“Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.” ― Thomas A. Edison

Test Early, Test Often

There are few things as terrifying as spending a lot money or time (or both) to produce something whose end results are completely unknown. For those of you who like the surge of adrenaline that comes along with gambling, the float industry will provide you no end of thrills. For those of us who like a certain degree of certainty, being in the float industry is fundamentally nerve wracking. There are always more questions than answers, and just when you’ve got one thing working smoothly, something else starts falling apart.

Sometimes you have to tear up over $10,000 of flooring after it’s been in place for only six months. Sometimes you need to hang a new ceiling over your immaculately constructed, painted, and finished original ceiling. Sometimes you erect a new, soundproof wall which does very little to stop the music from next door that’s been disturbing your customers’ floats. Sometimes you really have no idea what’s going on and you feel like crying, but you don’t give into the urge because the idea of being around even more saltwater sounds awful.

At times like these, there are three things I turn to for comfort. The first is floating: we own a rest and recovery business, and you should take advantage of it. The second is a philosophy of testing and improvement: knowing that every failure brings us closer to a working solution. The third is sharing both our failures and our successes: contributing to a larger body of knowledge and hopefully saving people the avoidable pain and mistakes that we ourselves went through.

Replacing Our First Set of Floors

When we had to tear out our first set of floors it was because there was water creeping underneath them, and we were worried about mold and mildew forming. We had four rooms and several options for our new flooring. Instead of going with a single solution for all our rooms, we decided to test out three different options. One room got sealed pebble tile with sanded grout, one got sealed pebble tile with epoxy grout, and the last two received unsealed pebble tile without epoxy grout.

We didn’t have the knowledge or experience to make the right decision.
We were ignorant enough that we didn’t even realize that the two different types of pebble we were ordering were sealed or unsealed (or what that would ultimately imply). We did, however, know that we wanted to expand and even build other float centers in the future, which meant that we would be facing this decision again in the future. We also had a firm belief in testing and in the scientific process. By putting in three sets of floors, we got to test different assumptions and then see first hand how they held up.

Shortly after we installed these floors, we took over the shop next door and constructed two new custom float rooms. It happened unexpectedly, and we hadn’t had time to see how the new floors stood up.

Which was unfortunate, since the Fusion grout and unsealed pebble tiles would fall apart sooner rather than later.

More Flooring Tragedy

When some of our second set of floors started falling apart (the unsealed pebble tile was completely destroyed by the salt water) we needed something to go in as a temporary measure so that we could do more research and plan for a closure further down the line. We ended up tearing out the unsealed pebble tile, and putting in a whole new set of tile (large, flat porcelain tile with epoxy grout) which was quicker, cheaper, and easier to install than the pebble tile. We put Dri-Dek gridded rubber mats on top, with synthetic shammies underneath to absorb the salt water.

Even this holdover situation was a test. The gridded rubber with shammies underneath is a common solution in various float centers (we didn’t invent the Dri-Dek / Shammy solution. I believe that honor may go to FloatWorks, but I could be wrong). It was a burden over large areas, but we still use this setup in a couple of our rooms, where we’re worried about people slipping, as people just step out of the float tanks.

Our Current Best Solutions

After a few months, the time had come to replace this temporary, third set of floors. Our research in the meantime had turned up two new options to try out. Steering away from tile altogether, we picked out Altro Aquarius laminate floors, and Novalac resin epoxy flooring.

We ended up being happy with both of these floors. We like the Novalac more, though, for appearance, slip resistance, and ease of cleaning. This is convenient because it’s also more affordable than the Altro floors. Trying both of these options allowed us to directly compare them, and make a more informed decision next time (doubling down on the best one).

If you’re counting, that’s actually 8 different types of flooring we’ve tried. Only 4 are still standing (sealed pebble tile and epoxy grout holds up fine against salt water, and, shockingly, the sealed tile with sand cement grout hasn’t fallen apart yet either, although we hold out less hope for that one in the long run because of the semi-porous nature of the grout).

The Long Run

It will always take more time and money (in the short term) to test like this.

If you buy 4 types of heaters for your rooms (which we did), you’ll have to throw out 3 when you figure out which one is best (we didn’t throw them out, actually, we just retired them to our houses for personal use). In the long run though, you make up those costs quickly in the form of early understanding and better equipment. If you are planning on expanding, then the benefits over the long run are even greater.

Break as many types of things in your float center as you can. Get as many negative results early on as you can. We’ve placed the results of those tests along with hundreds of hours of research and professional review into our Float Center Construction Packet: A 180 page step-by-step guides on all parts of construction. From choosing your location and your contractors, to breaking ground, to building out your soundproof & saltproof rooms, to the final touches of your grand opening.

Fail. Learn. Float (for sanity). Share.

And repeat.

-Graham Talley
Co-Founder of Float On