Should I Wire my Float Tanks into the Wall? – DSP 265

Ashkahn is currently recovering from his talk and the after-party last night, but Jake and Graham have gracefully taken the time to answer a construction question again today.

On the docket today is a question about wiring a float tank directly into the wall. Graham and Jake provide an overview of why some people may prefer this (it’s much easier to keep waterproof, e.g.), and why at Float On they use the twist lock for their outlets and how to properly utilize them.

Today is the last day of the Float Conference! Go to Floatconference.com for info on speakers and scheduled events! 

More information on twist locks and how they’re used

Leviton Twist Locks (Woodward Twist Locks are functionally identical if you come across those instead)

Listen to Just the Audio

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

Graham: All right. Hello everybody.

Jake: Hey, hey everybody. Ahoy. Ahoy.

Graham: I am Graham.

Jake: And I am Jake.

Graham: And we are continuing in the vein of construction questions we’ve been doing while Ashkahn away from the mic. Today’s is, “should I wire my tanks into the wall?”

Jake: Well, depending on how much power they draw, in some places you may be required to.

Graham: Yep, so you might not even have a choice.

Jake: Yeah.

Graham: Which makes the decision really easy.

Jake: Yeah.

Graham: Just, yeah. Don’t do it and skate under the radar. Simple.

Jake: Never ever ever do that.

Graham: Jake won’t even let me joke about it.

Jake: But if you can, if you do have the option and you’re allowed to not have your tanks hardwired in, we prefer not to have them hardwired in. We like to use a twist lock plug into the wall. That way it doesn’t back out. You know worst case scenario, the pumps turning off and on, that plug backs out a little bit. One of my staff are running through the room picking up like a float pillow or something like that. They look over, see it, and then they reach out and grab and shock themselves. We don’t want that. But we do want to be able to move things around. If want to take the tank out of the room, do a remodel or something like that, it’s easier to just unplug something than having an electrician come in and have to take it out of the wall for you.

Graham: Yeah, and I guess let’s explain what a twist lock is, and the different options for it.

Jake: Right.

Graham: So twist lock into the wall is different than a twist lock into kind of a corded plug.

Jake: Yeah, umbilical. Yeah.

Graham: But the mechanism is the same, which is basically instead of just plugging something in, they’re creating this gasket and sort of a water tight seal, and actually doing a little twist lock into making sure water can’t get in there.

Jake: And you have a couple choices here. You can either twist lock directly into the wall outlet, which is what we recommend. Or you can get two ends of a plug, an umbilical basically, sticking out of the wall, and then those twist lock together.

Graham: We used those for quite a while.

Jake: Yeah.

Graham: That was one of our go-tos. Over the years we’ve just seen them fail. You know not once but a handful of times.

Jake: You’ve gotten moisture in them. The ones that still exist at float on, we actually wrap them with silicon as well.

Graham: Yeah. I’m not sure if it’s when you first go to plug them in and they just had a little salt, they weren’t quite cleaned enough or whether, yeah, wicked in there, which I almost doubt.

Jake: I don’t know.

Graham: Yeah, I don’t know.

Jake: I think it’s we don’t know.

Graham: They failed and so we’re less keen on those now.

Jake: I think humidity’s building up inside there. Just enough to cause it to short out a little bit. Like it doesn’t fail catastrophically. We’ll just notice and all of a sudden there will be a smell and the plug is on its way to burning out. That’s when we kill all the power to everything.

Graham: Yeah, then you open it up and it’s definitely singed on the inside. Like it’s a little scary when you see that, understandably.

Jake: We’re in kind of a crazy environment, right? We’re using these tanks. They’re full of water. We’re connecting them to a power source. Like electricity’s kind of a scary thing.

Graham: We should say it’s crazy that even these things that are meant to be totally watertight and gasket together, those fail in our space. Again, it’s just a reason that we use the wall gasketing plugs.

Jake: Yeah, the twist locks into the wall. Something else-

Graham: Do we have a name brand for people that we recommend for people?

Jake: We use Leviton a few times. We’ve also used, I believe, Woodward as well. Both of them operate just pretty much the same.

Graham: Yeah.

Jake: Something else we consider is actually that tail connecting to your tank, that cord. We’ll have our swapped out with a SO cord. It’s an outdoor rated cord just because that can live in a wet environment. Whereas like your regular household lamp cord, that could fail over time. Basically, just has a much larger protective sheath around it, so you can never nick it or anything like that.

Graham: Yeah, I guess the benefits of, again, being able to unplug your tank at any given time is you can take it out to do maintenance, you can, if the plug is attached to the brains of the tank or the controller in the room, you can theoretically unplug that and move it and do repairs on that without having to un-hardwire to from the wall. Basically, a lot more flexibility. A lot more room for maintenance and repair without needing to do the work of actually unwiring something that’s directly hardwired into the building.

Jake: Because that’s a contractor’s job. I know it seems simple. You can undo three wires, but you really don’t want to mess with anything like that. Anything that’s wired in, connects to the grid, bring an electrician in, a licensed, bonded electrician.

Graham: And the reason is just even though it is simple, you might’ve even done repairs around your house or any number of different scenarios with electricity, but if your building were to catch on fire, if there were this accident electrically and you’ve done some electrical work that wasn’t done by a licensed electrician, all of a sudden who

Jake: Your claim might be denied.

Graham: Yeah, who’s on the spot.

Jake: Liability. Yeah. Insurance company’s not going to be happy about that. That’s for sure.

Graham: And if it could be traced back to anywhere near where you did the electrical work, then that speaks very poorly towards your chances of getting money out of that all of a sudden. That’s why it’s more just for protection in case the worst happens more than anything else. Not like we’re saying you can’t do it or anything like that.

Jake: Yeah, again, relatively simple but just hire somebody else to do it.

Graham: I get totally derailed on insurance side of things.

Jake: I’m scared of electricity.

Graham: Oh, so the upside of having it hardwired directly into the wall is, like we’re talking about, you know moisture getting in there or issues arising. I mean that’s pretty much eliminated for the most part.

Jake: Yeah, because that cord then goes into a junction box that you can have moisture-proof junction box and everything’s connected inside there. It has gaskets.

Graham: Yeah, yeah. You can really just eliminate that worry. Even with having a cord that is this gasket system that goes into a wall, there is still a chance that the part of the cord that’s going into the wall has some moisture on it or a little salt or same, you know, a drop splashed onto the wall at that point. Even though they’re high up off the ground, and now all of a sudden you can have a short. I don’t know. For peace of mind I would say is one of the things that-

Jake: For sure, peace of mind. I would add one more note here just on the placement of those actual junction boxes, those outlets. You know we want those high and tight. You know what I mean? Like we don’t want those down in the spray area where you’re priming your system or whatever you’re going to be spraying water all over the place. We’ve seen leaks develop in pretty much every single spa pack. Like there’s no spa pack that has not suffered a leak at least at one point in time. Either from a ball joint failing or from even, we saw a pinhole in some flex tubing. It just was shooting straight out several feet and one little stream of water. So, yeah, we really try to keep electricity as far as we possibly can away from clients and away from any wet zones.

Graham: Cool. Yeah, as to whether or not you should wire your tank into a wall, there are pros and cons on either side. For us, personally, we like, again, having the very protected outdoor certified gasket system that goes into the wall directly. For other people, you may be required to have it in the wall or you may just like the safety of it. There’s no right or wrong here is, I guess, what I’m getting down to. Oh, there is a wrong. The wrong is to just have, in my mind, your tank just plugged directly into wall.

Jake: No outlet even? Just like bare wires? Like that might not be the safest.

Graham: Just bare wires.

Jake: That might not be the safest.

Graham: Okay, so there are wrong answers, but maybe no absolute right answer.

Jake: One more note on us tanking our tanks out of our rooms. Keep in mind we are open 24 hours a day, so we do break down our tanks and do some deep cleaning on them and replace caulk lines and things like that. Or if we need to repair flooring in a room, it’s easier to get that tank out of the room. So we definitely break our tanks down from time to time.

Graham: Unfortunately, because it’s a huge hassle. Okay. If you have questions of your own, cruise on down to floattanksolutions.com/podcast.

Jake: All right. Thanks for having us.

Graham: Yep. Thanks everyone.

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