Handling humidity to reduce water drops on tank ceilings – DSP 88

One of the biggest Float Mysteries in the industry is how to properly deal with condensation in a float tank. Your float tank is basically a giant humidity generating machine so clearly there’s going to be some condensation, but how much and why it forms can vary for seemingly no reason, making managing it difficult. The last thing any float center owner wants is for it to affect the floats they’re running (little water droplets falling on floaters is no fun).

Graham and Ashkahn commiserate with the industry about the difficulties in dealing with this particular hot topic, while also delving into the science of it and common solutions that should help any float center owner that’s facing this problem.

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

Graham: Today’s question is, “I have a bunch of water drops that keep forming on the top of my float tank. What should I do to stop that?”

Ashkahn: Bummer.

Graham: So, first of all, this is really common. These things are giant humidity generating machines. So, it’s not the most surprising thing in the world that it’s forming on the ceiling there.

Ashkahn: Yeah. It happens.

Graham: The problem with this too, we should say, is not that it’s on the ceiling, it’s that mid-float you’ll get these water droplets that come down. It’s like this weird water torture where you don’t know how often or what body part it will hit.

Ashkahn: It’s pitch black.

Graham: Once every 20 minutes come down and disrupt your float.

Ashkahn: It’s pretty horrible. Once it happens, you just can’t relax anymore.

Graham: Yup.

Ashkahn: So, what causes it? What causes this condensation? What’s the condensation cause?

Graham: It’s giant humidity…? It’s a pool of water that’s kept at 94 and a half degrees.

Ashkahn: Here’s what I’m getting at: usually the condensation is either existent or especially pronounced when there’s a big temperature difference between the inside of the float tank and the outside of the float tank.

Graham: Like a soda can.

Ashkahn: Like a soda can, or like anything that holds condensation.

Graham: Like any object in the world.

Ashkahn: Various float tanks have things to try to prevent those too. From the way the ceilings are sloped to radiant heaters inside the ceilings like the Samadhi tanks have. I think some other float tanks might have that too. A lot of float tanks if they don’t have that will put a lot of insulation up at the top, things like that to all cut down on the problem. Still, if you do have a pretty serious temperature difference between the outside and the inside, which usually means colder on the outside, warmer on the inside. You’re going to get that condensation. I mean it always means that, otherwise the condensation would be on the reverse.

Graham: On the other side.

Ashkahn: When you have this situation that’s when it comes. There’s I think two big things to help deal with it. One, is humidity control. That’s part of it, is making sure that you’re trying to keep the area not extremely humid.

Graham: Even a little bit of airflow getting into the tank, hopefully not enough to disrupt the float or even be felt by the person on the inside, but just any kind of circulating air towards the top will also work to eliminate some of that condensation, which is nice.

Ashkahn: Probably the biggest thing that’s going help is keeping the room that your float tank is in warmer. Actually whatever heating system you have to heat the room, you might want to consider bumping it up a little bit and trying to equal out that temperature.

Graham: It also sometimes depends on time of year.

Ashkahn: Yeah, that’s what we find at our place.

Graham: Again with the temperature differential, winter tends to be the worse time for condensation gathering on the float tanks and causing issues. Even with kind of getting this ideal – at least with floater comfort, plus stopping condensation – interior air temperature down. We still have issues with that forming in some of our rooms and the solution we have right now is actually just checking the ceiling between every person and having basically a …

Ashkahn: Stick with a …

Graham: Rag on it. We just clean our tanks with a rag on a stick.

Ashkahn: One of those almost like a Swiffer-shaped thing.

Graham: We do that. We use a telescoping pole and go in there and get the humidity off the ceilings of the cabins just in between people. I was just talking to one of our staff yesterday and they were saying they found they have to do that in between every single float right now for one of our rooms.

Ashkahn: There’s definitely a certain mystery to it too.

Graham: Even when we have identical tanks and one room has a bunch of water forming and one doesn’t.

Ashkahn: They’re the same temperature. Sometimes I’m just like, okay there’s something going on here.

Graham: We call those … in the business we call those “float mysteries”. Get used to them – is my best advice for those.

Ashkahn: This whole conversation has sounded very logical up to this point, but in reality sometimes you’re still scratching your head. Wiping it off, I haven’t found it to be, even at worst case scenario if you’re wiping it between every float. It usually seems to do the job for the course of that float.

Graham: I love having it so the drops aren’t falling on people.

Ashkahn: Which is nice.

Graham: A couple other things to keep in mind. One is this idea of using like bubble wrap type cover for your float tanks. Oftentimes we’ll find the most condensation seems to gather when people aren’t using the float tank. Especially if you’re leaving the door closed to keep in the temperature. You want to keep the water temperature warm so you close the door to the float tank, you didn’t have a floater in there in that session, next person goes in and opens it up and it’s just drip city.

Ashkahn: Yeah, why? Why?

Graham: Because you’ve creating this contained environment. Something about humans and …

Ashkahn: Where’s the person in there? Why would the person change?

Graham: Float mystery. Don’t even try to worry about it, my friend.

Ashkahn: It matches with experience, but I don’t understand.

Graham: One thing is to leave the door to the tank opened so that doesn’t happen. You get the airflow going in, but then the water in the tank will get cool, which is where you have this combo of door opened perhaps, some kind of a bubble wrapped cover in the tank to stop heat from going up.

Ashkahn: It’s kind of like a light pool cover, I guess. We call it bubble wrap because it has a lot of bubbles on it. We’re not just like saving the bubble wrap scraps from our packaging.

Graham: Right, don’t actually just throw bubble wrap in there. Much more official than that. I promise you.

Ashkahn: They’re usually blue, kind of thick plastic. I mean you’re looking up a pool cover.

Graham: Very serious. It’s very commercial, professional.

Ashkahn: Professional business.

Graham: So, anyway, that’s one of the tricks at least when you have an empty tank in between some clients. Both keeping the water warm and stopping that massive amount of humidity from gathering on the ceiling.

Ashkahn: Yeah, you know it’s just rag-stick.

Graham: You can on some tanks, depending on the construction of the fiberglass, you could also retrofit it with a heater on the ceiling, if it didn’t come with a radiant heater.

Ashkahn: Yeah, that’s true.

Graham: Not possible on all tanks. You know, if it’s double shelled fiberglass, it’s going to be really hard to do any kind of retrofitting or anything like that. In a lot of the units it is actually possible to go back and put a radiant heater on top of the float tank – which like Ashkahn mentioned before – is how Samadhi and a few other tanks control the drips on the inside there, is actually having a heater that’ll heat the ceiling enough that it just kind of evaporates that water or stops it forming, which kind of is like the most surefire way to stop this from forming. Other than stick-rag, which obviously is without saying the best solution.

Ashkahn: Or, more insulation is a nice easy step. See if that works.

Graham: So, good luck. Good luck with the drops out there on your ceiling. Again even if you have to wipe it in between every person, the most important thing is just even if there’s humidity forming try to make sure it’s not falling on your customers. That’s where it starts to cause trouble.

Ashkahn: Okay. If you guys have more questions for us go over to floattanksolutions.com/podcast and just type them right into there.

Graham: Yup, those will go straight into our trash folder and we’ll make up our own questions from there. All right talk to you all tomorrow.

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