Water Treatment Plant

This is the busy part of the Water Treatment Plant on the 12th floor of the Claremont Tower.
Most people thought the 11th floor was the top floor. Not so, the Water Treatment Plant was higher.

Here the warm water from the air-conditioning plant way below was pumped up to the cooling towers.
As the water evaporated from the cooling towers the dissolved solids became more concentrated.
A sensor detected the concentration, and at a certain level water was dumped to lower the concentration.
In the Water Treatment Plant were large tanks of treated water, (the end of one visible on the right),
that was pumped into the towers to maintain the water level. When the level in the tanks dropped enough,
mains water was fed to them. On the way, the water passed through the horizontal green lagged pipe
where it was water-softened in the tall blue cylinder, and injected with biocide from the white tub.

There were two air-conditioning technicians who maintained the two air-conditioning plants.
Every 6 months one of the plants was closed down, drained and filled with chlorinated water
to kill any bacteria like Legionnaires' Disease.

So it was a fairly costly operation to get rid of the heat generated by mainframe computers,
and this sequence of photographs shows what was going on 'behind-the-scenes'.
Very few people have seen this side of the computing service. Most might say, "That's fine".
I would say it is not good to be ignorant of what goes on behind the scenes.
If it fails, the computing service fails.