The ideal time to change your float tank solution – New Years Episode – DSP 35

Every float center is going to have to tell their customers, at some point, how often they change out the water in their float tanks. What’s the right answer? Find out Graham and Ashkahn’s take in this informative episode.

FTS Blog – The Basics of Float Tank Sanitation

FTS Blog – Testing and Maintaining Float Tank Water Quality

FTS Product – Intro to Water Treatment Course (Free)

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

Graham: All right. Welcome again once more to the Daily Solutions podcast. I’m one half of your host, Graham.

Ashkahn: And I’m the other two thirds, Ashkahn.

Graham: We’re not very good at math, but we are great at answering questions. And today’s is, “Short of a known contamination incident, how do I know when it’s time to dump the tank and start with a fresh solution?”

Ashkahn: Okay. Let me think.

Graham: So, the old fresh solution with no contamination.

Ashkahn: The old swapperoo, the old drain and fill. All right, so-

Graham: So, let’s start with what we do.

Ashkahn: Well …

Graham: Okay, what? You want to start somewhere else? Fine, I’m not attached to it. I could start anywhere.

Ashkahn: Let’s start with a few things here, so there’s-

Graham: You can’t start with a few things, you can start with one thing.

Ashkahn: We’ll both talk at the same time. All right, so-

Graham: All right, I think that we should …

Ashkahn: Okay, so there’s a few things to consider with draining your solution. First of all …

Graham: How many firsts are you gonna have, man?

Ashkahn: Okay, okay. Let’s break this down. There’s really no good research in the float world-

Graham: I thought you were gonna say reason in draining-

Ashkahn: There’s really no good research in the float world that would lead you to have a specific number of days that you should drain your float tank. It’s not like any one’s-

Graham: Specifically number of floats.

Ashkahn: Yeah. so that’s the other thing is that, really … I would probably guess be based more on floats than on days, but you usually hear about it in terms of days. But either, regardless, like floats or days. No one has done a study that said, “Okay, we had this float tank, we tested it for this long, we drained it here, then we drained it there, and this is what we found, or that’s what we found.” So, if you’re hearing things from people in the float industry, including us, people are mostly guessing. Right? I mean, it’s a lot of like their assumption is based off of this, or that, or what feels right to them, or things. So just keep that in mind when you hear these numbers, and you’ll hear everything from once every six months is the lowest I hear. Then you hear a lot people say once every year, and then you hear some people say never.

Graham: Yeah, or every 10 years, or something.

Ashkahn: Yeah. All that is based on not … there’s no study you’re missing out there that breaks this down in a quantifiable way.

Graham: There’s actually two reasons that I would say to change your water, if there’s not an incident, or something like that. And the first is because you’re concerned about the water quality, your combined particles and stuff left behind that are too small for the filter to pick up. And you just want to start fresh and have this idea of cleanliness from the new water coming in. And the other reason is totally a marketing one, which is, it’s kind of nice to be able to say that you change out your water every so often because it’s a question you are going to get from a lot of your customers. I guess, for us, at least. That’s why the “never” option doesn’t feel as appealing. Never changing out our flow water means that I don’t … like, I have to say that to the customers coming in. “Oh, no. We never do it. It’s just the same that’s been in there from 10 years ago.” It feels like a weird thing to say.

Ashkahn: Right. And there’s something nice about … there’s still a lot of unanswered questions in the world of float sanitation, so it costs a little extra money to do something like draining it every year. But there’s something nice about just having one extra layer of protection, even if it’s maybe not doing anything, and it’s overkill, or something like that. It’s nice to be like, “Okay, well, just in case. Once a year we’ll drain this.”

Graham: It’s like, my insurance salesman always says, “You can’t put a price on peace of mind.”

Ashkahn: In this case you can. It costs about $500 for a float tank, but … The other thing to consider with this is there’s churn happening continuously in the float tank, so every week or so you’re adding in another inch of water, another, whatever, 50 pounds of salt. Something like that into each of these float tanks, and that’s a tenth, an eleventh, a twelfth, or so, of the volume of these float tanks that you’re adding in every single week. So you can use that logic to say, “Okay, well 12 weeks later I’ve replaced the full volume of liquid that was in here to begin with.”

Graham: But of course not, and it goes out proportionally.

Ashkahn: Right. So it doesn’t actually … There is a difference between that and totally draining and filling. The way I usually like to think about it is if I were to put a bunch of food coloring in, at the beginning, twelve weeks later they would still be food coloring in the solution, right? Because it mixes up every time you add more in there, so it’s not exactly the same principle. But it does help, adding that fresh stuff in does help. It’s not entirely just the same … literally the same liquid that’s been in there for 10 years or whatever. And then the the other piece of this that I would say is interesting to consider is looking at the pool and spa industry, and where that leads you. Because it’s kind of strange, which is that if you were to look at … if you were to say, “Okay, what does a hot tub do?” Commercial hot tubs are typically draining their water once a week?

Graham: Yeah.

Ashkahn: Sometimes more often. Real busy ones might even do it daily, and they’re basing it off of these levels of turbidity, and total dissolved solids, and stuff like that. These numbers that they take to figure out what the content of stuff, non water stuff, is in the water, and they replace it when those numbers get too high. And so if you try and just apply that same logic to float tanks it becomes the same thing. You would be replacing your float tank water once every few weeks, I think, based off of that logic.

Graham: Which sounds a little pricey.

Ashkahn: Yeah, it’s just extremely impractical, but it’s interesting to consider that that’s what the convention is in this, in some ways, analogous industry, or analogous device that is a like a hot tub. At the end of the day there’s a lot of variables to consider with this, and a lot of unknowns. And kind of where my mind comes to rest with all of this is, “Okay, so far we’ve got a pretty good track record with float tanks, right?” Let’s not, like … getting a bunch of people sick or anything coming through your float center. Honestly, you should probably be paying more attention to what the quality of the water in your float tank is. Your water should never look bad or smell bad. If you go in and it’s off colored, or it’s smelling weird, and it’s only been four months-

Graham: Even like a little bit. Yeah. Opaque or something like that. None of these are good signs. Yeah.

Ashkahn: Yeah. You wouldn’t look at that four months in and be, like, “Oh, I got eight more months before it’s the year point, and I gotta swap this out.” No, that’s wrong. There’s something going on, some part of your system’s not working correctly.

Graham: And I guess that’s a good point. That’s not necessarily an incident, or something specific happened, and there was a fecal accident, or something like that, but … Yeah, if anything is getting off about your water consider it on that same level of incident. That tank needs to be closed down to the public and you need to figure out what’s going on until the water is clear, and looks and smells right again.

Ashkahn: I would use those as your guiding star almost more than these specific numbers and stuff like that. I guess the other thing throw in is we’ve gotten our water tested at a lab at the year mark before we’ve drained it, and we haven’t found any levels of micro organisms in there.

Graham: Clearly, a year isn’t that threshold where everything is going to start going wrong at that point. In fact, for me, the year mark is more of an arbitrary marketing thing. A year is just a length of time that makes sense to human beings, and I feel like saying a year isn’t too long. People understand that this is expensive solution, we have these extensive filtration systems attached to it. So, yeah, I would see no problem operationally right now with pushing our tanks passed the year mark, but marketing wise I do like keeping that schedule.

Ashkahn: And we may find out more stuff in the future. There’s a chance that we’re wrong about this, and there is quantifiable information that, as we figure it out, could change what people assume is right and isn’t. The bacteriological tests-

Graham: You could have to change them every seven days.

Ashkahn: We could.

Graham: We don’t know.

Ashkahn: The bacteriological tests is part of it, what your filtration system … the components it has is a part of it. If you are using something like ozone that’s a more powerful oxidizer than hydrogen peroxide is, and that might lengthen the amount of time before you have these problems.

Or if you have a UV system and you have stuff building up in the water it might look clear, but the small particles could block the UV light from actually being able to properly work. So there’s things like that that are hard to tell visually, and hard to tell through even, necessarily, like micro organism testing and stuff like that. There is quantifiable stuff, we just don’t exactly have all those pieces of the puzzle put together yet, but we might, as time goes on, get more clarification on this and find out there is a more specific number of floats that you would be recommending to change your water out in. But even that would probably differ based on your filtration system, and the tank, and everything.

Graham: And I’ll say that there’s a couple nice things about just being able to drain it anyway, regardless of how often you do it, or anything like that. With a reservoir system tank where you actually are fully draining the water and stuff like that this is a little less important. But on the ones where your tank is just sort of one body with a recirculating pump then when you drain your tank you actually get to get in there and clean everything, and actually wipe down the bottom, and sort of put bleach in there, and do this heavier duty disinfection on the tub.

And there’s the idea that even with a reservoir tank where you are fully draining things out when you replace the water, empty it, you get to run things through those pipes and actually do a deep clean of your holding tanks and of the pipes, and everything like that, too. There’s something nice about just … it’s like doing a routine checkup at the doctor, or getting to get your teeth cleaned. There is something nice about being able to do this really extensive deep clean with bleach and these hardcore chemicals that you can’t normally put in float tanks. Yeah, just wanted to toss that out there as another benefit of getting to break things in.

Ashkahn: Yeah, that’s, as for as we know, the general information out there, and as you can see, the picture is not fully formed, and we’ll find out more as more research gets done.

Graham: All right, thanks for the question, and if you have more go to floattanksolutions.com/podcast and shoot them our way.

Ashkahn: Talk to you later.

Graham: Bye everyone.

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