Osborne Park · Perth metro
Independent Legionella monitoring for Perth cooling towers
Sampling, inspection and cleaning schedules for towers and warm-water systems you did not install. We sell no treatment chemicals, so nothing rides on your results.
No chemical supply contract, ever. Kwinana to Joondalup, Midland to Rockingham.
What a round costs
Our rates, published. Nobody else in WA publishes theirs, so treat these as ours and not as a market benchmark.
Monthly cooling-tower service and sample
Inspect the tower, record the condition of basin, fill and drift eliminator, draw a representative cooling-water sample, lodge it with the laboratory.
from $395 + GSTper tower, per month
Monthly Legionella and HPC round
Warm-water systems: sample points drawn to a written plan, Legionella and heterotrophic plate count on every point, results forwarded as the laboratory issues them.
from $780 + GSTup to 5 sample points · each extra point $62
Six-monthly clean and disinfect
Drain, clean and disinfect the tower and basin, photograph the fill pack before and after, and write the date into the register so the next one is not a surprise.
from $1,450 + GSTper tower, per clean
Risk assessment and asset register
One walk of the plant room and the roof: every tower, calorifier and dead leg found, photographed, numbered and given a schedule you can hand to an auditor.
from $1,850 + GSTone-off
Positive-result response visit
A count above threshold on Friday afternoon is not an email problem. We attend, re-sample, and write up what was done and when.
from $640 + GSTper attendance
Water treatment chemicals
We do not sell them, do not resell them and take no margin on your dosing contract. That is the reason our sample result is worth reading.
Not sold hereask your treatment contractor
What your building owes
Whether the Regulations apply, how often, the count that means stop — then the fee.
The Regulations apply to your building.
Inspection, sampling and cleaning are the owner’s.
$790+ GST a month
$869.00 inc GST
Frequencies and thresholds are the Western Australian Department of Health’s, quoted in full further down. Prices are ours. Send this through and we will walk the plant before we quote it properly.
The three sentences the answer rests on
Everything the card above says about frequency and thresholds comes from one page published by the Western Australian Department of Health. It is short, and it is worth reading once yourself.
Inspection and cleaning. The Department says a building owner must “ensure cooling towers are inspected at least monthly as part of a regular maintenance program and cleaned when necessary.” On cleaning intervals: “Cleaning intervals shall not exceed 6 months”.
Sampling. The owner must “take a representative sample of cooling water at least once a month when the system is in use and test for legionella”.
Who is responsible. “It is important that the owner of a building ensures a competent person who has had appropriate training or practical experience (or both) is responsible for the management and maintenance of cooling towers to ensure compliance with the Regulations.”
Western Australian Department of Health, Legislation and guidelines for cooling towers and water systems — health.wa.gov.au. The gazetted instrument is the Health (Air-handling and Water Systems) Regulations 1994. The same page notes: “These Regulations are currently under review as part of the Public Health Act 2016 regulatory review program.”
Which buildings are out
Quoted as the Department lists it:
“The Regulations apply to all buildings across WA except those classified as a:”
- “Class 1 – single dwelling”
- “Class 2 – 2 or more sole occupancy units; or”
- “Class 10 – non-habitable building or structure (e.g. shed)”
“under the Building Regulations 2012 regulation 6.”
Same page. If your building is one of those three, the card above prices the work at nothing, because there is none.
The number that means stop
Above threshold, the sample stops being paperwork
A monthly result is a number on a page until one of two figures is passed. The Department publishes both, and it publishes them as a list.
“initiate control strategies when:”
- “legionella is detected >10 cfu/ml”
- “heterotrophic microorganisms is detected>100 000 cfu/ml”
Western Australian Department of Health, Legislation and guidelines for cooling towers and water systems. Reproduced exactly, spacing and all.
Scale of the thing
“Legionnaires’ disease is an urgently notifiable disease and must be reported to the WA Chief Health Officer within 24 hours of confirmation.”
“It estimates there are approximately 3,000 sites fitted with a cooling tower and 400 vulnerable premises fitted with a warm water system, but the true numbers could be higher.”
“Data provided by the Department indicates that a total 188 cases were reported over the last 10 years (2013-2022).”
Office of the Auditor General Western Australia, Regulation of Air Handling and Water Systems (Report 20: 2022-23, published 21 April 2023) — audit.wa.gov.au.
Argued against ourselves
When you don’t need us
We sell no water treatment chemicals and take no margin on anyone else’s. That is the whole business, and it has a consequence we would rather say out loud than have you work out later: if your dosing contractor is already sampling monthly and giving you the results, you do not need a second sampler.
Before you ring us, ask them for three things:
- the monthly result sheet, with the laboratory’s own report attached — not a summary of it;
- the cleaning date for every tower on the register, and the next one booked;
- what was actually done the last time a count came back above threshold.
Three out of three and you are already covered, and we would be a duplicate line on your budget. Two out of three, ring us about the third — that is a $640 + GST job, not a contract. The one thing a treatment contractor almost never covers is the warm-water side, because nobody is dosing it and nobody is on site for it monthly. That is where we are worth hiring.
What we will not do
Quote you a chemical program. Mark up your dosing. Tell you a competitor’s result was wrong without re-sampling. Sample a system we have not walked. Or promise a Legionella count the same day — culture takes days, not hours, and anyone offering you an hour should be asked which method they are using.
What you own, not us
The Department puts the duty on the building owner and on a named competent person, not on the contractor. We write ourselves into the register as the sampler and the cleaner; the responsible person stays yours, and we will tell you in writing who we think that is on your site.
How a Grayline year runs
Four moving parts, and you should be able to see all four on one page of the register at any time.
01
Walk the plant
Roof, plant room, calorifiers and the dead legs nobody drew. Everything numbered and photographed. Half a day, usually.
02
Write the schedule
Sample points fixed in writing, inspection dates set, and both cleans in the calendar before the first one is due.
03
Monthly round
Inspect, record, sample, lodge. The laboratory report reaches you the day it reaches us, unedited.
04
Six-monthly clean
Drain, clean, disinfect, photograph the fill pack before and after, sign the date into the register.
Nothing to sell you afterwards
A sampler who also sells the dosing has a reason for the count to be interesting, and a reason for it not to be. We have neither. It is the only structural argument in this trade and we would rather lead with it than with a badge.
The laboratory’s report, not our summary
Samples go to a NATA-accredited laboratory and the report is forwarded whole. We add a covering note for what it means and what we did. You keep both.
A register an auditor can read
Asset numbers, sample points, results, clean dates, and the action taken above threshold, in one document you can hand over without an explanation from us.
What facility managers say
Demonstration copy for a fictional business — written the way this trade’s customers actually talk, not marked up as review data.
“Our tower contract and our sampling used to arrive on the same invoice. Now the result comes from somebody with nothing to sell us, and the committee stopped asking me to explain it.”
Facility managerCommercial office tower, West Perth
“First round found a fill pack nobody had opened since 2019. They wrote the clean into the schedule with the dates, and the register is the first one we have had that reads straight through.”
Asset managerShopping centre, Cannington
“They told us our tower supplier was already sampling monthly and we did not need them for it. We hired them for the warm-water side instead. Not a sales call I had had before.”
Maintenance leadResidential aged care, Bull Creek
Where we go
Based in Osborne Park, on a monthly round that reaches the edges of the metro area. If your site is further out, say so — we will tell you honestly whether the drive makes the round worth doing.
On the monthly round
- Perth CBD
- West Perth
- Osborne Park
- Balcatta
- Joondalup
- Malaga
- Midland
- Belmont
- Welshpool
- Canning Vale
- Cannington
- Bull Creek
- Fremantle
- Bibra Lake
- Kwinana
- Rockingham
Sites outside that ring are quoted with the travel shown as its own line, never folded into the monthly rate.
Questions we actually get
Which regulations apply, and to which buildings?
The gazetted instrument is the Health (Air-handling and Water Systems) Regulations 1994. The Western Australian Department of Health sets out the exclusions as a list:
“The Regulations apply to all buildings across WA except those classified as a:”
- “Class 1 – single dwelling”
- “Class 2 – 2 or more sole occupancy units; or”
- “Class 10 – non-habitable building or structure (e.g. shed)”
“under the Building Regulations 2012 regulation 6.”
Department of Health WA — Legislation and guidelines for cooling towers and water systems
Everything else — Classes 3 to 9, so offices, hotels, hospitals, aged care, shops and factories — is in. The Department also notes that the Regulations “are currently under review as part of the Public Health Act 2016 regulatory review program”, so treat the page as live rather than settled.
What does a monthly round actually involve?
One attendance per site. We inspect each tower and write down what we found — basin condition, fill pack, drift eliminator, strainer, the state of the makeup and bleed. We draw a representative cooling-water sample from each tower and, on warm-water systems, from every point on the written sampling plan. The samples go to the laboratory the same day. When the report issues, you get the laboratory’s document plus a covering note saying what it means and what we did about it.
The Department’s wording for the two obligations we are meeting: “ensure cooling towers are inspected at least monthly as part of a regular maintenance program and cleaned when necessary” and “take a representative sample of cooling water at least once a month when the system is in use and test for legionella”.
What happens above 10 cfu/mL?
The Department lists the two counts at which you act:
“initiate control strategies when:”
- “legionella is detected >10 cfu/ml”
- “heterotrophic microorganisms is detected>100 000 cfu/ml”
Department of Health WA, same page. Reproduced exactly.
In practice: we ring you the hour the result lands, attend, re-sample, and record what was done and when. That is the $640 + GST response visit. The control strategy itself — dosing, shock treatment, a clean brought forward — belongs to your treatment contractor, and we do not quote on it.
Separately, and it is worth knowing before it happens: the Auditor General records that “Legionnaires’ disease is an urgently notifiable disease and must be reported to the WA Chief Health Officer within 24 hours of confirmation.” That is about a human case, not a water result.
Who is actually responsible — us or you?
You, and a person you name. The Department is direct about it:
“It is important that the owner of a building ensures a competent person who has had appropriate training or practical experience (or both) is responsible for the management and maintenance of cooling towers to ensure compliance with the Regulations.”
Department of Health WA, same page.
We are a contractor doing the inspecting, sampling and cleaning, and we write ourselves into the register as exactly that. We will also tell you in writing who we think the competent person on your site is, because in our experience nobody has ever been told it is them.
How fast do results come back?
The laboratory report reaches you the day it reaches us, forwarded whole. Culture takes days, not hours, so the honest answer is that we tell you at the time of sampling which date to expect it, and we ring rather than email if it is over threshold.
If a competitor promises you a same-day Legionella count, ask them which method they are using and whether the result they are quoting is a culture. It is a fair question and it has a real answer.
Do you sell water treatment chemicals?
No. Not directly, not as a reseller, and we take no margin on your dosing contract. We will read your treatment contractor’s program and tell you whether the sampling plan matches it, and that is the closest we get.
If your treatment contractor is already sampling monthly and giving you the laboratory reports, we will say so and decline the monthly round. That happens often enough that it is a card on this page rather than a line in the fine print.
Send us the site
Six fields. We come back with the schedule your building owes and a fixed monthly figure, or with the reason you do not need us.
Got it — that is enough to schedule a walk
This is a demonstration build, so nothing was sent and nobody will ring. On the real site this lands in the scheduler’s inbox and a walk is offered for the same week.
Hours
Monday to Friday, 6:30am to 4pm. Plant-room and roof access outside those hours by arrangement.
What happens next
We walk the plant, number the assets, and send the schedule with the monthly figure and both clean dates before you sign anything.