Learn best practices for starting and running a float center:
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Something in the world of floating have you stumped?

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Show Highlights

Customers who color or perm their hair might not want to let it get wet while floating. While Graham and Ashkahn are sympathetic to those issues, as far as they know, there isn’t really a great solution for them.

Listen to Just the Audio

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

Graham: And our question today is, “is it possible to keep your hair dry during a float?” Like, I assume, for customers who want to handle their hair treatment and stuff like that. I guess the most often reason why people want dry hair is they have coloring in it, or they got it professionally permed or styled or something else that either will mess up the water or mess up their hair. And the answer’s no.

Ashkahn: And the answer’s no.

Graham: Yep, absolutely not. It does seem like having waterproof swimmer’s caps will contain the water from getting in and mixing with hair color and getting back in the tank as much. So as far as the tank is concerned, swimmer’s cap seem to help out, but for anything that won’t get your hair wet at all. And we played around with different levels of tightnesses and things that really try to bill themselves as water won’t creep in, but just the process of laying in there for an hour, an hour and a half, like moisture is pretty bound to leach through whatever system you’ve set up.

Ashkahn: Yeah, it’s a tough one. There’s many different styles of swimming caps and stuff like that out there. And they all seem to let water leak in. It’s just really hard to create that tight of a seal.

Graham: So try this, try this. What you need to do is take a garbage bag.

Ashkahn: Okay, not where I thought that was going to start.

Graham: And get some Gorilla tape. And actually create a whole seal, maybe some Elmer’s glue as well. And what you want to do is you want the bag to go across your forehead and then down and around the back of your neck. And get good contact with your skin there. And just tape. It’s not going to be fun coming out, but you know, and tape it on over your face.

Ashkahn: If you just tape the bag over your entire head, that’ll give you a real nice seal.

Graham: I did not think of that, but I like the concept.

Ashkahn: And if you pump some air in there, works as a neck pillow, double whammy.

Graham: And probably stops you from suffocating if you pump air in there too, so that’s nice.

Ashkahn: Yeah, well usually you have to poke some holes to deal with that.

Graham: What have people done when they want to keep their hair dry? We have at least one customer who comes into float with us, right before they get their hair styled. So they do a monthly hair treatment and trip to their hair stylist person. I use a barber so I get confused sometimes. But anyways, to make they’re not totally messing up their hair, that they just paid a bunch of money to get styled, they’ll go into float, often the same day as their hair treatment is going to be. So they get to ride out the past month and then go in and not worry about messing up their hair for one day. So I thought that was kind of a clever way to still have it as part of your routine, despite also having a more regimented hair care routine as well.

Ashkahn: Yeah, and I do think if you get some serious swimmer’s caps, your hair is not going to get as soaking wet as it would, just being completely loose in the float tank.

Graham: Yeah maybe, I don’t know, water just slowly gets in there and all of a sudden you just have a cap that’s keeping in water as opposed to keeping it out.

Ashkahn: Yeah, I’m sure it’ll be slightly better, but I don’t think it’s something that, if there was a reason you don’t want to get your hair wet, this wouldn’t solve that problem.

Graham: Yeah, yeah. And certainly for customers out there, this is a good answer to know for them, if they are worried about messing up a really expensive do that they got. I tell them not to. That’s when you take out the Gorilla tape.

So I think this is a pretty short episode.

Ashkahn: Yeah, let us know if someone out there has a swimmer’s cap that they actually think really manages to keep your hair dry. Let us know.

Graham: A modified like astronaut helmet or something like that they can go in with.

Ashkahn: Yeah, that sounds great.

Graham: All right, if you have any other easy questions for us, go to floattanksolutions.com/podcast, and shoot them over.

Recent Podcast Episodes

Should we Pay for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Services? – DSP 169

When opening any small business, you want to do what’s best to gain an edge in marketing and make sure that you’re doing your best for your flowering company. The new trends and changes can be daunting if you’re unfamiliar with technology or the marketing world. 

Float centers are no exception. So when you get a call from someone claiming to be able to boost your SEO standing, it can seem like a really good deal. How do you tell if these companies are legit? And do float centers really need SEO help? Graham and Ashkahn break this down and simplify it for the uninitiated. 

Should we do Tank Maintenance Ourselves? – DSP 168

As it turns out, there’s no certification program to running a float center. You buy these big expensive machines that require constant, technical maintenance and you’re on your own for how to accomplish that. There aren’t float tank repair persons that you can call (yet) and just have them show up and do it for you, so making sure you’re knowledgeable and prepared for this maintenance is a really good idea. 

Graham and Ashkahn lay out the Float On best practices for how to plan for maintenance so that it’s the least disruptive for your center if something goes wrong. 

What to Consider With a Home Float Center – DSP 167

Getting a tank in your house and floating some people is a great first step on the path to opening a float center. It helps you figure out exactly what the maintenance is going to be like, along with just the experience of floating other people and introducing them to this neat salty practice. 

There are things to consider and there’s a right way and a wrong way to run a home based float center. First thing to consider is your local laws for small businesses and making sure you comply with those. Additionally, you need to decide if you’re just floating friends and family or if you’re going to have paying customers. This is also going to impact what type of float tank you should use and the demands you should consider on your house. Graham and Ashkahn have seen plenty of these and share the best practices as they’ve seen them laid out. 

How to Deal With Burnout – DSP 166

Running a float center is hard work. Especially if you just opened up and dealt with months of agonizing, crazy construction, and then go straight into pulling long hours keeping your center open. Even with the reward of seeing floater’s post float glow can fall short of satisfying in some moments. 

It’s important in these moments to take time for yourself so as not to get devoured by your work. Ashkahn and Graham share some of the things that helped them stay sane working long, thankless shifts at Float On in the early days and get through the hard days so that they could thrive. 

Will Hard Water Affect a Float Tank? – DSP 165

Hard water is something that comes from having too many minerals in your water source. It can cause a lot of problems with plumbing if it’s too hard, and most buildings will have resources for dealing with this to help avoid calcium buildup in pipes and along tubs or pools. As for how it interacts with a float tank, specifically, it seems like the larger issue is going to be how it impacts the rest of your building. 

Graham and Ashkahn break down what they know about how hard water affects float tanks and the differences you’re going to have to look out for if you’re using well water over municipal water sources.

Latest Blog Posts

Listening to Music in a Float Tank

Listening to Music in a Float Tank

To play or not to play music in the tank…

Some centers start the float with a few minutes of music and then fade away, some don’t play music until the end, and another float center will not let you turn off the light. In fact, they also have the noise of a automatic massage table, pounding away next to you, while other places will leave it up to the floater to decide. READ MORE…

Specific Gravity Specifics

Specific Gravity Specifics

Specific gravity is the ratio of the density of a substance to the density (mass of the same unit volume) of a reference substance. The reference substance is nearly always water for liquids or air for gases.” Specific gravity, then, in the case of our float tanks, is how dense the salt water is compared to regular, run of the mill water.

So, where should we keep the specific gravity of a float tank? READ MORE…

Don’t Squander Water in Your Showers

Don’t Squander Water in Your Showers

Once you start planning out the monthly costs for your float center, you’ll quickly come to appreciate a running joke in the industry: although you may think you’re providing floats, what you’re really doing is running a shower business.

Each person that floats at your center will take two showers: one before their float, and one after. These showers are definitely necessary. Before a customer enters a float tank, you’ll want them to shower in order to make sure that water contamination from skin oils and dirt is minimized, and after a float a customer is going to need a shower to remove the salty residue from their skin. READ MORE…

How Do You Properly Use Hydrogen Peroxide?

How Do You Properly Use Hydrogen Peroxide?

The Art of Floating, a great blog by the Float Shoppe here in Portland, has been answering questions that hit their inbox. Which is brilliant, and gives a second life to the extensive novellas on that minutiae of float tanks that I find myself writing daily. Here’s the first in what will hopefully be a series. READ MORE…