Green, Clean Shop: Get Wet

   Unfortunately, it’s the process of shaping it into countertops and other products that’s apt to draw frowns from portions of the public – and from regulators. Dust in the air, or dirty water on the ground or down the sewer, can make even the best-intentioned shop owner into Environmental Enemy Number #1.
   Regardless of their reasons, some shop owners are finding that, as with the old car-care ad, they can make the investment now to clean up the shop – or they’ll surely pay later, whether it’s a lawsuit over silicosis or a closed business thanks to government regulators.
   The decision isn’t all that difficult, say some that’ve already made the investment in cleaner shops for themselves and their employees.
  
FEELING BETTER
   Sid MacKay, president of Creative Countertops in Las Vegas, has dealt with government regulators. While he survived the experience when the company moved into a new shop in June 2007, he made sure it wasn’t something that would happen again.
   Say what you will about this city; it’s not exactly the ideal manufacturing spot. A desert climate makes water precious, and its geographic location in the bottom of a bowl accentuates concerns about air quality.
   MacKay’s encounter with bureaucracy came because of water, but in solving one problem, he’s been able to get a handle on the air situation, too.
   He explains that Creative Countertops was caught during an inspection because its shop water was overflowing into the sewer system.
   “The system we had in our old shop just wasn’t adequate, and that was our fault, because we grew so much,” he says. “When we were doing two kitchens a day, it was fine, but when we got up to 12-14 kitchens a day, it couldn’t keep up.”
   While the net result of the bad write-up was a mandate to do quarterly inspections of just what was going down the shop drain, MacKay says there was another price attached.
   “In the desert, the more water you use, the more you pay,” he explains. “In the old shop, we were using more than $2,000 a month in clean water.”
   And, the lack of good water was also hampering the shop’s commitment to doing all its fabrication wet.
   “We were having trouble getting enough water to where they needed it for hand-fabrication, and they were allowed to do some dry grinding in one specific area,” MacKay explains.
   Since the move, he adds, it’s been stressed how important it is to do everything wet. Employees caught doing dry grinding are written up, and three infractions is enough to cost the offender his job.
   Getting the right-sized water treatment system was definitely a big concern when work started on the design of the new building. As with the rest of the facility, MacKay wanted it be big enough to handle future expansion.
   He chose to buy a system from the Kenosha, Wis.-based Beckart Environmental Inc., and appreciates that they were willing to listen to his concerns.
   “Having been at capacity in our old shop for a year-and-a-half and having experienced something going down, I was concerned about that,” MacKay says. “I asked them to not only supply the extra pumps but build them into the system. We’re totally set up with redundancies, but we’ve never been down for more than a few minutes.”
   The system is also easy to clean, he says, and the sludge cake that’s removed from it is simply put out in the company’s dumpster.
   And those $1,800 monthly water bills?
   “Now that we’ve moved, our water bill is averaging about $180,” he says. “That alone is more than enough to pay for a water-treatment system.”
   MacKay isn’t sure if the emphasis on doing wet production and having a good water-treatment system has made a difference in production, but eliminating the dust has given employees a better attitude about shop cleanliness that’s carried over into all facets of the business.
   “The more we do, the better we feel about it,” he says. “It’s a safer environment, not just for us and the employees, but for the customers who are walking in to select slabs. It instills confidence in your customers, especially if they’ve walked through other shops and found them to be dust bowls.
   “There’s definitely no going back.”
  
GET IN COMPLIANCE
   John Deem is another shop owner who’s felt the heavy hand of regulators on his shoulder and decided it’s best to be what he calls “environmentally responsible.”
   The owner of DCI Countertops in Crystal River, Fla., a small community about halfway up Florida’s west coast, says he learned the hard way that any discharge from the building is enough to get written up by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP).
   “We had a small discharge of five-to-ten gallons of water a month from the building, but that’s considered wrong,” he says. “Whether it’s dirty water or clean water from a garden hose that just got pumped from the ground – if it’s coming out of the building, it’s wrong.”
   And, it’s not like Deem wasn’t treating his water at that point. He says he utilized a combination of a bag dehydrator, a settling pond and a cyclone separator.
   “We bagged the large particulates, let the water settle as much as possible, pumped off the top and spun it through a cyclone to get it as clean as possible,” he explains. “It was fine when we were a somewhat smaller shop running just a bridge saw and hand tools, but it wasn’t adequate for a shop using more technology.”
   Once Deem had been cited, he says the options weren’t too attractive. Because it was such a small amount of discharge, he was able to send it to a holding tank. However, it then had to be removed from the tank by a company handling hazardous waste.
   “If I’d been a larger polluter, we would have had to have ceased operations immediately,” he says.
   He also learned that he’d been dumping his sludge improperly, because it was still wet when he sent it to the landfill.
   And, if there was one lucky aspect to the situation, it’s that government regulators moved more slowly than Deem did, giving him time to contact Hampton, N.H.-based Water Treatment Technologies™ to engineer a system for the shop.
   “It took them (the regulators) 30 days to get back to me and say, ‘You have a problem, and here’s what we’re telling you to do,’ and by that time I had already gotten the new system designed,’” he says.
   While describing it as, “a financially painful time,” Deem says he never contemplated just continuing to put his excess discharge into a holding tank for periodic pumping. The shop has a CNC and is ready to add a waterjet, and he says dealing with the old system would have just become a continually more-substantial problem.
   Even now, he still has to maintain dump records on the sludge hauled to the landfill, and the FDEP still drops in to make sure the system is running as promised.
   “Between them telling us we had a problem and getting the machinery in place, it was a nightmare,” Deem concludes. “They’ve been great since we’ve gotten the system in place, but getting there was a problem.
   “I firmly believe you’re better off investing the money and getting into compliance.”
  
"WE’RE NOT GOING BACK”
   Steve Hood doesn’t just want to be known as a good fabricator. He wants to be on the leading edge of where he believes the industry needs to go.
   Hood worked in other stone shops before opening Paragon Granite in Longmont, Colo., in 2005. Because of that experience, he knew what he did – and didn’t – want in his own operation.
   “My very first shop I was in, you couldn’t see from one end to the other,” he relates. “It was nothing but dry fabrication, dust, and no masks. It was just a nasty, nasty place.”
   Having been there and done that, Hood also says he knows the arguments in favor of doing some dry work: the need to get jobs done as fast as possible, and having to wait for the stone to dry to inspect the work if you’re fabricating wet.
   However, his own preference, he says, “is for thinking about what we can do for the employees.”
   And, he adds, having experienced an OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) inspection as an employee also colored his thinking in terms of what he wanted his shop to be.
   In fact, when Paragon started operation, Hood applied for an Occupational Health and Safety Consultation through Colorado State University that was completed earlier this year.
   “It took 18 months to get to the point where they came out and did the inspection,” he says. “They found some things I needed to address and I did, and life is good.”
   Keeping up can be a challenge, though. When Hood added a CNC machine to the shop about 18 months ago, he had to upgrade his water-treatment system, a process he did with the help of Beckart Environmental.
   “That’s when my eyes were opened in terms of water treatment,” he says. “We put in a complete floor drain system for the polish line and to run the machinery. We’re a closed-loop system, so we’re not putting anything into the sewer any more.”
   Still, he says after making the investment in the CNC it was probably another $60,000 out-of-pocket to pay Beckart and do other improvements.
   “Once we said ‘yes’ to Beckart, I saw I needed a different compressor system,” Hood says. “My guys and I knuckled down and did that work ourselves, along with the floor drain and the pit and everything else. As soon as the machine came, we had it put in and running.”
   The whole thing has been a good investment, though. Not only can the sludge go out with the trash, but he’s gained a reputation among his clients.
   “In this area, being environmentally conscious is being politically correct,” Hood states, “I tell people I’m not paying anything for water because it’s a closed loop. And, the designer I use tells people I’m higher because I’m recycling.”
   Hood is just as proud of the cleanliness of his shop, and the certainty that in 20 years he isn’t going to be sued by a former employee suffering from silicosis. And, if wet fabrication takes a little longer, from his perspective that’s not a problem.
   “So what if it takes 20 minutes more?” he says. “If we need to laminate, the guys use torches to help dry the stone. I’ve got an electric heat gun to help them dry it so they can inspect the work.
   “Cutting out that extra 20 minutes isn’t worth it. We’re not going back to dry.”
  
THE RIGHT THINGS, THE RIGHT WAY
   The image of Old World stone fabrication is that of skilled craftsmen carefully turning stone palettes into artistic masterpieces, often by hand.
   Be that as it may, today’s Europe is also one where stone fabrication is carefully regulated in terms of air and water quality. For Primo Danti, owner of Primo Granite and Marble in Walled Lake, Mich., that’s an important lesson he’s carried across the Atlantic and into his own operation in this small community west of Detroit.
   “I think I run a pretty smooth operation,” he says. “I recycle my water and don’t discharge anything in the sewer or the drain system. Everything I do stays inside my property lines.”
   Danti is still doing some dry fabrication in the shop, but he’s changed his production methods to cut down on the amount of grinding necessary to get jobs out the door.
   “We were doing a lot of 1 1/2” work – laminating two 3/4” pieces – and that required a lot of grinding on the back of the stone,” he says. “It was done dry and it did create a lot of dust. Now, we’ve started going with 1 1/4” granite, and that’s eliminated the lamination and the grinding.”
   His preference is for wet fabrication, and part of the shop’s cutting is done by hand using wet tools (the shop has a bridge saw but not a CNC). Still, the employees continue to do some dry finishing.
   “It’s better if you’re wet,” Danti observes. “The shop is much cleaner and it’s healthier for the employees. We have an Italian-made machine with a long arm that sucks the dust up, but I’m pushing my employees to do as much as they can with water. Still, some prefer to do it dry.”
   Despite the fact he doesn’t have a CNC machine, Danti upgraded to a Water Technologies system two years ago. Up to that point he’d been using another system, but he says, “it wasn’t doing the job.”
   Although the shop hasn’t been visited by regulators, he knows that probably won’t continue indefinitely. And, he says he’s well aware of what happens to shops such as his in Europe, where people are closed down until they have the proper systems in place and up and running.
   “We try to do the right things in the right way,” he says. “It’s like with OSHA. I’m sure they could find things we could improve at, but I think we’re pretty safe with our jibs and forklifts and fire extinguishers.”
   Other than the cost, he says upgrading his system wasn’t all that onerous, either.
   “Water Technologies just came and took the old system out and put the new one in,” Danti says. “It was easy and simple stuff, and it wasn’t all that long from when they started until we were up and running.”
   And, he adds, one of the great advantages he now enjoys is the ability to throw his sludge cakes out with the other shop scraps. However, his primary focus is on doing the right things.
   “If there’s a problem, I know who’s going to pay for it,” he concludes. “I believe if you’re cautious and use the right equipment, you’re going to be fine. You have to be ready to do things the way they’re supposed to be done.”

This article first appeared in the June 2008 print edition of Stone Business. ©2008 Western Business Media Inc.