How to reduce salt dust from ending up everywhere – DSP 105

Today brings a curious question about a float center owner who’s trying to deal with salt dust everywhere, including in their tool room. While salt does get everywhere, it can’t evaporate like water can and doesn’t travel through the air very well.

Graham and Ashkahn try their best to answer it and try to figure out what might be causing it, having not experienced something like that themselves at Float On. If any float centers out there have experienced this phenomenon and have any insights, send it our way!

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Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)

Graham: Today’s question is, “What about the phenomena of evaporation resulting in salt residue everywhere? Anyone else have this? Do you have to clean out the HVAC system? We found that some of the tools rust just from the salt in the air. Just from the salt in the air.”

Ashkahn: Just from the salt in the tools, like in their tool room?

Graham: Yeah, it seems like a long way for-

Ashkahn: This is-

Graham: … salt air to travel.

Ashkahn: So, like, this doesn’t really happen to us. Like, I don’t notice in our float rooms, like, salt building up on the ceilings or in the HVAC vents or-

Graham: No, except from people doing the Herbal Essences kind of hair flip when they get out of a float tank. We really don’t find salt just kind of coating things, as though it had been aerated or anything like that.

Ashkahn: Yeah, it’s not like a powder or salt or, yeah. Even on the ceilings of the float tanks, there’s not like a fine dusting of salt or anything.

Graham: Yeah.

Ashkahn: But I guess it is like, it can be very humid, too, in there.

Graham: Yeah, I mean. So I see, you know, when I’ve heard of people that experience rust problems or issues with HVAC vents and things like that, it almost always in talking to them and working through things, ends up being more related to the moisture in the air than actually having salts in the air that’s getting in there. And if the HVAC installers didn’t prepare for the sheer volume of humidity that your float tanks can crank out, then yeah, you can totally hit problems in those vents and in the system as a whole.

Ashkahn: That’s good. I would ask these people that question. Like, are you-

Graham: Are you sure it’s salt or could it be-

Ashkahn: Are you actually seeing salt. ‘Cause if it’s salt, you’d see salt building up on things.

Graham: They see the salt residue everywhere is a direct quote from the question.

Ashkahn: Salt residue everywhere, that’s so strange.

Graham: I mean, so, I can think of a couple things. And from our consulting, I’ve probably heard of things like this a couple times. But, I mean, much more I hear people who are surprised that they don’t see salt getting everywhere.

Ashkahn: Right.

Graham: You know, they expect it to be like the ocean.

Ashkahn: Right.

Graham: Where the ocean is so turbulent, and it’s just kicking up all of these waves and this water.

Ashkahn: Some mist, a sea mist.

Graham: If you drive a car anywhere near the ocean, you just know your car has to be coated or it’s going to rust out from the bottom, and every metal part is going … So, I think people picture that with a float tank center, and are surprised when they open to find that’s actually not the case, which again in Float On, for us, it certainly has not been. So, the couple things I can think of are, if you have something, even like a pinhole leak in your filtration system, there’s a chance that you can be kind of spraying a really fine salt spray around. It’s almost like installer error or something going wrong with the pump system.

Ashkahn: Yeah. Like, I feel like even without any noticeable leaks, I’ve never seen a filtration system that doesn’t just kind of end up getting kind of salty.

Graham: Sure. And most of the time it’s from leaks, but sometimes there is kind of like a fine …

Ashkahn: Like a fine, fine mist of-

Graham: And I guess the most I’ve seen for a fine dust, is a couple of our tanks have …

Ashkahn: Right.

Graham: There is something about their filtration system… but only around the pump area leave this kind of residue.  So, I wonder what could go wrong that would just sort of do that same vaporization.

Ashkahn: Get it everywhere?

Graham: Or really spread that to your work. All the way to where your tools are?

Ashkahn: Well, it’s so … Here’s the thing though. I feel like we have had the rusting issue, like our door hinges have … we’ve had to replace those with stainless steel door hinges.

Graham: Right, and yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Ashkahn: So, that’s … but there was no coating of salt on those things like there was or is in our pump areas, and under the pump boxes. So, it leads me to believe what you were saying, that it’s a moisture thing, not a salt thing, right?

Graham: Or that some … whenever you’re in a float room, there’s a chance again, someone’s just shaking out like a dog and getting salt everywhere. They put their salty hands on the-

Ashkahn: Or this is the door hinges of our front door I’m talking about.

Graham: Oh, I see. I thought you meant of the float room doors.

Ashkahn: So, that’s beyond like Herbal Essence range. We’re talking like lobby, front door door hinges, we needed to replace those things, too.

Graham: I was trying to picture situations where people go and shake off specifically near door hinges. I think I’ll concede this point. I think you win this one, yeah.

Ashkahn: But it is, you know, at times unbelievably humid in our lobby.

Graham: Oh yeah, I mean, even with three different dehumidifiers in our lobby, it still gets up to 60%, 70% humidity during those transitions.

Ashkahn: And again, what I see when I saw those door hinges was not what I see when I lift up a pump cover and see like a fine coating of salt on some of the equipment.

Graham: Yeah, so we don’t know. We’re not sure what’s going on with your fine powder, but it is not a common phenomenon.

Ashkahn: No.

Graham: There may very well be other float centers out there. If you have this, definitely write in and let us know if you have theories about it or what tanks you’re using or what your setup is. But again, having talked to a lot of people that don’t have this problem, I would say it’s more the exception than something that you really need to be aware of going into this.

Ashkahn: Definitely.

Graham: So, thanks for the question, keeping us on our toes.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: And yeah, if you have more questions you want to try to stump us with, go to floattanksolutions.com/podcast

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