Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
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.
Show Resources
Check out FloatConference.com for talk schedules and booth information. It’s going to be another beautiful, amazing Conference day!
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: All right, hey, everybody. Graham over here.
Jake: Hey, Old Salty.
Graham: Or whatever.
Jake: Jake, over here.
Graham: No Ashkahn with us today, but instead we’re going to be answering-I was going to say all your construction questions, but I guess really just a single-
Jake: Probably just one.
Graham: -one construction question is what’s on the docket.
Jake: Little taste. Little morsel.
Graham: Today’s question is, “Is it okay to keep the drop ceilings in the space I’m moving into? It used to be medical offices.”
Jake: Short answer, no. It’s not ideal, by any means.
Graham: This is my instinct whenever a question starts with, “Should I keep blank in my float center when I’m moving in?” My instinct is always no, because we’ve been burned so many times by trying to keep different amounts of construction there. I always just assume we’re going to have to tear everything out.
Jake: I wanted to keep a stray cat once when I moved into a space. It didn’t pan out well for me.
Graham: Sure, yeah, biological organisms also problematic, even just in the construction materials, it rarely works. Float centers are just so demanding and so precise with what we need, trying to keep anything that was there before is probably going to cause even more problems and more headaches in the long run than just getting rid of it.
Jake: This in particular. This drop ceiling, this T-bar ceiling, this grid ceiling. The problem is humidity. The problem is moisture.
Graham: I guess you naming it all those different things made me realize maybe we should actually describe what this is.
Jake: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Graham: You’ve seen them before. It is that kind of gridded ceiling. It usually has some kind of metal framing or metal framework bar grid.
Jake: T-bar.
Graham: The T-bar is going across the entire ceiling, and then panels that sit within them.
Jake: They’re usually, it’s decorative. They’re concealing duct work or conduits.
Graham: If you look up in your dentist’s office, or just in any kind of office space, you’re very likely to find them.
Jake: Very common.
Graham: In a classroom, very likely to see those things. I remember sitting in my classrooms as a kid, looking up and seeing the ones that had been damaged by water.
Jake: Throwing a pencil into those.
Graham: Sure, throwing a pencil into them.
Jake: Try and get the pencil to stick into it. If the pencil can stick into it, as you can see, moisture can probably get inside there.
Graham: Ah, good transition.
Jake: They’re very porous. They hold a lot of moisture and you have this weird temperature differential between, especially if it’s above your float room, between your room and what’s above that space. So that can lead to real issues of humidity building up. What do you do if the landlord, assuming you’re leasing the space, won’t let you pull it out, because they don’t want to deal with it afterwards? We’ve seen that a couple of times.
What we’ve recommended to people, and what they’ve done, is they swapped out those cellulose, or mineral wool, or a bunch of other things that we were just looking into of what they’re made of, with vinyl panels. 2×4 panels that fit right into that grid, and then we’ll have them use some contractor grade silicone, some caulk around the edges, try to keep out that moisture from the float rooms. But definitely, not ideal, by any means.
Graham: You have a few things going on with the drop ceiling, typically, that aren’t ideal. One is they’re often made out of materials that moisture, if it can’t immediately damage, which often it can, thinking back to the ceiling panels that get kind of rained out and stuff. Or at the very least, they have these holes that sound can get through. So they’re not the perfect panels to have up there, even if you have the ceiling.
So being able to replace those with something solid, something that is 100% impermeable, and then like Jake said, the extra step, kind of siliconing those seams. Really make sure that even though you have kept to the letter of the landlord’s law, in case if it’s a requirement you have that T-bar ceiling, you still essentially, out of it created something that’s very solid and waterproof. Seamless.
Jake: There is one other thing, when you start thinking about these. They do perform differently in different environments. Up in Portland we have a lot of rain. It’s not going to survive very well here. We have a lot of moisture. I’ve seen some of these ceilings do pretty well in the mountains of Colorado, where it’s really arid, or down in Arizona, where it’s really dry and really arid, again. Just something to think about there, if you’re looking at cost. Maybe the hallways you can leave as these other type of panels, the cheaper ones, and then just use the vinyl panels, which are like 10 times as expensive as the regular ones in your float rooms.
Graham: One nice thing about them, or about having any kind of suspended ceiling like that, is really easy access above them. That’s something that-
Jake: That’s a silver lining.
Graham: -nice. I am kind of jealous. Whenever we have to make changes to our ceiling we have to cut into it, and it’s this huge, big hassle, you know?
Jake: We’re using a suspended drywall ceiling, so we’re cutting through a suspended piece of drywall, and then we’re cutting through another layer of drywall to get to things.
Graham: In an ideal world, you can just have a regular ceiling. And then beyond that, I still like a suspended drywall ceiling over modified drop ceiling or T-bar ceiling, whatever you want to call it.
Jake: Yeah, when we look at minimum buyable product, like what’s the basic, we’ll start with maybe a nine foot tall room, regular drywall. If that’s not enough we’ll add some acoustical compound. We’ll throw up some soundproofing drywall right over the top of it. At Float On we have a couple of open tanks. It was determined that even that was not enough, and that’s when we implemented the suspended drywall ceiling. Kind of like the T-bar ceiling’s concept of suspending the whole ceiling from wires, but much more robust. We’re hanging soundproofing drywall. We’re using these metal studs, we’re insulating-
Graham: You’re essentially making a ceiling that’s solid, has studs, has the whole covering of the soundproofing drywall.
Jake: All hanging from cables.
Graham: And then suspended with cables. A little crazy, but same basic idea.
Jake: Yeah, definitely.
Graham: For places that have a really high vaulted ceiling, you can still have those with access above them too, which is really cool. I’m super jealous of float centers that have that.
Jake: Yeah.
Graham: So there you go. Rarely keep existing construction, including your ceiling, unfortunately.
Jake: All right, cool. Well, thanks for listening today. If you have any other questions, please send those over to floattanksolutions.com/podcast and we look forward to answering them with you.
Graham: Thanks, everyone.
Jake: Yeah.
Recent Podcast Episodes
What Causes that Float Tank Twitch? – DSP 244
Graham and Ashkahn discuss what causes that mysterious twitch people sometimes experience in the float tank, called the hypnic jerk (AKA hypnagogic jerk, sleep start, sleep twitch, myoclonic jerk, or night start ). While the guys offer up some interesting theories, there’s not a lot of research that’s been done on what causes these, so we’re left with theories, more or less.
Ashkahn thinks it has to do with pancakes.
Does floating impact the Parasympathetic Nervous System? – DSP 243
The Parasympathetic Nervous System is the part of your body that gets really excited when the rest of your body is winding down. Taking care of the digestive and rest systems are an important part of human health and physiology. How do float tanks affect this system?
Many of the studies on floating have demonstrated an impact on the parasympathetic nervous system. Graham and Ashkahn talk about the information that’s been studied so far.
Getting Salty With Speakers – Professor Hu – DSP 242
Dr. Peicheng Hu is a researcher from China that studies floatation therapy over there. He’s speaking at the Float Conference this year so Ashkahn decided to take the opportunity to talk to him about the Chinese float industry and some of the differences in the practice as well as the type of research being done out there.
Are Google Ads Important – DSP 241
When looking at online marketing, Google Ads seem like an obvious choice, but are as relevant for Float Centers as they are for other businesses? The most useful thing these ads do is boost search result placement, but if the ads are to boost the ranking of a float center that is the only center in town, it’s not going to affect search results much.
Derek and Graham dissect the platform and really focus in on the uses (or lack thereof) of Google Ads for float centers and provide tools and tips for online marketing and how to make it as effective as possible.
How to Build Community Relationships from Home – DSP 240
Building community relationships when you’re already working 12 hour days at your float center can seem impossible. How do you make those connections when you’re busy during business hours?
Derek and Graham tackle this problem and focus on it from personal experience. When Float On was just starting up, Graham was always running around, but still found time to grab a tea with local wellness professionals in his down time just to chat and hang out. Derek also points out that there’s plenty of social media tools that you can use between transitions when you have a couple minutes.
Latest Blog Posts
Fancy Acronyms for your Business Plan: TAM, SAM, and SOM
In this post, we’ll be looking at those enigmatic acronyms: TAM, SAM, and SOM, which are the backbone for the market analysis section of your written plan. We’ve helped a couple hundred float centers to develop their business plans, and we’ve found that this one area generates the most questions, and seems to generally be the most difficult to wrap your head around.
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #9
The Float Tour makes a stop in Tulsa, OK to visit Dr. Justin Feinstein’s Float Clinic and Research Center at the Laureate Institute of Brain Research (LIBR).
Rather than following the usual path of incremental progress with its research, LIBR is tasked with pursuing alternative treatments that have a chance of “shooting the moon” and making potentially large leaps in medical progress. Float tanks are just the kind of technology they’re looking to explore.
Float Tank Centers for Sale
On our journey we found at least three owners who are actively looking to sell their float tank centers, and in all three cases the centers are doing well. Life often calls us in different directions than we expect.
In case you’re in the market for a pre-established business, without all the trials and tribulations of starting from scratch, here’s information on two centers that are, for the moment, available to swoop in on…
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #8
The desert is vast and the sun is harsh, but it doesn’t deter floating. We’re officially off the beaten path. From here, the float centers have become a bit more spread out. Everywhere we go, however, the people continue to be kind and eager to see us.
Everything in between Arizona and Texas is nestled in between some of the major manufacturers in the United States, providing some resources that other areas just don’t have. Areas that might find building out a center prohibitively expensive due to additional shipping costs, not to mention that real estate is cheaper than in major metropolitan areas, can save a bit of money when planning their buildout.
