Slip Proofing Your Float Tanks and Float Rooms – DSP 220

The solution inside float tanks is slippery. Really really slippery. What is the best way to make sure that float customers aren’t slipping and falling before or after their floats.

Ashkahn and Graham break down the various steps needed for slip proofing for inside the float tank, the first step out of the tank, the rest of the float room, your hallways, or inside your workrooms.

TUFF Coat

Takiron Pathways 

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

Ashkahn: All right.

Graham: All right.

Ashkahn: Hey, how’s it going out there.

Graham: Welcome.

Ashkahn: Welcome.

Graham: So, I’m Graham.

Ashkahn: And I’m Ashkahn.

Graham: And today’s question is, “I’m worried about floaters slipping and falling. What’s the most surefire, foolproof way to prevent it?”

Ashkahn: Nice. I thought that one needed a little backing track.

Graham: Cool, and it was a good backing track. I enjoyed it. Just, what do you think about the question?

Ashkahn: Oh, right. So, it’s a good question.

Graham: It was a good backing track, too.

Ashkahn: Here’s the deal. Yeah, the floor in a float tank is very slippery.

Graham: You can get things that are specifically labeled “slip-proof” and put them on the floor of a float room and they will definitely not stop slipping with the salt water.

Ashkahn: Yeah, this is more slippery than pools, spas, gyms, all these other kinds of banana peels. Banana peels can be pretty slippery. I’ve seen a few documentaries about it.

Graham: You mean Mario Kart?

Ashkahn: Yeah, normal slip resistant tiles, slip resistant stuff that’s really made for these kind of normal wet environments, even some things made for kitchens. Kitchen stuff can be a little bit better if it’s really good for oils and things. But even some of those don’t really hold up to how slippery the salt can be.

Graham: It kind of makes sense. Without even stepping on it, or playing around with things, just kind of dipping your hand into the saltwater and rubbing it between your fingers-

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: It just feels slipperier, you know?

Ashkahn: Viscous. it’s got viscosity. So it’s pretty slippery, and it’s slippery in the float tank and out of the float tank, especially the process of getting out of the float tank.

Graham: Yeah, like standing up inside of the float tank to stepping out of it.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: That first step, really, like on both sides-

Ashkahn: It’s a doozy.

Graham: Did you just come up with that?

Ashkahn: Yeah, so really, the way we picture it is just like a layer of Epsom salt on the bottom of your foot, and you’re almost hydroplaning on that first step. It’s just thick. There’s a couple of different things to talk about here, I think. Let’s start with the inside of the float tank, because I-

Graham: That was what I was going to say, actually. I thought you were going to disagree with me, so this is-

Ashkahn: Let’s talk about outside your center.

Graham: I think inside the float tank was good.

Ashkahn: All right so give you cleats. Different float tank manufacturers do different levels of slip resistance on the inside of the float tanks.

Graham: Yeah.

Ashkahn: Some of them are decent, and some of them I kind of personally think are not enough. I definitely have seen a couple of float tanks out there where it’s, to me, personally just feels a little too slippery on the inside of the float tank for my comfort.

Graham: We worry about things, and this very question, a lot. It’s something that we’ve paid a lot of attention to, and we’ve actually gone back both on our kind of custom-produced tanks that we have for our big open pools they float on, and also for some of our pre-manufactured tanks, added some extra slip proof thing to the interior bottom just to kind of be extra safe and make sure that there’s more grip in there.

Ashkahn: Specifically, we use a product called Tuff Coat, and this is a product that’s used for-

Graham: T-U-F-F in case you were-

Ashkahn: T-U-F-F Coat, yeah, exactly. This is a product that’s used a lot sometimes for piers and boats, and different things like that. It’s a product that you can either spray or paint on. You’ll most likely be painting it on for kind of the small surface you have to apply it to, and you can get different levels of kind of grip in it, and it’s usually rubber that they kind of shred up and put in there to create that traction. It works really well. It lasts, it can hold up to the Epsom salt in the float tank.

Graham: Yeah, we used to do it initially for rooms five and six just when we were kind of getting them together.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: It’s been-

Ashkahn: Years.

Graham: Yeah, four years at least, I think, since we did that. Maybe four and a half.

Ashkahn: And it comes in a lot of different colors, too, so you can match it to the color of your float tank.

Graham: Maroon, for example. For all those maroon float tank owners out there. Don’t worry.

Ashkahn: Because we just put it on the bottom. We don’t typically go up the sides with it or anything like that.

Graham: Burgundy. Any color, really.

Ashkahn: Any shade of red. Here’s the downside is that it takes a week to cure.

Graham: As we’re doing this podcast we actually have one our tanks curing with Tuff Coat right now.

Ashkahn: It’s on our minds. So you have to drain a tank. It’s hard to store the tank water for a week somewhere. You can top it off into other tanks and stuff like that, but it’s basically one of your float tanks has to be empty for a week.

Graham: That can be done before you open, which is ideal.

Ashkahn: That’s really ideal. If you’re getting your float center up and running, if you think that this is going to be something that your float tank doesn’t come with in terms of slip resistance, plan on doing it before you open. Just hit all your float tanks. It’s pretty easy to do, like the actual application process is pretty simple. Then, it’s just the wait time that takes so long.

Graham: Yeah, and I mean, I will say it’s not like a 100% solution, I would say. I mean, it is for the slip proofing, but little balls, the kind of little bits of rubber that are mixed in there, for a little bit after you apply will kind of come off-

Ashkahn: Yeah, but that goes away.

Graham: and filtered off. Yeah, just go away. It looks a little whiter were the little bits fell off as opposed to a single color that you got before.

Ashkahn: But it is freaking slip resistant.

Graham: It’s awesome.

Ashkahn: That, like which-

Graham: For safety, which for us is well worth it. You know, we’ll compromise the tiny bit of aesthetics in order for-

Ashkahn: You can walk on it, and it feels real comfortable. You feel like you have a solid footing.

Graham: Yeah, nor does it feel too sharp or anything. It’s not like you step in there and it’s so gritty that it’s uncomfortable on your feet or anything like that. Even if you have tender feet. So, that’s inside the float tank.

Ashkahn: That’s inside.

Graham: Also, in addition to what you actually step on, grab bars everywhere. Just having tanks that have really easy grab bars, and things that you can support yourself with from the inside, from the outside, when you’re building your shower area, having grab bars everywhere on every wall that you can kind of move to. Just if someone does slip, having human beings naturally are reaching out for something to grab on to if we’re falling down. So, having those things there and making sure that they’re properly mounted and can support weight, I’d say that’s step two even for inside the tank, is something to grab on to.

Ashkahn: Yeah, I mean it’s a lot harder to add your own grab bars inside of a float tank.

Graham: Oh yeah, but hopefully-

Ashkahn: Definitely outside and stuff like that, it should be no question.

Graham: Hopefully your tanks come pre-prepared as far as grab bars are concerned.

Ashkahn: Most float tanks have done a good job placing grab bars on the inside.

Graham: Yeah, or at least handles or-

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: Yeah.

Ashkahn: So then comes the interesting thing about the outside, which really is that first step’s a doozy. You know, the amount that you have to do to make the first step okay versus every step beyond that is they’re kind of like different levels. There’s a lot of things that we’ll see float centers do is if the whole room doesn’t have really, really good slip resistance, they’ll put something else specifically right in front of the float tank.

Graham: Small animals. Just something to absorb the saltwater before you-

Ashkahn: This ranges from towels to that kind of like plastic almost locker room or pool decking sort of material to-

Graham: Boards with wooden slats.

Ashkahn: Wooden slats, things like that. It’s interesting. Stuff like that makes it really slip resistant, which is nice. There’s a lot of float centers that will do that, which I think is if your floor is not slip resistant enough, definitely put something like that in front of it. But if you can not have something like that, I think it’s better. It’s nice to not have to deal with cleaning those things. Usually they have a lot of holes in them to make them slip resistant so the water goes through, and that means hair gets caught in them. If it’s towels, that kind of needs to be replaced every time. Wood can get damaged. Some people put bath mats, those need to be cleaned all the time. It’s just like one more thing that you have to deal with in each of the float tank rooms.

Graham: And it’s still a little worrisome that someone’s foot could still be salty after stepping off of their slatted wood box, and now the rest of the room is still not slip proofed as well. You know, it really is ideal for many reasons, if the entire floor can be slip proofed.

Ashkahn: But it takes a lot more work.

Graham: And money.

Ashkahn: The difference between having something in front of a float tank for those first steps or two, or maybe like leading people into the shower, which is hopefully really close versus having your entire floor really solid, it’s just a different scale of slip resistance that you need to go to.

Graham: I mean, you’re adding on thousands more dollars-

Ashkahn: Yeah, yeah.

Graham: To your construction costs.

Ashkahn: But there are stuff out there. You can get things that are slip resistant, like real slip resistant. You can step right out of the float tank onto them and feel like you have a solid footing.

Graham: Carpet? Carpet on the inside of your float room. Very slip resistant.

Ashkahn: Yeah, grass. Just lay some grass down.

Graham: You gotta get the type that likes Epsom saltwater, though, which is a little harder to find.

Ashkahn: Yeah, succulents or something.

Graham: Yeah, so what are a couple of options for the slip proofing?

Ashkahn: Yeah, the kind of two most common ones we see are some sort of epoxy flooring with grit mixed into the epoxy.

Graham: Yeah, and that can be, again, things like rubber beads and stuff like that. In our case, we use kind of quartz crystal added in for grit. There’s a bunch of things. Pretty much anything gritty that you can imagine, you can throw it into epoxy and it will kind of mesh with it.

Ashkahn: This is a job where you’d hire someone to do, and they would be putting in the slip resistance themselves often, so you can say, “Hey, I want to make sure I this amount of grit in it,” or somethings they’ll even make the top layer thinner so that the grit in the very top layer of the coating comes through more.

Graham: Yeah, and you can actually even have them prepare little samples for you that have different levels of grit in them so you can play around with them, maybe these are just little 18 inch by 18 inch samples, or even 18 inch by a foot, or something like that, so you can both feel them with your feet and your hands. Also, get your feet kind of salty and see what that feels like on there.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: It really gives you this nice customization over how much grit you have in there, because it’s this balance always between you do want to make it so they’re not slipping anywhere on the floor, really, in my mind, but also you have to clean it up after every single person. The more grit you add, the more it turns into a towel/sponge destroyer.

Ashkahn: Yeah, it’s like trying to clean sandpaper.

Graham: Yeah. So if you are trying to hit this level where its gritty enough that it’s safe, then go no further. Yeah, getting little test samples is a great way to do that.

Ashkahn: There are other types of flooring, too. There is this kind of laminate sheet flooring called Takiron, specifically as the one that we think is the most slip resistant that we’ve come across.

Graham: Yeah, and then Pathways is the product line, kind of a thin Takiron-

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: That we end up using.

Ashkahn: Yeah, so this is like a material that you would lay down in sheets or, some professional installer, theoretically, would be laying down in sheets on your floor and they kind of heat weld the seams between them. Instead of grit mixed into them or anything like that, they just have an embossed pattern in the actual material itself which causes the slip resistancy-ness.

Graham: Yeah, and it feels really good. Definitely stepping out we have a couple of rooms that have the Takiron Pathways flooring, and stepping out of the tank directly onto it, we don’t feel like we need an extra towel or some extra measure there to prevent slipping. It just does feel really safe and sound when you’re getting out of the tank.

Ashkahn: Yeah, safe and sound. It also-

Graham: Well, you gotta have safe and sound. That first step’s a doozy, you know? What are you going to do otherwise?

Ashkahn: It’s also easier to clean than epoxy flooring or things with grit in it, which is nice.

Graham: Yeah, for sure. A little less of that cheese grater kind of feeling to it.

Ashkahn: You know, and then there’s tiling. Tiling can get tricky because they make slip resistant tiling, but I often find that it is not up to what I would want it to be in terms of slip resistance for a kind of big piece of square or regular pieces of tile.

Graham: And then they make really slip resistant tiling that almost have grooves in it. That just isn’t as easy to clean, or as comfortable on the feet necessarily as the other solutions we talked about, so I’m sure there is porcelain tile out there, which is the type of tile you want to use that you do get it is slip resistant. But normally in a setup for a shower or something like that, what you see is people just using smaller tiles, and the edges of the tiles with the grout lines are kind of what gives it it’s slip resistance. Once again, in our float rooms that kind of simple solution that normal people use is not nearly slip resistant enough for our application. So, you have to turn to actual textured tiles, and that’s where it also either seems like not enough, or almost like too much than some other ones I’ve seen.

Ashkahn: Yeah, and the best tiles I think we found for actual slip resistance is kind of like pebble tiling, things that seem like little river rocks. It’s just because they have a huge amount of grout that goes between them. It’s just grout lines all over, and because there’s such big areas of grout, it’s just in kind of the difference in height of all the pebbles and stuff make for a decent surface to stand on. But those floors are kind of tricky for other reasons. The rocks are not usually sealed enough for the salt to not really damage them over time.

Graham: Yeah, and even if they are totally sealed, it’s going to be a really expensive floor-

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: A, because that’s a lot of epoxy grout that you’re talking about putting in between these irregular spaces between stones.

Ashkahn: Yeah, multiple times more than what you would do for big 12 inch by 12 inch tiles or something.

Graham: And tilers really don’t like working with the kind of river rock type stones, and they really, really don’t like working with epoxy grout, which means if you’re putting these in, you’re definitely going to be paying a premium and it’s just hard to get them to look nice-

Ashkahn: Yeah, they’re hard to clean.

Graham: Grout is supposed to be taking up this little bit of space between tiles, so when you essentially have kind of almost rivers of grout going across your room, it’s very difficult to get that even and smooth, and even to the point where it will stay clean and not get dirty over time and show some it’s wear and tear. If you can’t tell, we’ve had this kind of flooring-

Ashkahn: Yeah, we’ve been through that.

Graham: In a couple of rooms, so it’s very real world issues that we ran into.

Ashkahn: It was kind of a headache. But it was slip resistant. You could stand on it, you could step out of the float tank onto it, and it felt slip resistant.

Graham: And it is ultimately one of the only floors that we tore out that didn’t fail. Sealed tile with the epoxy grout was still holding up fine, but aesthetically it wasn’t great. Yeah, water kind of pooled in between things. It was harder to get it to drain properly. There were just other issues with that floor that led to us kind of relinquishing it. Afterwards, it’s not like we immediately went back to figure out a better way to put in pebble tile floors. We went to doing the kind of epoxy resin and Takiron Pathways. Novalac is a brand of epoxy. My brain got caught up in flooring land there for a second. It will happen to you, too.

Ashkahn: I guess it should also be noted that the hallways outside your float rooms can also be slippery. People put their shoes on, they come out, maybe they go to the restroom in their bare feet. They’re bringing just some normal water and stuff out with them into the lobby. So, you want to be careful there, too. You don’t want to just think that  your float room is the only thing you think about in terms of slip resistance. Think about your hallways and stuff like that as well. It’s not quite as intense. You don’t necessarily have to put Takiron all the way through your hallway. You can do something slightly less intense with that, and I think it will be okay.

Graham: Although some people do.

Ashkahn: Some people do.

Graham: And that’s cool. Yeah.

Ashkahn: It doesn’t look bad. Takiron looks pretty nice.

Graham: Yeah, for sure. I mean, more than even the customers, to me. Your staff are cleaning rooms-

Ashkahn: Yeah, especially during cleaning.

Graham: Your space sometimes.

Ashkahn: For sure.

Graham: To get those transition times done, and-

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: Running from float room straight into a less slip proof hallway is a great way to have someone-

Ashkahn: It’s a doozy. Yeah.

Graham: We’ve had a couple of staff who almost do and then didn’t, and then eventually we ended up tearing out the floor in our hallway and redoing it with more grit just to kind of help protect against that. That is the downside of kind of getting this wrong from the beginning. If you guess how much slip proofing you want, and it wasn’t slip proof enough, you’re either going to have towels everywhere, or you’re tearing up floors in order to fix it. So, yeah, one of those things that’s worth playing around with. Probably even just visiting other float tank centers to make sure that you feel confident with the answer that you’re providing for slip proofing on the floor, specifically.

Another thing to get right from the beginning. So going back to grab bars and putting those everywhere, they aren’t something that you can add easily after the fact because you would need to, on your actual studs and when you’re going down to that base level of construction, have supports there so that your grab bar isn’t just going into raw dry wall or something like that. Nothing, just the width of a single stud isn’t going to be enough to actually attach a firm support to. You need to plan ahead at the right height where you’d want grab bars, actually mark off, put supports there. We even recommend putting extra supports in the room just in case you want to, in the future, add different grab bars, or maybe even reorient your float tank so it’s facing a different direction.

Ashkahn: They’re so easy to add in at the beginning. You’re just talking about a few extra pieces of two by four.

Graham: Yeah, and then later on you’re talking about cutting through waterproofing, cutting through soundproofing, going down to the studs, redoing and patching all of that just to add on a grab bar, so you almost can’t add on too many extra supports at grab bar height at the beginning when your rooms are under construction. So, another little pro tip there. If you can’t tell, we also got this wrong and had to chop through while I was adding supports for grab bars, so yeah, one of those things.

Ashkahn: It’s terrifying. I mean did it right, too. I mean at some point we installed the backing and then we went to add the grab bars, and we were doing it through some tiling we had on the wall. It was a very nerve-wracking moment. It was like we had a diamond bit to cut through the tiling, which then had a waterproof membrane behind it, which then had our soundproofing drywall behind it. Which then hopefully going to hit this grab bar spot that we drew out in a map and measured before we built all this stuff into it. And it was just kind of a huge, “Okay, I hope we took these measurements right,” sort of thing. And we did. We hit it, which was a huge relief.

Graham: Yeah, so that’s if you do things right-

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: Somebody else will have to cut into walls to fix things when we get them wrong too.

Ashkahn: Just make yourself a big margin of error, I think, is a nice thing to do too.

Graham: Yeah, for sure. In your lobby, you don’t really need to worry about slip proofing too much, I guess just to kind of continue the trail out of the float room.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: Severe slip proofing for the very first step out of a float tank. You need less, but it’s still worthwhile to have it in the rest of the float room, to a lesser degree in the hallway. Oh, the work room, we also didn’t talk about. Definitely worth it. I mean, you’re going to be tracking so much saltwater into your work area.

Ashkahn: You’re doing a lot of cleaning, it’s also a very wet environment.

Graham: Filters, they’re tracking saltwater.

Ashkahn: Yeah.

Graham: Maybe it’s even soap that kind of gets spilled on the floor. Yeah, for many reasons beyond saltwater, I guess, it’s worthwhile to have some slip proofing in your work room, too. And chemical resistance in that one, too. You don’t need as much in your float rooms, but in the work room where you could actually be spilling acids and stuff like that, it’s nice to have a little slip proofing and chemical proofing. Hiring someone just to hold people’s hands, can be an experience. Can be really useful.

Ashkahn: Boy Scouts. Yeah, so this really is a good thing to think about. We talk a lot about how float tanks are not risky, and for this reason and that reason, they’re kind of they can be really safe.

Graham: Oh, so much fun. You get to learn about yourself.

Ashkahn: This is really one of the areas where I think float tanks are particularly more dangerous than a lot of other things.

Graham: Death traps, yeah.

Ashkahn: They really have a lot of saltwater, and the saltwater is very slippery. It’s an important thing to think about and be diligent about as your building your center, or an important thing to do retrofitting for.

Graham: And if you have your own questions, go on over to FloatTankSolutions.com/Podcast, and let us know about them. Share them with the world, you know? Let other people learn from your curiosity.

Ashkahn: All right, we’ll talk to you tomorrow.

Graham: Bye everyone.

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