Concerns for running pumps with floaters in tanks – DSP 21

In today’s Daily Solutions Podcast, Graham & Ashkahn dole out some advice on (not) running pumps when floaters are in your tanks.

The best case scenario if a pump goes on with someone still in it — their float is ruined. Worst case scenario? Their hair could get stuck in the filter or worse.

In our risk-averse society, these disaster scenarios compel us to set up safeguards to make sure they never happen. At Float On, we make it a point to never run a tank when a floater is still in it.

As they say, “Plan for the worst, hope for theta waves.”

FTS Blog — Health Departments and How to Get Approved

Virginia Graeme Baker Pool & Spa Safety Act

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

Graham: Today’s question is, “I’ve heard different things about running the pump while someone is in the tank. Is it safe or not?”

Ashkahn: Oh boy. Okay, okay.

Graham: I’m just going to shoot from the hip here and say I have serious concerns about running the pump when someone is in the tank.

Ashkahn: We should kind of give some pretext here about this is very much like our opinion, I don’t know.

Like every float tank can be different and there are subtle things that you can do with the way that your filtration system’s set up, and the piping and all that, that can change the answer to this question.

Graham: Now I feel bad about shooting from the hip so quickly.

Ashkahn: Shooting from the hip is part of it. It’s part of the game.

Graham: All right, so Ashkahn’s totally right. There are huge disclaimers that come along with this conversation.

Ashkahn: Let’s just talk about why it could be a concern, right?

Graham: So one of the things that is true about float tanks that isn’t necessarily even true about pools and spas and things like that, is that the pump tends to be, in a lot of float tanks, very close to where the inlet is.

Ashkahn: So we’re basically concerned about someone’s hair getting caught in the pump, and that having a disastrous result.

Graham: And you might have heard of things like entrapment or the Virginia Graeme Baker Act, the GBA, and all that stuff is more-

Ashkahn: It’s the Virginia Graeme Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act, is the official title.

Graham: Sorry. The VGBAPNSA.

Ashkahn: VGBPASA.

Graham: So the deal with that though is the idea of getting trapped against a suction inlet, not that your hair is going to get actually entangled in the mechanical parts of a pump, which makes, I guess, the possibility of entrapment or of something going wrong in a float tank, again one that has the pump so close to where the inlet is, slightly terrifying.

Ashkahn: Yeah, because in pools they have their pumps often twenty, thirty, forty, a hundred feet away in piping between where the pump room is and where these kind of inlets are in the pool, so it’s just slightly different logic with float tank. You are floating horizontally in this water, your head’s usually somewhere right near these things, depending on which way you’re floating in the tank.

So it’s very unlikely, for this to happen would be statistically like pretty crazy, but the consequences are so huge, which is why it makes it kind of a nerve-racking thing to think about. Like were this to happen to someone, it would be pretty bad.

Graham: And I should say I know of absolutely no one who this has ever happened to.

Ashkahn: And you’d have to have like two-feet-long hair, and all this, everything would just have to go just right. But at the end of the day there is, I guess it still seems, like a possibility at least in certain float tanks or certain setups, et cetera, with all those disclaimers. Which is why it makes us nervous.

We try not to do it, not just try, like we have certain systems set up in our shop to allow us to not run the pump while somebody is in the float tank.

Graham: Yeah, and at least in ours, we’re in those setups where we do, we have pump systems that are very close to where the inlet is in the float tank, so there is that risk if someone did have a couple-of-foot long hair, that they could get it entangled into the pump system, and so we’d rather get someone into a float late than risk rushing the other person out by turning on the pump in the room and risking their hair getting entangled.

Ashkahn: For us that’s a general rule, we do not run the pumps while people are in the float tanks, and for the same reason we don’t have our float tank controls on automated schedules either, because we don’t want the pump to just always turn on five minutes after the music or whatever it is.

We want a human being to actively make the decision to turn the pump on every single time the pump runs, and that way they always know to make sure there’s nobody in the float tank and that they’re actually kind of in control of the situation.

Graham: So it definitely puts some restrictions on the schedule and we have to do things like pay attention to when showers are going on the rooms, which is usually our cue that someone’s out of the float tank, we use the shower going on.

And we actually have shower sensors now, since we’ve opened, installed in our rooms, that let us know when the different showers go on for our different rooms, so we can pay attention without being big creepers and just kind of listen in the hallway for the various showers to turn on after we hit the music.

Ashkahn: And that’s about enough confidence for me. I guess technically in some weird scenario, someone could turn the shower on and go like get back into the float tank, and lie back down. But at that point it just seems so improbable that it’s hard to justify making plans around that.

Graham: Yup, and the other place that you’ll hit this other than just me and Ashkahn being paranoid, is health departments talking to float tank centers and them being paranoid about this exact same thing. We’ve even talked to health departments that are afraid about someone hopping back in the tank after they’ve gotten out and showered.

For them, even having a shower indicator might not be enough of a protocol in order to protect someone, right? Sometimes they actually want more extreme measures like you have to visually see the person or know that they’re out of the tank.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: So not very common but that’s the level, and it’s the exact same reasons that we’re scared are the reasons that they get paranoid again, even about someone hopping back in to get their wedding ring out of the float tank or something like that.

Ashkahn: So yeah, you know, and a lot of float tanks, there’s maybe a concern, some with long piping or just kind of different setups this kind of same logic may not hold true, but it’s at least something to keep in mind and to realize that it might not just be that you’re disturbing someone in the float tank when you’re turning the pump on.

There may be a kind of serious risk there.

Graham: Yeah, I still feel bad about shooting from the hip at the beginning. Is there anything else that we need to say here? Disclaimers at the end that we need to get out as well?

Ashkahn: Hopefully this has just never happened and won’t be a problem.

Graham: And we’re just paranoid?

Ashkahn: Yeah. That’s the ideal world.

Graham: All right, there you have it guys.

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