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.
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Editors Note: This is a revision of a past blog post, updated to reflect the most current sanitation methods and standards
In a perfect world, you could just pour water and salt into a float tank and it would stay pure and clean and fresh and salty forever. In the real world, conditions in the water are constantly changing, so keeping your water safe and clean takes a fair amount of vigilance.
This post covers how we maintain basic water quality in the float tank, except for sanitization methods, which will be covered in their own beastly sanitation blog post. Stay tuned for that coming out next week!
Floating, mental health, and wellness
This post will explore the intersection of floating with the concepts, beliefs, and experiences related to mental health and wellness, with a focus on anxiety and depression. I’ll explore my own story as it relates to floating before diving into the current intersections of floating and mental health, with a look at past, current, and potential opportunities for research and personal growth.
Massage, Acupuncture, and Float Tanks… A Chat with Sandra Calm
We’ve seen lots of float centers that aren’t just float centers.
Many have massage, some offer counseling, some have yoga classes next door. Lots of people start out either by incorporating float tanks into a larger business, or with float tanks only being one of many modalities at their center. Being specialists in floating, Float On has not mastered anything else.
So, to help gain insight into this growing aspect of the industry, we contacted our old friend, Sandra Calm. She started up The Float Shoppe here in Portland with her husband and podcast sensation, Dylan Calm, back in 2011. When they first opened, they had just two float tanks, and slowly added acupuncture, massage, counseling, along with two more tanks. Talk about expansion!
She was more than happy to take some time for the industry to help us understand just what it’s like to run a center with multiple services by answering some questions.
