Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
Construction and buildout are likely going to be some of the largest expenses for any float center. Possibly even more than the float tanks themselves in some situations. Most float center owners aren’t millionaires, and when faced with these large expenditures, it can be difficult to decide what to cut to keep your costs down. Doing your own construction can be an effective way to go about that, but with so much technical work needed to go into building a float center, is that really the right thing to do?
Graham and Ashkahn lay down some knowledge on this, having both worked on a lot of their buildout themselves initially, as well as hired out workers for repairs and upgrades.
Show Resources
FTS Product – Construction Packet
FTS Blog – Location Checklist
FTS Blog – Gut Your Space Before Construction
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: And today’s question is, “I’m pretty handy and have worked as a general contractor in the past. What parts of building a float center do I need to hire professionals for?” This is a little bit tricky.
Ashkahn: Probably a lot of it still.
Graham: Yeah, it’s a little bit of a tricky question and it’s another one of those, “the more work you decide to do yourself, certainly the more at risk you’re putting everything.”
Ashkahn: And the work’s not easy work, you know. It’s not like very simple construction that you’re trying to do to get a float center up and running. I mean, of course, there’s certain legal things. Like, you probably can’t unless you have a plumber’s license and electrician’s license and things like that.
Graham: Certified HVAC installer for any kind of mechanical permitting work you need to pull.
Ashkahn: So, I mean, you probably can act as a general contractor. Like if you think you have the general knowledge and stuff like that. And just having an eye for construction is a huge help in and of itself.
Graham: Yeah, I would almost say the best thing about you being a contractor in the past, is you probably have some good connections in your area if you’re a contractor in your city. You know, if your license is still valid, then that gives you some nice access to contractor supply rates, without needing to go through your contractors. There’s certain benefits to it, even if you’re doing none of the labor yourself. And again, the biggest one in my mind is being able to vet out other people and their work is an awesome resource to have at your disposal as a result of previous work and training.
Ashkahn: I mean the main stuff that you would be able to do yourself, in a construction site, would be the framing and the drywall and all that sort of stuff. The stuff that doesn’t require a certification for and even that gets a little bit tricky. I mean even just slapping up drywall is not quite as easy in a float center. Like, you’re dealing with a lot more expensive pieces of sheetrock than you would be otherwise, if you’re dealing with the soundproof sheetrock and so you just want to be wiser about how you’re cutting it and not screwing things up is one part of it.
Graham: Yeah, I guess there’s a good lesson here in that even if you’re going with … if you personally don’t have contracting experience, if you’re hiring contractors anything like that, just know that the work going into a float tank center is probably really different than work that contractor has done in the past. Again, whether it’s you or someone else. You probably haven’t gone and installed totally soundproof assemblies with waterproofing or anything like that. And if you have worked on home theaters, if you’ve worked on professionals studios, if you’ve worked on pools or even on boats or something like that, all of that’s really good experience. It’s a little more relevant, just than your basic residential contracting experience.
Ashkahn: But, yeah, you know, it becomes important. You want someone who can put up sheetrock with very, very small gaps between the pieces. That’s going to pay off, in terms of your sound proofing as opposed to, maybe you’re not quite as good as that and you’re leaving bigger gaps. The nice thing is if it’s you, you care a lot.
Graham: Yeah.
Ashkahn: Which is definitely a big help. It’s very important to you that it gets done right, so if you’re doing it yourself, you have that going for you. But even in something that you might think is a very common thing to be able to do yourself, like sheetrock, there are some benefits that come from paying someone who can actually do a good job of getting pieces like really well and nicely cut and tight together.
Graham: And there’s another part of this too, which is warranties. Right? The more of the work that’s being done by other people. Especially even things like putting up your waterproofing and stuff like that, which maybe you could do yourself, but now if your waterproofing fails, do you want that all to be on you and you can’t really claim a warranty for the installation or anything like that. Just having someone else who’s on the line to be the one to come in and fix something or pay the money if something goes wrong can be a reason in itself to – even if you possess the qualifications – to not just do things yourself.
Ashkahn: Yep. So I guess I’d say you’re in a good position to be your own general contractor. ‘Cause it’s one of the things that there’s not really a general contractor specializing in float tank centers.
Graham: Right.
Ashkahn: There’s not like that kind of expertise that you’re missing out on. So hopefully if you have good connections from being a contractor before, that’d be the real main benefit you’d get from having another person be your general contractor is those connections.
Graham: And I should just put in a little aside, that in order to be a general contractor, you either need to be in a state where, as the owner of your business, that just allows you to serve as general contractor, which some places do, or you need to still have your contractor license active, of course. But if you were a contractor, you already know that. Hopefully.
Ashkahn: So that seems fine to me and probably a benefit to you, that you can act as your own general contractor and then beyond that, I’d probably, if you can, find good people to do the specific parts of the work.
Graham: Yeah, to do the water proofing. To do the … well, again, any licensed work, your hands are kind of tied. Concrete sloping, things like that, you want consumate professionals.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: Unless you personally have tons of experience in concrete work, especially interior concrete work. That’s probably not one of the things you want to do yourself.
Ashkahn: Yeah, that’s real hard. Getting the slopes right from multiple drains from a single room, all that sort of stuff.
Graham: All of this too is coming from us having done a ton of construction ourselves and knowing how hard it is and how hard it is to get things right. And when you’re opening too, there’s so much to do that’s not construction. From the marketing to starting to figure out who you’re going to bring on for early employees and training them and everything. If you’re being called in all these different directions, at some point you’re probably going to drop the ball on one of them. So, a realistic assessment of your time and how many business partners you have is definitely necessary as well.
Ashkahn: I will say, having this kind of construction knowledge will be super handy after the point that you’re opening and when there’s little stuff that needs to be fixed and upkeep and ongoing maintenance and all that sort of stuff, all this is going to come in super, super handy.
Graham: Yeah, again, I said it earlier, but I would view it almost as a superpower for being able to vet other things and all the benefits you get from being experienced in this realm and consider, not necessarily doing the bulk of the work yourself. Maybe a lot of the benefits you get from your past experience are more fringe benefits and come from that side of things.
Ashkahn: Cool. I think that’s good.
Graham: I feel good.
Ashkahn: If you guys have more questions for us, you can go to floattanksolutions.com/podcast and use your fingers to type them on in there.
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Latest Blog Posts
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #28
Home sweet home! After so many months on the road, it was strange being back here in Portland. We were exhausted, excited, and a little travel weary. The first night back, I slept in my own bed for the first time in three months and the world just melted away.
Having travelled across the United States, I’m reminded of how insular Portland is. We are aggressively fixated on keeping things local. Local beer, ketchup, bikes, pet food, pillows, phone cases… it’s part of our charm. We want to reward people for living here and being a part of the community. It’s so pervasive that, after living here for so long, I kind of forgot that Secret Aardvark hot-sauce isn’t available everywhere, and that most cities don’t even recycle, let alone compost.
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #27
Our northern neighbor – a sister city, of sorts – Seattle is the largest metropolitan area in the Pacific Northwest. It’s the land of Microsoft and Kurt Cobain, and the culture here embraces both simultaneously. It’s tech business professional in the front and rock n’ roll grunge in the back. This blend creates a perfect storm of high energy business life and high energy nightlife, making relaxation a valuable commodity. Floating helps fill the void left by nightmarish traffic and overcrowded restaurants.
Given that it’s so close to home, the float centers in Seattle are a lot more familiar to us. Our visits here were more like a high school reunion than they were like the first day of school. During some of our visits, we were picking up conversations right where we left them.
The Float Tour Blog Issue #26
Vancouver is the largest metropolitan area in Canada, and third largest on the West Coast. It’s a major hub for international trade, with one of the largest ports in the world, giving it a large migrant population, mainly from Asia, the Middle East, and Australia. It’s also been a long-time home to the Canadian film industry, and has even been nicknamed “North Hollywood.” Dozens of film and television productions from major studios film here every year.
Vancouver is very much an international city. It has large boroughs dedicated to varying cultures, including one of the largest Chinatowns in the world. The society here is more receptive to new ideas, always looking for the next big thing; it’s not surprising that floating has blown up in Vancouver as much as it has.
In the last 3 years, 10 float centers have opened up, most of them being larger 4–6 tank centers. The really interesting thing is how they all opened within the same short amount of time about 1 ½ to 2 years ago, within months of each other.
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #25
We finally made it back to the West Coast! We went through the Canadian Rockies and were overwhelmed by the beauty of it all. We drove through hours and hours of winding mountain roads, fertile valleys, and tiny towns so picturesque they looked like movie sets. It was so captivating, in fact, I suspect Graham and Ashkahn may have secretly replaced themselves with robotic doppelgängers to hike throughout Banff.
This post will focus on the smaller communities in B.C. that are bringing floating to new people every day. We also get to visit Canadian manufacturer Pro Float. They’re relatively new to the scene, just opening up earlier this year – another exciting sign of the growth in the industry.
