Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
How do people float in float tanks? With salt, of course! Salt water is denser than regular water, so it can hold more weight.
But not all salt is made the same. Find out about what salt to use in your float tanks, how it’s made, and the different options out there for float tanks (plus which salts count as “delicious”) in this episode of the Daily Solutions Podcast.
Show Resources
FTS Blog – Getting To Know Your Epsom Salt
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: Okay, so today’s question is, what’s the difference between sea salt and float salt. And what the heck is dead sea salt?
Ashkahn: Okay. Interesting. Well I’m gonna go ahead and separate these into the delicious and not delicious categories.
Graham: That’s pretty much how he separates everything in our lives.
Ashkahn: Yeah. That kind of the base one classification … that I go into here. So, if you try to eat float salt, it’s not delicious. That’s the first thing you should really know. Does not taste good. You’ll probably only do it once, and then realize that you never want that in your mouth ever again.
Graham: And dead sea salt too, is also-
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: -in the not delicious category.
Ashkahn: Yeah, that’s not delicious. However … Are we talking about, what was the other thing?
Graham: Sea salt. Regular sea salt. Live sea salt.
Ashkahn: Yeah. Is very delicious. I-
Graham: Especially out of ocean water.
Ashkahn: Yeah, like sometimes I would just take scoops of ocean water and sprinkle it over my breakfast.
Graham: Over your cereal.
Ashkahn: Yeah. Yes. And so it’s because the basic chemical composition of these things is different. Right, they’re not actually … Salts are something that forms that’s a structure of molecules, that forms into this kind of crystal and lattice. But, the molecules that are going into them can be completely different right. You can have chlorine salts as well. In a sense.
Graham: Like, sodium chloride chlorine salts? Like table salt?
Ashkahn: Right, so that’s the first one right, table salt is sodium chloride.
And that again, delicious category. So the sea salt when … Is basically a completely different chemical than what is in the float tank, which is magnesium sulfate. So those are the most specific of these. The dead sea salt is, as far as I know, like a mix of things.
Graham: Right, yeah. So it’s mostly I think, sodium chloride.
And then with just a bunch of other minerals and things that have kind of accumulated and mixed in.
Ashkahn: So, it’s multiple, it’s different percentages of different things. Of different types of salt and I don’t really know much more about the actual breakdown of dead sea salt than that.
Graham: Yeah, nor do I, but for the sake of this conversation, I think that the main question really is about what makes our float tank salt … Why can’t someone just buy a bunch of salt from the store and pour it into a float tank.
Ashkahn: Well, you can. Actually you can buy a bunch of salt from the store and pour it into a float tank.
Graham: We’ve been doing it wrong this entire time?
Ashkahn: Yeah, yeah, and in fact it’d be cheaper. Like I’ve seen 50 pound bags of sodium chloride at Costco for like $10 or something.
And a little piece of float history, that’s actually how it started with float tanks. I mean there was many, many, years of just water, and then when they first-
Graham: So no salt?
Ashkahn: No salt. Zero salt, and when they first started introducing salt into it, in an attempt to make the water more buoyant, they started with sodium chloride. Table salt. And got it up to that kind of same level of saturation and basically just found that it’s … If you had any sort of small cut or abrasion or something like that, it would sting and it just would not stop stinging. And as much as it did help and make you float, it was really uncomfortable to actually be in.
Graham: So that’s essentially the main reason for not doing that. That’s why even if you could get it cheaper, you don’t just wanna go down to the store and use table salt, is because it’s way harsher on people. And those stings are from cuts that you have, which you can really still feel in a float tank very much. Don’t really go away with the table salt, nearly as much. So that’s why people don’t do that.
Ashkahn: The Epsom salt on the other hand, still stings like your not gonna get away from that. But it seems to only sting for a few minutes, maybe two, three, four minutes and then after that it kinda fades away and you’re good to go. So it’s much less intense and you can actually still float as long as you’re willing to. Either being a little bit uncomfortable for a few minutes, or put, if it’s a small enough little scrape or something, some of that petroleum jelly on it and make a little force field around it. And because there’s health benefits associated with the dead sea and floating in it and that sort of has its own lore going along with it …
Just to loop back around to the dead sea salts as well. I think there’s this, “why can’t I fill my float tank with dead sea salt,” is that exact same reason as table salt. Which is, it’s also mainly sodium chloride. It’s also gonna be way harsher on your skin. Just not as pleasant an experience. That said, I do know some float tank centers who sprinkle dead sea salt into their float tanks alongside it. So maybe 10% dead sea salts and the rest, 90% of the salt being magnesium sulfate.
Graham: Yeah, even 10% is much higher than I normally hear. I often hear of people put in like, even just a few cups in or-
Ashkahn: A scoop.
Graham: Yeah.
Ashkahn: Yeah, so, that’s also an option. We never played around with it. So I have no idea how that actually turns out functionally. But I kind of can imagine that it actually makes that much of a difference on the perception at least or the abrasion from having it in there.
Graham: Yeah, I would be surprised if you could feel a difference on cuts on your body or anything like that. I dunno if there are actual health benefits or not. I think we’re trying to figure out how much you absorb stuff like that through your skin. So that’s a bit of an unknown.
Ashkahn: Yeah, for any of these two. Eating salt, floating in salt, floating in dead sea salt.
Graham: Well eating salt … I think we know.
Ashkahn: It’s good for you. We know it gets in but, I mean, it’s still like I feel like every year there’s a different argument back about how beneficial or not salt is.
Graham: Yeah, that’s true.
Ashkahn: So, just like the medical world where, in a huge quandary about the benefits of certain things.
Graham: Yeah.
Ashkahn: All right, so hopefully that answered your question. And we’ll be here same time tomorrow so, tune back in. Thanks guys.
Graham: Later.
Recent Podcast Episodes
Having a walkthrough script for float center staff – DSP 140
How specific do you want to get when walking a customer through a float for the first time? Everyone is gonna have a different answer to this, but it’s important to have consistency when running a business. A lot of places do video walkthroughs, but that runs the risk of losing that personal touch.
Graham and Ashkahn share a little Float On philosophy about how they instruct staff to introduce the practice of floating as well as some helpful tips for making your intro speech grow and evolve over time.
Special tools for cleaning your float center – DSP 139
There are so many tiny particular things that go into keeping a float center clean that are really specific to this industry. For example, mopping at the end of the night can be a chore because using a typical mop bucket will just mean spreading salt water everywhere.
Graham and Ashkahn share some of their favorite convenient products that they have found helpful running Float On that they totally recommend for everyone else as well.
Causes for drifting to the side of float tank – DSP 138
Okay, so this is something that happens a lot, and it can seem like a small thing, but it can be a little confusing when it keeps happening. What’s going on when you float in the same tank and keep drifting to one side? How does that happen? And why is it so consistent? Graham and Ashkahn know what the deal is here and drop some knowledge here on this topic.
Cause and Solutions for a Crystallized Pump – DSP 137
This is a terrifying experience the first time it happens in a float center. A pump will seize, it’s full of salt and there just seems like there’s nothing you can do about it. Fortunately, this is one of those things that happens to pretty much everyone and it’s not too difficult to take care of.
Graham and Ashkahn dive into what causes a pump to seize as well as how to fix it. It’s all here. Right now. Check it.
What social media networks to use? – DSP 136
Social media is everywhere. There are entire libraries of books written on its effectiveness as a tool for marketing for small and large businesses alike. There’s so much, in fact, that it can seem impossible to find a good place to even start.
Graham and Ashkahn break down this subject and provide some simple, straight forward solutions based on their own experiences and observations within the industry.
Latest Blog Posts
Think Big and Start Small When Planning a Float Center
Deciding on how many tanks to have is a big question for anyone starting a float center. Answering that question can depend on factors ranging from the philosophical to the inescapably practical. It really depends on what you want out of a float center. If your vision...
Start Small or Launch Big
I think everyone should do what feels right for them. But I have a strong preference for slow. People who are able to start small have such an advantage over someone who has to learn everything so fast. We happened to start with one and then two tanks in our home for...
Would You Like a Cup of Tea?
This post is a carry over from our February topic. I live in a world of duality. My mind is always busy, with the past or the future, or involved in some project in am immersed in. It is evaluating and trying to figure things out. What did that mean, how can I...
Hanging Out – Post Float Experience
This post is a carry over from our February topic. I like to think of our float center’s lobby as a sort of no-man’s-land. It sits between the nothingness of the float tank and the everythingness of the outside world. A place where people can attempt to merge these...
