Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
Real estate costs from building out a float center, especially in an urban area, can get costly really quick. Sometimes compromises need to be made. But how much of a compromise is too compromised?
As with the best float center mistakes, Graham and Ashkahn can speak to their personal experience on this issue. They talk about opening a four tank center with less than 1,000 square feet and how much of a mistake it is. They also provide helpful planning tips so you can find out how much space you need at an absolute minimum for your float center.
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: Here we go with today’s question. The one coming in is, “I’m looking at a pretty small space for a four-tank center, a little over 1,000 square feet. How small is too small?“
Ashkahn: How small is too small? Okay.
Graham: I mean we started Float On with four tanks and a little under 1,000 square feet.
Ashkahn: Yes, which was too small.
Graham: It was … That was not big enough.
Ashkahn: It was too small. So that small is too small. I think I can say that.
Graham: The things that you don’t have space for that you might think that you do as you’re building out are things like storage for just about everything you can throw in the float tank center.
Ashkahn: I mean that’s really the one that took us the most by surprise; storage and a back workspace. We’d figured out we wanted the rooms to be a certain size cause the float tank has to fit in there. And we still screwed that up. It’d be nice to have a little bit more room around the filtration system when you want to go work on something.
Graham: That’s what I was going to say for point number three too, was just the ability to actually access your pump systems.
Ashkahn: Alright, well let’s hold on for point number three then. Let’s start with point number one.
Graham: Storage.
Ashkahn: Okay. Storage. Storage, you just need a bunch of stuff. It’s surprising how much stuff you need for a business that’s focused on nothingness. It’s insane. The salt is huge, right? The more salt you can buy the cheaper you get it. So that’s a big chunk of things. And we just started putting salt into our lobby, just making giant salt stacks all around the lobby area.
Graham: They have salt furniture that people can sit on.
Ashkahn: That’s right. Salt people working the front desk.
Graham: And then the other thing, really honestly, it’s a lot of space in order to do the types of cleaning that you need to do, right? So things like actually cleaning off all of the neck pillows in between every person and sanitizing them. That actually takes a lot of space to allow them to dry. An area to dump your filters into a big filter-soaking area and let those both soak and then leave room for them to dry afterwards.
Ashkahn: Definitely way more utility sink space. I did not realize how much having a giant awesome utility sink was the greatest thing in the world.
Graham: We started with a very, very tiny utility sink, which we later upgraded to a slightly larger but still small, one-bay utility sink. And that was not nearly enough.
Ashkahn: No. We’re still … We have a nice three-bay stainless steel utility sink with wings on either side of it. And I still kind of want it to be bigger. I want 12-bay … You just have a giant, huge utility sink running the entire expanse of a wall. It sounds awesome to me.
Graham: When your staff needs to take a break they just go chill out in one of the utility sink bays.
Ashkahn: Yeah. One just has Otter Pops in it waiting for you, just totally decked out.
Graham: So 1,000 square feet is not enough to make any of that happen.
Ashkahn: Just forget about that space.
Graham: So what was point number two, other than storage?
Ashkahn: So we had storage. Point number three is on its way.
Graham: You’re the one who said point number two.
Ashkahn: I said point number two?
Graham: Yeah.
Ashkahn: Um-
Graham: So point number three was being able to move around your pumps, and actually being able to access them and do pump-related repairs and things like that. And even now that we have a little more room-per-float space that we have in our facility, it’s still a little tight. It’s one of the biggest things that we recommend a larger space for, is actually being able to do everything that you’d want around your pumps. Right now it takes us a couple hours to actually disconnect all the parts that tie into a single pump system, just because we have to unhook everything that’s above the pump in order to get down to it. It’s all kind of stacked and compressed in a way that takes up the least amount of space possible.
Ashkahn: For sure. And it’s not enjoyable either. It’s not just that it’s time-consuming. It’s kind of like the idea of going to do something on your pump is like, “Oh man. Okay. I’m going to have to sit crooked and twist my arm back behind this thing for two hours to unscrew this bolt.” It’s not really enjoyable work.
Graham: No. So that was point number three.
Ashkahn: Point number two: I’m going to make up point number two. Point number two is the extreme circumstances where you need to get a float tank in and out of a room or down a hallway. Those are moments where you really appreciate space. Being able to have enough space to have a five-foot hallway instead of a four-foot hallway, or slightly bigger doors, or something like that comes in real handy when you’re trying to navigate a eight-foot or nine-foot tub around a corner. It doesn’t come up very often. We’re not every week pulling float tanks out of our rooms. But when it does, the difference between pulling a float tank out and knocking a wall out or pulling the door frame off to get it through is a pretty big one.
Graham: Definitely. Seating for people going in an out of your float tanks is another big one. If you want a lobby, that’s something. If you want a lobby and a post-float lounge where people can hang out just with people who’ve come out of floats, not with the riffraff coming in off the street. That’s kind of nice.
Ashkahn: So what’s our … We have six tanks now and how many square feet? 1,600-
Graham: We have just above 1,600 square feet with six tanks, and that’s still … We are on the low, low side of square footage for a float tank center.
Ashkahn: And that … Even that number is a bit deceptive, right? Cause we have our 1,600 square foot building. But then in the parking lot behind us, we have a storage until filled with … ranging from extra retail items to extra whatever stuff that we have, supplies. Then we have another storage unit down the street in the parking lot of our office that just holds our salt. So that’s where all of our salt goes. And then we have another storage area under our office in the basement. That’s another, I don’t know, 20 feet by 8 feet, or something like that, that is full of our tools and stuff that we don’t want to put in our flimsy storage units.
Graham: And up in the office we have our actual office space where we can actually meet. We have a bunch of our reference materials, and books, and areas where we can use computers and printers and things like that. Again, we get by with our float tank center with a little over 1,600 square feet. But as far as the space needed to run that float tank center, obviously it expands out actually in many directions outside of there.
Ashkahn: It’s definitely nice. It comes with the very obvious compromise of as soon as you have space, your income is restricted by how many float tanks you can fit into it. I wouldn’t … I don’t think I’d go back. I’m not sure I’d rebuild our space with five float tanks instead of six, necessarily. Even knowing what I know now, because when you can put in a source of income versus making your life slightly nicer it can be a difficult decision to make.
Graham: And I would probably look for something a little bigger though. I’d probably … I really like our six tanks that we have. But the idea of having six tanks in a space that also has even 400 more square feet, or bringing us up into more of the 2,000 square feet region would be really nice for sure. And so that’s actually around what we recommend. Somewhere in the 350 square feet per float tank room that you want, assuming you’re only running floats, up to around 400 square feet per float tank room, is the minimum that we recommend for actually having a sane life and sane storage experience in your float tank center.
Ashkahn: How to do it not like us.
Graham: So with a four-tank center, what would that bring us up to? That’s about 1,400 square feet for a four tank center that we recommend at the minimum?
Ashkahn: With around 400 square feet a tank?
Graham: That’s at 350. So then 400 would be 1,600. So 1,400 to 1,600 square feet in the minimum sense. So a little over 1,000. Again, we did it, and it was very uncomfortable, and we had to compromise in a lot of different places. So it is doable. But more space is definitely preferable
Ashkahn: For sure.
Graham: Thanks for the question, and see you all tomorrow.
Ashkahn: Alright if you guys have other questions for us, you can go to floattanksolutions.com/podcast and submit them there.
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In this post we’ll lay out a general process and timeline of what you may encounter on your path, from initial idea to actually operating a center.
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So you’re thinking about using volunteers in your float center?
Before we clarify what a “volunteer” actually means, we’ll first explore why a float center might be considering them in the first place. While it can be a way to provide floats to people who are otherwise unable to pay, the impulse to bring in volunteers can also stem from a desire to get some sort of free labor (later in this post we’ll dive into why you can’t actually do this, but it’s important to recognize that the instinct is understandable, especially when you have someone lined up and willing to work for free).
In addition to a desired boost in overall productivity, it’s also a way to invite more people into your center to experience what you do. Some customers actually want to help out and see what happens behind the scenes at a center.
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One of the beautiful things about the float tank is that it serves to rejuvenate the whole person. — the body, mind, heart.
Broadly speaking, it’s a tool for homeostasis, an ideal environment that supports balance, health, and growth. This piece will look specifically at floating and athletics. For anyone who defines themselves as an athlete, or as a general pursuant of athletic endeavors, the float tank can be a powerful asset.
In this post, I’ll discuss individual athletes who float and how to look at this from a marketing perspective. I’ll also discuss past and present research, and share some thoughts on how the relationship between the athletic and floating communities might continue to unfold.
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I think it’s time we addressed the giant metaphorical elephant in the salty metaphorical room — there are lots of exaggerated and untrue claims about the benefits of floating being spread around the industry.
Some are anecdotal, some are only half true, and some are just patently false. Floating has historically had a strong oral tradition tied to it — the practice has survived through word-of-mouth, one passionate floater teaching another everything they know. The unfortunate thing about this is that the information disseminated can’t be reliably tested or shared with others on a broader scale. You can’t use “my buddy Chris” as a source for a health benefit of float tanks in a newspaper article, much less for a research paper.
Now that we’re becoming a bit more mainstream, we thought it would be nice to add some clarity to what we should and shouldn’t be telling people about these difficult-to-understand, saliferous containers.
