Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
Float Tanks are expensive. Purchasing tanks can easily end up being half of your opening costs when starting out, so it makes sense to want to purchase tanks that have a long lifespan.
Thinking about which float tank manufacturers might last the longest, though, is probably not the way to think about this issue. For one, it’s impossible to tell what manufacturer is going to be around the longest. What’s more, if anything does break, the vast majority of the time you don’t need to go to the manufacturer to get it fixed in the first place.
Ashkahn and Graham share their thoughts on proper float tank care and the steps any float center owner should take when considering a tank.
Show Resources
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Ashkahn: All right. Hey. Hey. Hey.
Graham: You need to break set a couple more times?
Ashkahn: Hey.
Graham: Hey, [inaudible 00:00:46].
Ashkahn: Still a little new to this. Sorry guys.
Ashkahn. This is Ashkahn.
Graham: Yep. I’m Graham right over here.
Ashkahn: Hey.
Graham: And today’s question is.
Ashkahn: Hold on, hold on. Special announcement first.
Graham: Oh yeah. Yeah, I forgot about that.
Ashkahn: There’s this thing called the Float Conference. Just a conference.
Graham: What?
Ashkahn: It’s about floating. We put it on and it’s happening pretty soon. It’s in August, August 18th and 19th.
Graham: Pretty excited.
Ashkahn: And you should get your tickets, because we have a cut-off date where the prices of the tickets get a lot more expensive; it’s the day that we got to start making concrete, some of our ordering numbers and stuff like that. So we set a date. It’s coming up. It’s July 19th.
If you’re coming to the Float Conference and you don’t have your tickets yet, get them before then, otherwise, the prices will go up.
Graham: And it’s the 16th for hotels as well, that people should get?
Ashkahn: Yeah. Yeah. If you’re looking for a hotel, you don’t have a hotel booked yet, we have some group discounts. There’s a place, the Hilton is just a block away from the conference and there’s a page on the conference website, FloatConference.com/hotels, where you can book and get a cheaper rate. Definitely do that. The deal ends on July 16th. It’s the last time you can book those.
Graham: All right.
And now, today’s question is, “despite you making fun of all my questions, I still think you are the hippest guys. Today’s question is,” you threw that in and I threw that in too. You really made me sound redundant there. Thanks a lot question asker.
“What tank manufacturers do you think will be around the longest for future parts availability?”
Ashkahn: Well that’s a stupid question. I mean-
Graham: Obviously the RESTroom.
Ashkahn: What a dumb question that you could ask me.
Graham: If you haven’t heard, go to restroomfloat.com right now. I know we don’t usually recommend float tanks, but I will just go out on a limb here and say, single best float tank on the market.
Ashkahn: There’s no real competitor, really. There’s nothing even like it, I think, is a fair statement.
Graham: Yeah. Yeah?
Ashkahn: What float tank manufacturer is going to be around the longest?
Graham: Specifically for access to parts. So if they buy a tank, and I guess that tank falls apart.
Ashkahn: Well, the more likely it is that your tank is falling apart on you, the less likely it is that that manufacturer will be around, you know?
Graham: That’s true. So maybe it just is a nice balancing effect where-
Ashkahn: Yeah. Yeah. If you never need parts-
Graham: no matter where along the spectrum it is, it’s the correct place to be, you know? Interesting. I like that twist.
Ashkahn: Yeah. I mean, it’s a good question. If I could predict the future, I wouldn’t be doing this podcast.
Graham: Yeah, we’d just be investing in the float tank manufacturer stocks.
Ashkahn: Yeah. So I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know what manufacturer’s going to be around the longest.
Graham: Yeah. No, we have no idea.
Ashkahn: It’s hard to say. I mean, when we opened our center, whenever it was, a thousand years ago.
Graham: A century ago or something, yeah.
Ashkahn: Eight, seven and a half years ago. When we opened all those many, many decades ago, most of the manufactures that you see in a lot of float centers right now, didn’t even exist.
Graham: Yeah.
Ashkahn: Weren’t even there yet. And so what manufacturers are to come even-
Graham: We don’t know.
Ashkahn: Who’s to say? I don’t know.
Graham: Certainly not us. That RESTroom floats thing though. That was pretty good.
Yeah, in fact, I don’t even know what kind of question you’re asking here.
Ashkahn: Well, okay. Let’s approach this from a different direction, other than foreseeing the future.
Graham: Another better question?
Ashkahn: This is a fine question. Thank you. This is a very upstanding question you sent in to us today.
Graham: Playing good cop isn’t going to get you anywhere with this, Ashkahn.
Ashkahn: They need to send us more questions.
Let’s take this back a bit, because what parts would you even need a manufacturer for, I think is another interesting question to ask? The more that you’re getting a tank that uses a pump from a pump company that’s been around for a while, or a UV system from a UV company, or PVC pipe is PVC pipe.
Graham: Tires from a tire company.
Ashkahn: So most the stuff in your filtration system, I think, is going to either be easy for you to fix or replace with or without the float tank manufacturer. No float tank manufacturers out there are really making their own, totally custom UV lights or pumps or filters or forging their own PVC pipe or however PVC’s made.
Graham: Growing it out of the ground or something like that.
Ashkahn: So all that stuff is parts that they’re getting from other places, so no matter who you’re going with, you’re most likely going to be able to source those parts from somewhere else.
It’ll probably be easier for you, if you’re buying a float tank, in the country that you live in. Float tanks from other countries typically use parts from other countries, and they’re a little bit harder to find and source. Not impossible. We’ve done it. We have some float tanks from England and we’ve certainly found the parts and ordered them from England, but it’s not quite as easy as just going to Home Depot and there’s the same type of threading and stuff like that, that’s on the rest of your system.
Graham: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ashkahn: I would say, really the hardest part is probably the control box and the software, right?
Graham: Yeah, because if something happens to the finish of the fiberglass tub, you can get it refinished; you don’t actually need the manufacturer for that.
Ashkahn: Yeah. Heaters. They’re probably buying heaters from some company; they’re not making their own heaters.
Graham: Yeah. And you can find another heater company, theoretically, if you really had to.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: We know. If we got a used tank that didn’t have heaters in it-
Ashkahn: Right.
Graham: we could find heaters to replace that.
Ashkahn: We could fix that. Or last resort, put an in-line or circulation heater in.
Graham: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ashkahn: That hurts the ability for long floats, but it’s functional.
Graham: So yeah, the control system-
Ashkahn: That’s the tricky part, right?
Graham: I mean, you’d almost have to probably figure out a way to just take the inputs and outputs and if the control system broke, you’d go back to, “Here’s where the speakers go. Here’s where the pump turns on,”-
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: and it’s hard-wire it into the controls.
Ashkahn: Yeah. And most manufactures have their own custom control box and their own custom control system for it, especially as time goes on, more and more manufacturers are going that direction; they’re making software, they’re getting electrical engineers to put together these boxes.
Graham: Yeah. And it’s getting more and more fancy, I guess is the right word for it.
Ashkahn: Right. Yeah. No, that is the right word for it.
Graham: Which means, the ability to just do that yourself and recreate these fancy setups that people have is-
Ashkahn: How fancy are you, really?
Graham: Are you a fancy person? If you’re a fancy person, no problem.
Ashkahn: Yeah, you got this.
Graham: But otherwise-
Ashkahn: But if you’re a common slob like the rest of us-
Graham: This ain’t no slobcast.
Ashkahn: And anything’s possible. At a certain point, you could just ditch the entire control box, the entire control system.
Graham: You’d probably have to, to be honest. You’d probably just have to ditch it.
Ashkahn: Yeah. It depends how far out you are from buying this thing, or what’s wrong with it? There’s certainly certain situations I think you could probably hire someone to just make a tweak or something, but at a certain point, probably the easiest thing is going to, especially thinking about the future, so that you don’t have to hire another person a week later to fix some other random little thing and keep Frankensteining this control box.
Yeah, at some point you’ll probably just have to ditch it, hire some low voltage electrical engineer person or high voltage if the pump and stuff is going through there.
Graham: Yeah.
Ashkahn: And build a little control box. And we’ve done this. When we built our own float tanks, we had to deal with this; we had to build a little control box.
Graham: Yeah.
Ashkahn: And it can be as simple as just little timer knobs that you have in your lobby that feed into something that turns the entire system on and a way to play music. So there are simple solutions without all the-
Graham: Rigamarole?
Ashkahn: Rigamarole or automation.
Graham: Was that the word you were looking for?
Ashkahn: Yeah. If you’re not a rigamarole type of person, there’s totally ways to deal with it.
Graham: Yeah. And really, everything could get replaced.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: It’s just a question of difficulty. I was thinking about liners, too. If you’re doing a tank that has liners throughout it in the fiberglass tub.
Ashkahn: Sure. Yeah, because those are custom sized.
Graham: Yeah, but you can reverse engineer them, you can have someone come in, you can custom size liners and have your own made.
Ashkahn: Yeah. Yeah.
Graham: It’ll be more expensive.
Ashkahn: The real question is, at the point that you’ve replaced every piece of the float tank, is it even the same float tank?
Graham: That’s a good question.
Ashkahn: Yeah. I don’t think anyone’s thought of something like that before.
Graham: You know where you should send that, you should go to FloatTankSolutions.com/podcast and send that one in. I’d answer it.
Ashkahn: Okay. That was good.
I got one more little thing to say before we finish, which is that-
Graham: Oh yeah, that wasn’t even my sign off.
Ashkahn: I thought it was just a real smooth segue.
Graham: Oh, I’m not that smooth.
Yeah, no go on there. What were you going to say?
Ashkahn: There are people out there.
Graham: All right. Thanks everybody!
Ashkahn: We’ll see you tomorrow!
There’s many people out there using float tanks right now from manufactures that don’t exist anymore.
Graham: True. Like the RESTroom.
Ashkahn: Yeah. Sometimes from manufacturers that never existed. But you see a lot of Floatarium’s out there. Floatarium hasn’t been a company for decades.
Graham: Apollo Float Tanks.
Ashkahn: Apollo as well. They’re still technically making those.
Graham: I’m sorry. Sorry Apollo.
Ashkahn: Yeah. Easy, easy. That’s still being made in Australia.
Graham: Whoops. They stopped existing for a little bit, or the company got purchased by someone else?
Ashkahn: This gets into hazy float history that I’m not even a hundred percent certain on. But I think there used to be two dudes who worked together, made these tanks and then they split. And one of them-
Graham: Okay, well-
Ashkahn: Let me at least finish.
One of them went to somewhere in Asia and started making them and those became the PathFinders. And the other one went to Australia and continued making those as the Apollo, or maybe vice versa.
And then the guy up in Asia sold his molds and stuff to a dude in Russia who’s still making that branch of it up there currently. And then there’s a guy down in Australia still making that branch of it. I think both branches of it are still currently being manufactured.
Graham: So actually, this is, as far as questions about people going out of business, this one doubled its business. So in some cases, you might actually end up with two separate manufactures who both could have spare parts for you.
Ashkahn: So yeah, you’ve got nothing to worry about. You’re all good. Don’t worry about it.
Graham: And thank you very much for continuing to send in questions, despite me berating them all the time. That was a really fun one to answer, so even though we pretty much didn’t say anything of any real merit.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
So if you guys have some high-quality questions to send in to us in the future, go to FloatTankSolutions.com/podcast. You’ll find a little thing right there that you can type it in to.
Graham: Was that your sign off or was that mid episode?
Ashkahn: That was it. Signing off.
Graham: Cool.
Bye everyone.
Recent Podcast Episodes
Are Tankless Water Heaters the Best? – DSP 270
Graham and Jake take on talking about Tankless or “On Demand” water heaters today. They break down a lot of the benefits of them compared to storage water heaters like the fact that they provide a nearly limitless source of hot water, require less energy consumption, etc. They’re not perfect though, and any float center considering one should look closely on how best to implement them. Jake shares some of the pitfalls of them as well as how to maximize their usefulness.
Should Float Centers use Light or Heavy Gauge Studs? – DSP 269
Still no Ashkahn today. He’s taking a couple of post-conference days to himself.
Jake and Graham are on the scene though to answer construction questions, though. Even the straight forward ones, like today. Jake informs us which to choose when doing construction, light or heavy gauge studs when constructing a float center, while getting a little sidetracked when comparing wooden and metal studs.
Construction to Make Your Life Easier – DSP 268
Graham and Jake cover a wide range of construction tips to make running a float center easier. Everything from making sure you have extra storage to installing mop closets with sinks in them for dealing with heavy duty chemicals.
The advice is pretty much a shotgun approach of tips, tricks, and hard lessons learned throughout the years.
Draining Float Tanks into Septic Systems – DSP 267
Graham and Jake tackle the difficulties of draining float tanks and how that process can differ based on different municipalities, different water treatment systems, or whether you’re using a septic system or not.
Water treatment typically involves whole contained ecosystems and highly concentrated epsom salt water can impact that pretty drastically. The guys provide good tips for each type of system and what to be prepared for if you’re operating in a rural area with a septic system.
The Difference Between STC and Decibels – DSP 266
Post-Conference Ashkahn is still out of the recording studio, but fortunately Jake is keeping Graham company in there.
Graham and Jake break down the differences between decibels and STC ratings, two very important to understand when figuring out soundproofing. There’s a lot to digest in this episode, but fortunately the guys keep it easy to understand by providing a broad level overview of the different concepts.
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.
