Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
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.
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: Today’s question for you is, “We want to do some tank maintenance, but we’re worried we’re going to mess everything up.”
Yeah, that’ll do you.
“Should we take things apart just to do it, or should we go with the old adage of, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it?”
Ashkahn: Alright, that’s very general. I wish I knew a little bit more specifics about what they were talking about, but you know. You can’t let fear hold you back! I mean, that’s my general answer.
Graham: Yeah, and there’s just some maintenance that needs to be done, you know?
Ashkahn: So you can’t-
Graham: You can’t wait for things to break either.
Ashkahn: Yeah, the solution shouldn’t be “just don’t touch anything and avert your eyes and pretend like everything’s fine.” So yeah, you should probably do the maintenance you think is important that you should be doing.
Graham: Yeah, and the fact that it’s called “maintenance” and not like, just abstract upgrades, or you know, “I have this sick idea to pimp out my float tank.” Like, should I leave well enough alone-
Ashkahn: Unnecessary labor.
Graham: Yeah, yeah. But you know, things like, yeah, actually … like we talked about during a different episode … draining your tank, and cleaning it out on the inside and refilling it every so often, making sure to get the inside of the pipes. Things like changing your impeller, changing UV bulbs.
Ashkahn: Cleaning the impeller.
Graham: Whoa, did I say changing the impeller?
Ashkahn: Yeah. You don’t need a new impeller, but-
Graham: Cleaning the impeller, getting all the hair out of there. And all of that is regular maintenance that does feel a little intense when you’re doing it for the first time, like actually taking apart your pump, and breaking spindles in the middle of the night, and stuff like that. You know.
Ashkahn: So here’s the deal. Here’s the deal, is when you-
Graham: Break it down for us, Ashkahn!
Ashkahn: Break it down here! When you’re doing maintenance, I think there’s two things that I like to keep as general rules that make all of this go a little bit easier. One of them is to only do one thing at a time. If you have to like change the UV bulbs on all five of your float tanks, or something, do one UV bulb per week. Don’t just spend one day being like, “I’m just gonna do all five tanks at once,” because you know when you do stuff like this, there is a pretty decent chance you’re gonna mess something up.
And even if you don’t mess anything up, like you put it all back together, and it’s just kind of leaking all of a sudden. And there’s just stuff like that happens, like way more than you would want or think that it would. And sometimes it’s to the point that your float tank is kind of down. You’re gonna need to spend a few days fixing it.
So, only doing one thing at a time allows it so that, one you have time to deal with stuff when it goes wrong, and also, if, in the worst case scenario, something happens to some point that you do actually have to cancel floats for that next day or two days or something, if you just have one float tank down that’s a lot easier than having all of your float tanks down all of a sudden. You may be able to scoot appointments around to the point where you don’t even actually have to call and cancel on anyone, if you’ve just got one float tank down.
So that’s usually what we like to do. We never took on more than one maintenance task like that for our float tanks per week. And the other thing that is a really nice rule to kind of keep is basically, usually this maintenance has, there’s a certain amount of pieces in whatever machinery you’re taking apart that are really easy to break. So like when you’re replacing UV bulbs, the glass tube around the UV bulb, the court sleave, or the bulb itself, or basically giant long pieces of thin glass, those are easy to break. In pumps, there’s usually like a little porcelain spindle kind of holding the impeller in place. That thing’s really easy to break.
Graham: Really easy to break, yeah.
Ashkahn: See, we’ve broken so many of them! So, I kind of have it as a rule that we do not ever open anything. A pump, a UV light, we don’t unscrew or start messing with anything, unless I have spares of those fragile pieces already on hand. Because the spares are usually pretty cheap, you know, those spindles cost like ten dollars. But not having one and breaking one means it’s three days, or four days before you’re gonna have to get that emergency shipped to you, and that’s just like three or four days that your float tank is down.
So that can be a really big difference in how screwed you are when you break something. So, those are kind of main things, don’t do more than one thing a day, and if you ever touch anything, make sure you already have spares of the fragile parts available to you.
Graham: Yeah, and if you’re really nervous, or it’s expensive machinery that you’re talking about here, like actually doing maintenance on your UV system, or doing maintenance on your pump, it doesn’t hurt to look online for the manual, to check in with the manufacturer. They have technical departments that you can talk to and make sure that you’re doing things right. Like taking apart your pump, you actually need a calibrated torque wrench, where you can like exactly know how many pounds of pressure that you’re putting into-
Ashkahn: Sometimes, sometimes. Not all times.
Graham: Yes, okay, fine. Some pumps you need that, right? And if you don’t know which pump they are, it can cause problems.
Ashkahn: That’s true, yeah, you can tighten things and it’ll like warp the-
Graham: The actual pump housing. And that, you need an entire spare pump to fix. So don’t be afraid to reach out for help and guidance, too, again both from manuals, and from technical departments.
Ashkahn: And you’re really gonna be surprised how few parts are inside of these pieces of equipment, than you think. Like the first time I took a pump apart I was like, “Oh boy!” And I opened it, and I’m like, “Wait, there’s three pieces in here? That’s it?”
And like a UV light, a lot of people’s UV lights, those kind of Delta UV ones and stuff, if you open up those, it’s literally just a tube. There’s like a glass tube and a light bulb in it, and the rest is just a big, open, empty, hollow cylinder. Like so you know, it’s nice. It’s nice to like understand what these things are and how they work, and that way, in the future, if you notice something is having a problem, you probably have a better chance of kind of understanding what’s going on, and understanding if it’s important or if it can wait. Getting comfortable with your equipment is really useful.
Graham: Yep, and the first time that you change your UV sheaths and bulb, just plan on having like two backups or something like, those are often the easiest things to break. I think in our shop, that’s like the biggest kind of serious maintenance thing that has gone wrong, yeah, just over and over again.
Ashkahn: Broken a lot of spindles, too! Yeah, and separate the UV thing. If you’re worried about breaking glass, you don’t want it to be connected to the rest of your float tank system, so if you do break something you can like totally flush it out and clean it without any concern of any glass getting into your float tank.
Graham: Yeah, that.
Ashkahn: I mean yeah, we can … If we had more specific idea of what-
Graham: Maintenance-
Ashkahn: What you’re trying to do, we could give a more specific answer, but in general, that’s it. Like do it, it’s probably not gonna be quite as crazy as you think, but make sure you’re going into it-
Graham: Plan for the worst.
Ashkahn: -prepared. Yeah, yeah. Make sure the worst case scenario is not gonna totally screw you over and bring all your float tanks down.
Graham: And don’t wait for something to break. I mean, doing regular maintenance is absolutely the way to extend the life of your float tanks, and pay the least amount of money, and stuff like that.
Ashkahn: And it’s good, what we do at our shop is we take all this bigger routine maintenance and we just, we schedule it out across a year. So we’ll use like our Helm software with these task generators, and set these things to show up, like these tasks, to pop up one week apart. So, we’ll go through six weeks of clean the impeller in room one, and then clean the impeller in room two, and then clean the impeller in room three, and then six weeks of changing our UV bulbs, and then six weeks of draining and filling our tanks one tank at a time.
And as we do, you know … and there’s enough stuff like, that to kind of like every week, there’s one big task that needs to be done. And so if you, yeah, you can actually sit down and kind of plan out like your year of maintenance.
Graham: Cool, and if you have anymore questions for us, head on over to floattanksolutions.com/podcast.
Recent Podcast Episodes
What are average floater return rates? – DSP 84
Getting repeat customers is integral to the health of any business. For float centers, this is especially true. It can be worrying when we see our floaters leave the center, never knowing if they’ll return. There’s a very natural inclination to start tracking this trend to see if there’s anything you need to change about your business to attract repeat customers. Memberships are a natural way to attract repeat customers and can quickly become the lifeblood of your center, too.
But how do you measure it? What time frame is acceptable to consider a repeat customer? If they don’t float within six months, does that mean you’ve lost them? If they float once and don’t return for three years, is that a success on your part or a failure?
Graham and Ashkahn tackle all of this and more this time around. Check it out!
How to handle ‘Summer Slump’ in your float center – DSP 83
Many a float center has hit their first summer and seen their schedule thin out. What causes this? Is it just a seasonal thing? What about places that don’t really have seasons? Or tourist towns? What exactly causes this and what are some good tips to combat it? Graham and Ashkahn address this phenomenon head on in this episode.
Addressing customer misinformation – DSP 82
Every float center owner has to deal with customers who get, maybe, a little overenthusiastic about the float experience. What is the best way to deal with customers who say things that are just patently false about the benefits of floating? Do you just let it slide? Do you correct them and potentially offend your customer? It’s not their fault, they’re just excited. It doesn’t seem right to punish them.
This is definitely a tightrope walk type of conversation and it can have an impact on your customers and your reputation as a business, as well as the whole industry. As stewards of the tank, Graham and Ashkahn offer their advice on how best to have this difficult conversation and offer some resources to help with it as well.
Our Report on the Chinese Float Conference – DSP 81
Ashkahn went to China and brought another one of the owners of Float On along, Jake. The two of them share their experiences of visiting the Chinese Float Conference this year and learning about all of the developments in the Chinese float industry, which seems to have exploded in just the last couple of years.
Handling Common Client Concerns: Claustrophobia – DSP 80
This is something pretty much every float center deals with on a regular basis. The first objection that a lot of people will say when they first hear about floating is “Oh, I’m too claustrophobic for that”. Which… feels like getting shut down straight out of the gate.
Graham and Ashkahn, as seasoned float center owners, have heard this all too often and are not only familiar with it, but have some excellent ideas as to why this is the first major objection people throw out there as well as good ways to combat this concern.
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