of disinfectant as a good thing. But there are there is that caveat that too much of a good thing can be problematic.
Gary Burlingame: Let me if I can just add something to that.
Going back to water quality, when I say to there’s three aspects: safety, aesthetics and an indicator. Chlorine residual and public water systems are required by EPA regulation to provide a chlorine residual and in most public water systems. So safety, if there's a chlorine residual, then the water's considered safe to consume by federal regulation. Second is aesthetics. Chlorine residual makes the water smell like it has a chlorine residual and is a reason why maybe a lot of people turn to bottled water or used point-of-use of filters to remove the chlorine residual.
So it has an aesthetic effect. And finally, it's an indicator. If you have a chlorine residual coming into the building of 1 milligram per liter and it dies off to 0.2 milligrams per liter by the end, the final tap, then something has a chlorine demand in that building. Something is consuming the chlorine and it would be good to find that out and fix that.
So chlorine residual is also an indicator. It serves a good purpose in those three areas: safety, aesthetics, and an indicator of the system.
Christoph Lohr: And I want to stay on this point a little bit on water quality, because for me, in reading through the Water Auality for the Plumbing Professional that Annex A, what really struck me is that interrelated component of water quality. Because I think Gary, you hinted at that a little bit on your first answer about how these things can kind of have an impact like the corrosion control.
But my understanding is even that your disinfectant, like chlorine, let’s say just sticking with that, that's impacted by pH level and its effectiveness is impacted by pH level. And I think what the other things too, you mentioned the word residual, right? I think we all have to remember that chlorine and other oxidizing disinfectants like monochlorine, they dissipate over time. So the longer they’re in the piping system, you know, the less there is over time, the more opportunities there are to react.
Maybe first starting with you, Tim, and then maybe we can flip over to Gary to provide some additional information. Can you touch on a little bit of that inter-related or interrelations between the disinfectant types?
Because it seems like there's a circle here almost of, you put chlorine into the system, it can cause some corrosion depending on the amount so you put in some kind of anti-corrosion metric in there. But in order for that to work, you have to change the pH level. But that might not make the chlorine work as well, and it just seems like there's these circles of like interconnecting reactions that occur with all of this. And I think some of our listeners might be interested in hearing a high level of what that looks like.
Tim Bartrand: From my perspective the utilities, they're required but they also, out of due diligence, they provide water to their customers that is going to be optimal for the customers.
And what they're shooting for generally is providing water that's not corrosive, particularly if there are thick lead-bearing fixtures, lead service lines, those kind of things. If there's corrosive water, then even though the lead doesn't come from the utility, the utility is providing corrosion-inhibiting strategies to limit the amount of lead that comes off of the fixtures or the pipe.
And so you've got corrosion inhibitors and you've also got the disinfectant. And the disinfectant can contribute to a more stable scale, which could reduce corrosion. It’s not necessarily a corrosive agent. Certainly if you go up to 50 parts, you'll have some trouble. But the water quality is formulated by the utility to be protective and helpful in the customer's plumbing.
Gary, I'm sure you can add to that.
Gary Burlingame: Yeah. The way to think about it is, and this is the way we think about it in the public water supply distribution system, the water entering from the service connection flowing past the meter has one quality associated with it, and that quality changes as it travels through the plumbing system.
The question is, how much does it change? Some aspects of water quality are conservative. They come in, they don't really change, and that's what you detect at the customer’s tap, such as fluoride or sodium or chloride. Some aspects of water quality are not conservative and they change. Chlorine residual will decrease in a plumbing system. It's just a question of how much does it decrease and does it decrease so much that it doesn't provide protection against biofilms and bacterial regrowth in the plumbing system?
Other things like calcium and silica will deposit a scale on the pipe, which would be a nuisance in some cases, as in a hot water system or a boiler. Or it could be beneficial as placing a layer between the pipe material if it's metallic and the water and reducing corrosion. So that makes the issue of water quality in any pipe system not as simple as we would like it to be, but a little more complicated because of the biology and chemistry and the fact that the water quality does change as it travels through that pipe system.
Tim Bartrand: And I think this shows why Gary was the primary author of the of the water quality manual and it shows the importance of providing that level of education, because at this point people listening to this podcast, if they didn't know before, they know, “Hey, it's a pretty good idea for me to understand the corrosion control strategy for my water supplier. And I probably ought to know what disinfectant they're using and what level it is at my service connection.” Because if you have that information, then then all of these tangled-up other elements, like, “OK, how much sludge do I expect to form in my in my water heater? What is its nature going to be? Do I have to worry about erosion corrosion in my system? What materials should I design and use in my system?” You can start to answer those questions based on the information that Gary provided in water quality manual.
Christoph Lohr: Excellent. Well, I think for our listeners, it kind of goes to the one quote, “People think that water is simple, but it is actually highly complex.”
You guys just described just a few of the metrics. Obviously there's the full annex, the full manual by itself in many respects that covers it a bit more in depth. But one of the things I really like that you guys mentioned in that, and you kind of touched on it here as well, so it’s both in the manual and we sort of briefly mentioned as we've been talking here, is the consumer, and the manual, that annex talks about consumer confidence reports that water suppliers provide to their customers.
What should consumers look for in these reports and how can they use this information to ensure the drinking water in their homes and buildings is safe? And I'll start with you, Gary. Any thoughts on that?
Gary Burlingame: Sure. So the consumer confidence report is a requirement by the U.S. EPA for all public water systems to communicate to their customers, their bill-paying customers, the water quality as it relates to contaminants that are in the water. So if a water quality is truly 100% pure, there's really very little, if anything, to put in a water quality report as required by the EPA.
If the water has a lot of contaminants in it that exceed their limits, the water utility has problems with treatment, the water quality report could be pretty extensive. The problem is the water quality report only relates to drinking water regulations. It doesn't really tell you everything that that you would need to know to run a plumbing system, such as will the water produce a scale in your boilers? What is the chlorine residual you should expect at your end taps? What's the pH of the water? There are things in it that are very practical regards to the indicators and aesthetics that you would want to know to operate a building water system. So that's why we added more information on water quality in Water Quality 101 to explain a lot of the things that you may not see in the consumer confidence report.
I will add that water utilities, especially larger ones who have the capability, often go beyond the water quality report, the consumer confidence report required by the EPA, and they add in additional information that customers typically ask about, such as hardness of the water. That's a big question that's often asked, but it's not regulated. Also, water utilities will have information often on their website, common questions that are asked and answers to those common questions. The consumer confidence report isn't meant to be a thick document; it's meant to be very thin and focused on water safety and regulations.
You need to work with your water utility and help them understand the parameters that are important for you to operate your plumbing system and see if they can help provide that information and help you understand what that information means and where to get it as you need it.
Christoph Lohr: Excellent. Tim, anything you want to add in terms of the importance of consumer confidence reports?
Tim Bartrand: Just echoing what Gary said, that because they look at regulated contaminants it's sort of a pass/fail thing.
My utility doesn't have contaminant X above the level that has been defined as safe in the regulations. But that doesn't necessarily get to, OK, what's this going to do in my plumbing system and that's more where we live. We have no control over whether there's PFAS in the water; it's either there or not. And it's good to know whether it's there or not, but nothing happens to PFAS; it’s one of these conservative contaminants like Gary was talking about in the plumbing system, whereas with things like alkalinity, disinfectant, pH, there are changes. And that's something that if people know and if they have the inclination, they can use to make sure that they're protecting their pipes and keeping good water quality to the fixture.
Christoph Lohr: And I think that it kind of all relates to this idea of planning and thinking ahead a little bit. That annex talks about the importance of infrastructure planning for water quality. How can individuals and building managers stay informed about planned infrastructure changes and what impact could these changes have on water coming to the building? I guess we'll start with you, Tim, to kind of pick up on that, and then back to Gary.
Tim Bartrand: When utilities have infrastructure changes, you've got two basic types: you've got planned ones and then things like main breaks and so on; I'll call that an infrastructure change. These are important to customers; they can impact water quality, etc. Utilities have very highly regulated procedures by which they go about these changes.
And they also have SOPs and they have ways that they respond to things like main breaks and emergencies. They also have reporting requirements that, if there is a contaminant that's found or if there is a condition that is that is encountered, a main break, they have a very clear statement or a very clear regulation that says this is who you need to inform and this is how you need to inform them.
And it comes in tiers and it's something that all utilities hopefully are doing. So the question, what about these infrastructure changes; how will you be informed? I doubt that a utility will inform its customers if it's going out and doing routine maintenance on a part of the infrastructure. Certainly, people have to be informed if there is a main — well, not always if there’s a main break — but the information about the infrastructure changes is going to follow the regulations that the utility is under.
Thats a bit of an evasive answer to your question, but that’s the best I got.
Christoph Lohr: No, that's totally fine. Tim.
Gary Burlingame: If a utility is replacing a water main, shutting down a water main for a period of time, doing anything significant, they typically go round and knock on doors or check with customers, especially larger buildings, schools, hospitals, sensitive customers.
And they usually check with them and say, “Hey, we’re going to be doing this will be out. You might be out of service for a while. You might see a reduction in pressure.” A responsible utility will check with those sensitive customers. If a building is particularly vulnerable to such changes, they should simply notify their water utility and ask them, “Please give us a heads-up or notify us if there are any changes.”
They should also get a copy of the local water main and where their service lines are; they should know that. They might have a fire and a domestic service line. What water main are they on? If they’re in a city, there could be a different water main on each side of the building. They should understand the connection, where the connections are, so if they see work going on, they’ll know, OK, on the east side in the building, we're connected. I should be concerned about that. If it's on the west side, we're not connected there. That probably won't affect us. So there's that initial work between the building owner and manager and the water utility to understand those aspects and to see how they can work together, especially if that building is very vulnerable or sensitive to such changes in the system.
Christoph Lohr: Excellent. Excellent. The sense that I get from both of you is that this document is very thorough. It covers from head to toe anything and everything in terms of water quality, at least for those people that are not familiar with it from the plumbing industry and the building manager side, to help get them a leg in there and just an initial understanding to kind of start that process to being able to speak the same language.
My next questions are for you, Tim, because this particular manual, as we kind of have mentioned a few times through, the water quality manual, is now an annex, Annex A, in the Construction Practices for Potable Water Manual. Can you tell our listeners — that might be a two-part question here, Tim. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about the Construction Practices for Potable Water Manual and then also why the Water Quality 101 Manual was added as an annex as opposed to having that separate document?
Tim Bartrand: Great. The Construction Practices for Potable Water document is, give me a second here. The origin of that document was discussions a colleague of mine, William Rhoads and I, were looking at disinfection of buildings. So currently commissioning of buildings entails disinfection according to a particular standard, typically AWWA C651, and then hoping for the best.
And we both thought, “Hey wait a minute. How you disinfect is very much dependent on what you did and what's there to disinfect.” So we kicked around the idea of using the water safety planning process, which is a process by which water treatment facilities, water distribution facilities are managed for managing risk.
We thought, “What if you were doing that for construction water safety?” And now let's look at everything, not just disinfection, but let’s look at all of the practices that you could do to protect water quality along the way. So one thing led to another, IAPMO picked this up, saw some value in it, and has developed what I think is a very industry-leading, forward-thinking document that takes construction from, “Hey, let's just do whatever and disinfect at the back end” to “Let’s really think about water quality along the way.”
And I’m hopeful that that there's going to be better results; it turned into kind of a marketing pitch. Sorry about that. So where does the where does the Water Quality 101 document fit into that? During the discussions —this is looking a little bit at the sausage making here — during discussions, there were many conflicting resources that talked about water quality.
Certainly when we put together the Construction Water Safety Planning Manual, there needed to be discussion about water quality, and there wasn't a good document to point to that summarized the water quality that somebody who is designing a system and somebody who is installing a system, what they needed to know. And Gary had already solved our problem for us.
He produced that that manual that then can be the one-stop shopping — hey, here is what you need to know about water quality. So when we talk about chlorine, when we talk about disinfectant, when we talk about chloramine, you can simply look at this reference. And hopefully the Water Quality Manual can be, now that it's part of the Construction Water Safety Manual, it can be referenced elsewhere where it’s useful.
Christoph Lohr: In our preparation for this podcast, and you brought up the AWWA C651, which, if I recall the name right, it's the disinfection of water means. I think Gary, as we were preparing for this, you mentioned that you had been involved with that quite a bit and had quite a bit of contextual knowledge of that.
Do you want to share with our listeners a little bit of that contextual knowledge? Because I think for some of them it might be interesting to hear some of the context and the intention and what the intentions were behind that manual. And obviously it's been in essence used in plumbing systems, premise plumbing systems, and maybe getting your thoughts on the applicability of that, I think would be really beneficial to our listeners.
Gary Burlingame: In the drinking water system of a public water supply, one of the areas where the water can be contaminated is whenever you open up the water system and expose it to the environment. And clearly when you’re repairing a water main break or you’re installing a new water main, you’re exposing that safe and secure public water system to environmental contamination or you’re potentially exposing it to contamination.
One of the ways to offset that, knowing that we don’t have full control of the construction process in a sanitary way, knowing that materials don’t come in a sterile condition, one of the ways that has always been around is to disinfect the pipe prior to releasing it for people to drink the water from and assuming the disinfection will kill off any germs or environmental bacteria that had gotten into the water main or the pipe during its work.
The problem with that is disinfection is a cure-all for everything that can go wrong. If backfill sand got into the pipe, if dirt got into it, if contamination got into the pipe, runoff water while it was being constructed, the chlorine won't necessarily take care of everything at the level that we would use to typically disinfect water, which might be like 5 milligrams per liter needed to disinfect the water.
You could have a clump of dirt in there, for example; that’s a bad example but it could happen. And you hit it with chlorine and the chlorine gets consumed by the clump of dirt and no chlorine is left over to do any disinfecting. So we needed to provide a higher level of chlorine — 25 milligrams per liter or 50 milligrams per liter, depending on the way it's being disinfected — to overcome the demand, if you want to say the environmental dirt and so on in the main, to overcome that and then have some left over to do the disinfecting that is needed before the water can be released and consumed. So there’s a lot more that goes into guaranteeing that the repair of a pipe system, or the installation of a new pipe system, is safe to drink the water from.
You need to keep it in a sanitary condition. You need to protect it, you need to install it and protect it. If you get … need to inspect and make sure nothing got in it and flush it out if it did, then disinfect it. But then the final test is to run a water quality test to make sure that all that happened properly and that the water then that’s being sent through that pipe is indeed safe to drink.
Tim Bartrand: And Christoph, that that might sound familiar from the construction water safety document, because essentially those practices — and others that are specific to buildings — are what the document brings forward so that when the disinfection is done, it doesn't have to be at such high concentrations and it will actually get the job done.
Christoph Lohr: It sounds like both Tim and Gary, from what I'm hearing from you all, the science is advancing on this in a good way and we’re updating, with manuals and code proposals and plumbing codes and standards, we’re updating the practices that are needing to be updated as the science advances and as communication improves, which is really great to hear.
For our listeners, the manual — again, today is January 18th is when we’re recording — the manual is going to be released, is in process of being released today for 20-day public review. If you make that 20-day review, I would love to get your comments and input on it. If not, then the task group — which Tim is doing an excellent and expert job of of helping to lead — will be looking at comments. I would anticipate we’ll be able to get through those and then hopefully here in quarter one we'll have the final document release. We’ll have to see when this episode gets released compared to the document.
But on behalf of The Authority Podcast: Plumbing and Mechanical and IAPMO, I just want to say thank you, Tim and Gary, not only for your contributions but your time here today in discussing water quality with myself and our listeners.
Thanks for joining us on this week's episode of The Authority Podcast: Plumbing and Mechanical. Love this episode of the podcast. Head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate and leave a review. Please follow us on Twitter, @AuthorityPM; on Instagram at The Authority Podcast or email us at iapmo@iapmo.org. Join us next time for another episode of The Authority Podcast: Plumbing and Mechanical.
In the meantime, let’s work together to make our buildings more resilient and shape us for the better.
