Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
You have to change out your float tank water eventually. Is it a good idea to give your float tank a vinegar cleanse when you do? is that effective? Is it too much work for the results? Are there better solutions to keep your tank clean and fresh?
Graham and Ashkahn discuss while providing assurances like “either you’re not crazy or we’re all crazy”, so that’s nice.
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: All right. Hello everybody.
Ashkahn: Hey, everyone. This is Ashkahn.
Graham: Graham over here, and we got a question for you today.
Ashkahn: Nice, that’s good.
Graham: Just like every day, yeah.
Ashkahn: I’m impressed every time.
Graham: Which is, and I always say that. I should say we have an answer for you today, because really the questions are for us.
Ashkahn: We got both, we got both.
Graham: The question is, “we have a crazy idea of draining float tanks and then running 200 gallons of water mixed with vinegar for an amount of time. Do you think there would be some decent cleaning?”
Ashkahn: All right, so assumptions-
Graham: Decent. Let’s define decent.
Ashkahn: Let’s make some assumptions first. I’m assuming they’re talking about doing this at the point they’re draining their float tank, once-
Graham: Anyway, right? Not like they’re just draining it and they’re-
Ashkahn: They’re not doing this every night. Yeah. Dump the water, throw some tap water in there and get-
Graham: 200 gallons of vinegar.
Ashkahn: 200 gallons of vinegar. That’s not what they said, but assuming you’re like, “Okay, yeah. I’m draining my float tank,” on whatever kind of periodic schedule that I’ve decided, a year or whatever it is. At that point, should I be doing this crazy scheme? And-
Graham: Sort of.
Ashkahn: Yeah, sort of. I mean, so it’s not crazy.
Graham: Well, we came up with it, so it might be crazy as well. Not the vinegar part, but the … this is something that we’ve started doing to, when we drain our float tanks is to actually kind of run a full cleaning kind of cycle through them to deal with anything that might be collecting on the inside of the pipes. Biofilm, things like that. So certainly the desire to make sure that your entire system’s kinda of flushed out, as long as you’re doing a big drain and fill, is totally sane and reasonable.
Ashkahn: Yeah. I would probably say the main thing to think about is vinegar is probably not what you want to put in there.
Graham: Yeah.
Ashkahn: It’s just really not that strong of a cleaning agent. I mean, it can clean things. It’s good at killing things. It’s not as good as many, many other things you could probably use. As long as you’re just putting tap water in there and you’re putting some cleaning agent in, and you’re gonna dump all this afterwards, you might as well use something stronger than vinegar.
Graham: Super vinegar.
Ashkahn: Yeah, it’s like you let vinegar ferment a third time, and then it becomes super vinegar.
Graham: Super vinegar. Probably bleach is just the easiest thing to be able to toss in there, which is basically just chlorine.
Ashkahn: Yeah. Bleach is just kinda concentrated chlorine, and you can just put a decently high concentration.
Graham: 200 gallons of bleach.
Ashkahn: Then you’re not gonna expose anyone to being in this liquid, right? So you’re kind of hitting it probably with a different method than maybe you’re used to using with other things that you’re typically cleaning your float tanks with, whatever. Using peroxide or ozone, or relying on the UV or whatever it is. Even if you’re using chlorine. Getting to a really high, kind of super-chlorinated dose of it for a period of time can have kind of an extra sanitation boost.
Graham: Yeah, and it just seems to be the go-to for a lot of disinfecting, too, that you see from different health departments and recommendations. Bleach is just an easily available and easy to use disinfectant as long as you’re not worried about, again, people kind of getting in the water afterwards. Which you’re not. You’re just sort of doing a flush and fill. That’s what we decided, was pretty much this exact same protocol that you’re talking about, where you’re emptying your float tank, filling it back up, running cycles through with water. Only in our case, we’re using bleach rather than vinegar.
Ashkahn: And there are calculators online if you want to be a little bit more quantitative about what you’re doing. You can find online calculators that will tell you how much bleach you’re pouring in and what level of parts per million of chlorine that turns into. So you can actually kind of shoot for a certain number or do something other than just turning a bottle of bleach over and counting for three seconds.
Graham: The old glug and chug method, huh?
Ashkahn: I don’t know about chugging, but-
Graham: I meant chugging along, not like-
Ashkahn: I see, I see. Take a quick sip. Pour some in the float tank.
Graham: Half for the tank, half for me. Yeah, don’t do that.
Ashkahn: Yeah, this periodic sort of cleaning can be good. There’s kind of a conversation in the pool and spa world more recently than ever about these things called biofilms, and that’s where certain microorganisms can build up these protective shell layers outside of them that protects them from the exposure of different sanitizers that would usually be able to kill them. One of the methods of being able to deal with stuff like that is having these kind of periodic, long-term punches of super-sanitation that you do to your system. The best kind of analogy I heard was relating it to keeping your teeth clean. You want to brush your teeth every night, but also it’s good to go to the dentist once every six months and have them do kind of like a more intense cleaning of your teeth that you’re not gonna be able to do with your toothbrush. That same kind of logic, I think, makes sense in the world of sanitation. If you have these kind of longer cycles of more intense cleaning, it’s, I think, another step or another effective way of keeping things at bay.
Graham: There’s pretty much no harm to it, either. You know, as long as you’re not adding in enough bleach that you’re worried about staining your tubs or something like that-
Ashkahn: Your filter’s not filled with ammonia, or something?
Graham: There’s not really any concern to your float tank for doing it. Other than a little extra time spent in when you’re draining it out. Doing this intermediate step before immediately refilling with salt water. That’s really the only cost of adding in what I think is a really nice precaution to other things growing in there or anything that might be hanging out in your pipes.
Ashkahn: So, you’re not crazy. I guess that’s-
Graham: Or we’re all crazy. One of the two, yeah.
Ashkahn: Yeah. We’re in it together, if that’s the case.
Graham: And if you have any more questions you want to send over to us, go to floattanksolutions.com/podcast.
Recent Podcast Episodes
Being the First Float Center – DSP 320
What’s it like to be the first float center to open in an area? How do you handle it?
Graham and Ashkahn explain what it was like opening Float On, being one of the first dedicated float centers in the United States. The exciting thing is that creating awareness is really fun, but it can be a little stressful since your float center will represent floating as a practice for people.
Many of the tips here are the same for anyone opening a center: focus on awareness, be prepared to educate, and make sure your floats are the best they can be.
Are Light or Dark Colored Float Rooms better? – DSP 319
Is it better to have a light colored room that hides salt, or a dark colored room that easily shows it?
Graham and Ashkahn dish out some strong opinions on this idea, especially the idea that dark colored rooms and tanks are good for maintaining employee accountability.
What you Need to Know About Algorithms – DSP 318
Ashkahn and Derek talk about algorithms, those pesky bits of code that push your posts up or down on social media and search engines and leave you scrambling for ways to get likes and clicks, constantly mixing it up to just be seen.
The duo discusses how algorithms affect everyday posts for small businesses and how to keep up on information about the constantly changing nature of these systems. The main takeaway is, if your content is fresh, non-repetitive and you aren’t trying to game the system, you likely have nothing to worry about.
Commissions for Memberships? – DSP 317
Any sales related business knows that commissions are the gold-standard incentive program for drumming up business, but how does it work in a float center for memberships?
Derek and Ashkahn talk about the mixed success they’ve experienced at Float On each time it’s been tried.
Getting Members to Float More Often – DSP 316
Single float memberships have become increasingly more common in the float industry, typically with the option to purchase additional floats for the month at a discount. But how do you properly incentivize those members to float more than a single time per month?
Ashkahn and Derek talk marketing tips to keeping your float center top of mind and making sure your members are active regularly.
Latest Blog Posts
How Many Float Tanks Should I Have?
Intro If you’ve crossed over into the sacred realm of “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m gonna open up a float center,” an obvious question arises — “How many tanks should I have?” Now, if you’re like me, you’re creating a 90 tank float community where everyone who buys in...
The Construction Secret to Soundproofing: Storage Between Float Rooms
If you’ve ever taken a look at our construction materials or gotten advice on soundproofing, you’ve probably heard of the importance of including “air gaps” when building out your center. What that means and why it helps can be a bit of a technical question, and the practical implementation can seem daunting and unreasonable.
Float Conference 2017 Recap
Now that the salt has settled, I’m sharing some thoughts from “The Great Gathering of People Who Really Love Being Alone Sometimes in a Dark, Briny Room,” also known as The Float Conference.
The conference has always been an amazing opportunity to connect with the pulse of the broader float industry and, if this year’s gathering showed us anything, it’s that our collective heartbeat is as strong as ever.
2017 Float Conference Program Introduction
Every year, I have the great pleasure of writing the introduction for the Float Conference program, and every year we share it on our blog so that members of the industry who weren’t able to make the journey out to Portland are able to check it out. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
From all of us at Float Tank Solutions, where our time is measured as the space between two conferences, thank you again for a wonderful year!
– Graham Talley
