Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
Graham and Ashkahn have been around the proverbial float block. They’ve visited centers all over the world, consulted with them, and trained them on how to make their centers as good as possible. It’s tempting to ask them, specifically, what are some of the most common mistakes they’ve seen in this time.
Fortunately, someone did. The duo hash out exactly what they think of when it comes to both “common” and “expensive” construction mistakes for float centers, especially where those two points intersect on the float center Venn diagram of unhappiness.
Show Resources
FTS Product – Float Center Construction Packet – How to Build a Float Center
FTS Blog – Float On’s Halloween Spooktacular (horror stories about float center construction)
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: Yo, yo, yo, yo.
Ashkahn: Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. This is Ashkahn.
Graham: And I’m Graham.
Ashkahn: And we have a question from somebody that we are going to answer today on this podcast.
Graham: That is a really good description of what we do here.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: And that question is …
Ashkahn: Yeah, that was your cue.
Graham: Yeah, it wasn’t the best cue that I’ve taken. “What are the most common/expensive construction mistakes you’ve seen float centers make?”
Ashkahn: Yeah, there are some big ones that you can make.
Graham: Yeah, and we’ve talked about some of them here too, just kind of scattered across different episodes, so-
Ashkahn: Here’s a-
Graham: You should go back and listen to every episode and see if you can spot them.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: It’s kind of like a Where’s Waldo, Where’s Waldo kind of thing.
Ashkahn: All right, let’s do this thing.
Graham: Okay.
Ashkahn: Number one, the-
Graham: Carpet. Putting carpet in your float room.
Ashkahn: That’s not very common.
Graham: But it is expensive.
Ashkahn: It’s not even as expensive as other things-
Graham: It’s true.
Ashkahn: You just rip the carpet up. Number one, improperly sloped floors.
Graham: Super common.
Ashkahn: Super common and very difficult to fix/expensive.
Graham: Yeah, because you have to tear out your flooring, re-slope things.
Ashkahn: Yeah, I mean, it’s just crazy, and it’s just hard. It’s just hard. You have all these floor drains in your room and they all need to have slopes going down to them, and it’s a very small room, and you know, you don’t have this crazy elite concrete guy because you have a relatively small project compared to other concrete projects in the world.
Graham: I’d say that’s actually what makes it the most, one of the most common. A lot of people try to slope their floors. We’ve seen so many centers that they’ve made an attempt to slope their floors and what’s happens is half of the slope works and half just dumps the water out their door, or does something equally as awful, you know?
Ashkahn: Or just like a pool, as soon as you get like a little bit of puddling somewhere, it means you have to clean that spot up every single time, forever. Like, every single transition, you need to have to be like, “Okay, gotta go get this puddle spot.” That’s why it’s so annoying. Like, little tiny mistakes that lead to something where the water doesn’t go down the drain well is like, continuous ongoing work for you and your staff for the rest of the time that you have that there.
Graham: Which is expensive in staffing cost and then also expensive to fix for something relatively little. You’re like, “Wow, I wish this room drained better,” and it’s like $40,000 to go in and like actually correct it for all of your rooms, you know?
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: It’s insane. So yeah, that’s a really good one. I would say-
Ashkahn: Yeah, number two.
Graham: Yeah number two, was ceramic tile and cementitious grout, I would say is hugely expensive, right?
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: Because you need to use certain types of tile and grout for it not to be destroyed by salt water. That’s going to be, usually porcelain tile and epoxy grout. That’s not obvious necessarily if you’ve not worked in this kind of corrosive setting before. Even in wet environments they’ll use non-porcelain tile because having the non epoxy grout, because having water soak in and then be able to evaporate is actually part of how a lot of tile rooms work and function. But in this case, they can’t be porous because salt water will wreak havoc on them.
Using them not only means that you have to go back and redo all of your tile and all of your grout when it starts decaying, and cracking, and stuff like that, but you’re likely to have water damage on all of the soundproofing and the expensive work that you did behind that tile.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: So likely tearing out all of yours soundproofing or at least a layer of it.
Ashkahn: Big trouble. Big trouble.
Graham: You might have mold back there in which case you need to do mold remediation as well. Yeah, so improperly sealing your walls and waterproofing in general, but I’d say within that is like a main category, is just using the wrong kind of tile.
Ashkahn: Yeah, and grout.
Graham: Yeah. Number three.
Ashkahn: Number three. Number three. Not having enough space to get your float tanks in and out of the room they’re supposed to go into.
Graham: Oh, good one. Yeah.
Ashkahn: Super common. So many stories out there of people building beautiful, nice, soundproofed, waterproofed walls, and then realizing their float tank’s too big. It doesn’t turn quite right because the hallway’s too narrow, or you’re just not quite making it up or down a staircase, or it’s not getting through the doorway, or for whatever reason, you now have to cut out a chunk of beautiful, thick, soundproof, expensive, waterproof wall, to be able to get a float tank in.
And any time you’d ever want to get that float tank out of the room, which doesn’t happen that often but it does happen, now it’s build into the room. You have to cut that same wall out. Huge trouble, super common.
Graham: Yeah, it’s a good one. That is a good one. We see it happen so often.
Ashkahn: Number four?
Graham: Number four.
Ashkahn: Number four.
Graham: Four-alido. Quattro. I would say extending your soundproofing all the way to the ceiling, or sorry, to the ceiling but not to the roof.
Ashkahn: Right.
Graham: So not extending your soundproofing past your ceiling, all the way to the roof or the next story.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: Because you’ve just built these nice soundproof walls, you’ve surrounded your float tank with them, your ceiling is finished, or it was finished before you did this. The time to do ceiling work is when there’s nothing else around for it to fall on, for you to have to kind of wedge little pieces up into the joists and stuff like that. If you don’t extend your sound proofing up past where your ceiling is so you actually have this kind of full barrier going all the way up to the next level of your building, then it means sound is just going to go right past all of your soundproofing. It’s just going to kind of hop over your wall. Like it follows the path of least resistance so it’s going to go through your thin ceiling, over the top of your wall, and back through a thin ceiling, right into your float room. It’s kind of all of this money wasted on the soundproofing that you did build because you’re not achieving near what it’s capable of if you’d just raised it up a little higher.
Ashkahn: Raise the roof.
Graham: You gotta the raise the roof.
Ashkahn: At least raise the walls.
Graham: The other expensive part is it’s not cheap to go back and replace that. To go in you either have to decide yeah, how you’re going to tackle this. Are you going to cut a thin slice of ceiling out on either side and then wedge little pieces in which is what we did at Float On, and was a very long process, and tedious, and hands still kind of hurt from thinking about doing that. Or, are you going to, yeah, tear out a bigger portion of the wall so it’s easier to extend back up? But then you just wasted a ton of money and resources building and finishing this wall that you’re now tearing out in little bits so you can extend it higher. So yeah, getting that right from the beginning is-
Ashkahn: Big trouble.
Graham: Another big one. Number five?
Ashkahn: Number five.
Graham: Number five.
Ashkahn: Number five. Not having float tanks. How many people build these beautiful float centers and then they just don’t put any float tanks in there?
Graham: Get out of here.
Ashkahn: And it’s like, what are your customers going to float in? You know? It’s crazy. Super common.
Graham: All right, number six? Do you actually have a number five over there?
Ashkahn: No, that’s it. I think those are the only problems that I think can happen.
Graham: I’ll say another one for soundproofing that’s common but not entirely expensive to fix is, getting unnecessary vibration into your float tank. You either set up the float tank so that it’s touching the wall or it’s not touching a wall, but it’s one that’s built in like a cabin style, like an ocean float room or something. When you build it in, it’s just those wooden pieces that you’re using as the mounts for the kind of outside finishing are just right up against the wall, it’s drilled into a wall. The base is just touching the floor. These are all weak points where despite all of your soundproofing, vibration is one of the hardest things to block out which is why it’s so important to completely isolate your float tank from anything else.
You know, having a vibration isolation system down underneath it where you use vibration isolation pads with a little stand on top of it. Making sure that it’s not coming into rigid contact with the walls. Making sure that even for its pump system, that the pump system is up on vibration isolation pads and there’s just no way of sound to travel through the ground, or the walls, into the float tank without some kind of disjointed semi air gap going on there. That one’s not expensive to fix, but it is really common, and it’s expensive in the sense that you’ve invested a lot in soundproofing. You’re not making like 50% out of the use to it, just because you didn’t go that extra 10% and make sure that everything’s actually isolated from vibration.
Ashkahn: Yeah. So there you go, six top reasons that six common mistakes that-
Graham: Call it five and a half. Yeah.
Ashkahn: Yeah, your last one is kind of a half one. If you guys have other questions that we can answer in list form like this, then go over to floattanksolutions.com/podcast and type them in, and you may just hear it. You may just hear us talking about it.
Graham: All right, thanks everybody.
Ashkahn: Bye.
Recent Podcast Episodes
Should I Wire my Float Tanks into the Wall? – DSP 265
Ashkahn is currently recovering from his talk and the after-party last night, but Jake and Graham have gracefully taken the time to answer a construction question again today.
On the docket today is a question about wiring a float tank directly into the wall. Graham and Jake provide an overview of why some people may prefer this (it’s much easier to keep waterproof, e.g.), and why at Float On they use the twist lock for their outlets and how to properly utilize them.
Can I Keep My Old Ceiling With My Buildout? – DSP 264
Hopefully everyone had a lovely time at the Friday Activities and the after-party.
Ashkahn is still busy running the conference, but Graham and Jake have stepped in to talk about construction!
Today the guys talk about keeping a drop ceiling or T-bar ceiling in an existing space that you’re converting to a float center. The short answer is don’t keep it, as it can cause problems, but the guys do have some workarounds if your landlord is opposed to changing the ceiling.
What to Expect When Expanding from 1 to 3 Tanks? – DSP 263
Ashkahn is busy preparing for everything that happens tonight and tomorrow for the Conference, but that doesn’t mean Daily Solutions will stop being daily.
Graham and Jake talk construction and what to expect when you’re expecting… a giant expansion for your float center. What’s it look like when you go from one tank to three? How do the demands change? What needs to be put in place to make sure that you’re not hitting snags?
Fortunately, these guys know the score and are happy to share.
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Today they’re talking about floor drains. What to consider for drains and how they might pair with different types of flooring. Given the hefty price tag for these more advanced drains, having as much research before making a decision on these is essential. Luckily, the guys have done the hard part already and identified a lot of things to consider.
How to Deal with Float Room Humidity – DSP 261
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Today, the guys are talking all about humidity and how to deal with it when constructing your float rooms. They talk about all the little nuances that you (or your contractor) might not think about when it comes to humidity and how soundproofing and regular airflow may not always go hand in hand.
Latest Blog Posts
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #24
Alberta is often called the Texas of Canada. Part large oil industry, part cattle country.
Don’t Mess With Alberta!
At the base of the Rocky Mountains, replete with an Olympic Stadium, Calgary is a world-class destination for winter sports. The float community developed here similarly to Edmonton – there wasn’t anything nearby except for one or two residential float tanks, and then, in a short period of time, several centers opened all at once. Instead of competing, they’ve decided to work together and have developed one of the tightest knit float communities we’ve seen. They even have monthly Float Dinners, much like we do with the float centers in Portland. They don’t keep meeting minutes, so it’s hard to determine what they talk about at these dinners; my guess would be salt, the effects of salt on various substances, and how salty salt damage can make someone salty.
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #23
After Montana, we blazed our way back into Canada. The drive was long, but the scenery was beautiful. We followed the Rockies north, driving up to Edmonton. It’s a bit of a detour but, there are so many float centers in Edmonton, it seemed crazy not to stop by.
The city itself is primarily made up of workers from the oil fields – high risk, high income jobs that fuel the economy. At least until recently. Our visit was right in the middle of the Fort McMurray wildfire which has displaced a lot of the workforce, forcing 100,000 people to leave their homes. Many came to Edmonton, being the nearest metropolitan area to Fort McMurray. Some already split their time between the two cities, living in Edmonton and traveling to Fort McMurray for weeks or months at a time for work.
It’s understood that, in economic hardship, luxury commodities are typically the first thing people cut back on. Surprisingly, this doesn’t seem to be the case for floating. In fact, more people seem to be trying it to help alleviate the stress, many centers even offering free or discounted services to those displaced in an effort to help in a small way.
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #22
We’ve got two more stops in Colorado Springs before heading west. It’s a town known for its military base and long history of weapons testing. With such a large military presence, it comes as no surprise that the float center owners here are veterans, themselves.
After that, we shoot across to Salt Lake City. Utah is filled with gorgeous sights, from breathtaking lakes to stunning painted hills. With an international landmark famous for its effects on buoyancy, Salt Lake City should be pretty familiar with the concept of floating. With five different float centers, and the manufacturer of the Zen Tent out there, there could be some cause and effect.
After that, we head up into Idaho and Montana to close out the Central United States portion of our Tour. We’ll follow the Rocky Mountains north, taking in the scenery along the way.
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #21
Denver has been home to a vibrant float community for a long time. Some of the earliest commercial centers that started up in the ‘70s and ‘80s were out here. 30 years is a long time, and most of the old centers aren’t around anymore, but there’s a conscious community that has been floating since the old days and they love how much the industry has evolved and grown.
