Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
Getting a tank in your house and floating some people is a great first step on the path to opening a float center. It helps you figure out exactly what the maintenance is going to be like, along with just the experience of floating other people and introducing them to this neat salty practice.
There are things to consider and there’s a right way and a wrong way to run a home based float center. First thing to consider is your local laws for small businesses and making sure you comply with those. Additionally, you need to decide if you’re just floating friends and family or if you’re going to have paying customers. This is also going to impact what type of float tank you should use and the demands you should consider on your house. Graham and Ashkahn have seen plenty of these and share the best practices as they’ve seen them laid out.
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Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Ashkahn: What’s our question?
Graham: Boy, am I glad you asked. It is kind of a long one, actually. “My question is in reference to DSP 107”, which that’s what we call it on iTunes now. We abbreviate it as DSP.
Ashkahn: First question based off another question. I like this.
Graham: For DSP 107, which for those of you not in the know, means Daily Solutions Podcast episode number 107 …
Ashkahn: Yeah, it’s a classic one.
Graham: Best of. Best of. “I’m slowly working towards starting a float center, but my time frame is roughly one year out.” That sounds ambitious. It’s probably more like two years, first of all. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. “I was wondering if you guys have any advice/guidelines about starting as one tank in your home. I’ve heard you guys mention this a few times here and there. What kind of guidelines would I need to abide by if was to charge money? Would I have to treat it just like it was a multiple-tank business? Anything helps. Thanks for everything.”
Ashkahn: All right, the old tank-a-roony in your house. Yeah, we have talked about this before, because we often mention it as a nice stepping stone in the process of opening a float center. As you’re on your path towards figuring things out and finding a location and all that sort of stuff, it can be nice to get a float tank, put it in your house, and just start to get a feel for what it’s like, what the cleaning’s like, what the maintenance is like, how much of your house is going to be destroyed by salt.
It just helps you get a good sense for what dealing with a float tank is like, and you get to float and you get to get your friends to come float and you get to start spreading the word on floating by having people actually get to experience it. There’s all these benefits like that of having a float tank that you can start out with in your home, but there are some questions like this person is asking that need to go along with that concept.
Graham: What does it involve? How do I do it? Am I breaking the law?
Ashkahn: Let’s start with that, the breaking the law.
Graham: Hold on, hold on, hold on. Breaking the law, breaking the law. Let’s not talk about that on the air yet. There’s a couple other benefits to having a float tank in your home that I think too, just before we go on to the how, more the why, one of which is especially if you are going to open up a bigger center, like a four- or five-tank center.
The idea of having one that you actually get to play around with and test for even a few months or a year before you make that final purchase of a bunch of units is nice. You might find that you actually don’t enjoy the float that that tank provides, or how easy it is to take care of behind the scenes or something like that, and if you do like it you can just put that float tank immediately into your business, which is nice. It’s not like you then have this home tank that you need to use for your home and you’re still going to be buying five extra float tanks for your center.
You can reuse it or again, if you find out that you might want a different type of float tank, you can resell the one that you had in your home and invest in other float tanks that might be better for your center. There’s just a little feeling it out and making sure that you’re ending up with a product that you want to stock in your full center.
Ashkahn: Yeah, and it’s pretty easy to sell float tanks used, which is nice.
Graham: Yeah, there’s even a float web site for it. UsedFloatTanks.com.
Ashkahn: I wonder who runs that.
Graham: We’ll find out one day.
Ashkahn: Now we’ve convinced you. You want to put a float tank into your house.
Graham: The why is done now. You can move on to breaking the law.
Ashkahn: There’s a jump between you floating and having your friends floating, and charging people money to come to your house and float, and that line is the law.
Graham: Just like there’s a line between baking a casserole for you and your family and baking a casserole and serving it to strangers.
Ashkahn: Yeah, and this is just going to be different from place to place. Different jurisdictions have different rules regarding home businesses, and zoning and everything that would be involved in that sort of thing, so you’re going to have to do a little bit of research in your area. Most of the time there’s usually some sort of rules that would allow you to do this above board and get the proper permit and stuff like that to have something like this set up in your house.
Graham: Often it involves going through the city and getting a permit to do it. It involves checking in with your neighbors very often, making sure that no one immediately around you has a problem with you running a business out of your home of a certain type. Often there’s traffic restrictions, like you need to not have any more than a certain number of visitors a day or more than a certain number of cars parked out front.
Again, I think a lot of the laws around residential businesses revolve around making sure that no one that you’re right next to is going to feel an impact from suddenly all these cars and people coming in and out and noise and things like that. When I’ve looked into it in different areas, it almost always has this very strong element of checking in and just making sure that it’s all right with the people around you.
Ashkahn: You may find, now that float tank regulations from place to place are getting a little bit more existent or now that that world is developing a little bit, there might be some places where you run into possibly bigger hurdles than other places. There are some regulations out there that require things like floor drains in your room. That’s part of the necessity of opening up, that they actually have a rule for stuff like that.
You could find yourself in a position where it might not be as easy to put a float tank into your house if you do have to do some actual construction or something to alter the room to meet the rules. You might be able to get waivers and exemptions too to stuff like that, and it’s probably not very many places where you’d run into that at the current moment, but that could be something that might be in front of you.
Graham: I guess that’s a good point too. Even without being a commercial business, you can still have a float tank in your house, and float friends and relatives and yourself and get a lot of the benefits that we were even talking about early on about having a float tank in your house, without being fully set up as a commercial business and even really letting money exchange hands or letting total strangers in to float or anything like that.
Really, a lot of this stuff is related directly to once you decide that you want to accept money, especially if you’re advertising anywhere, putting yourself out as a float business. All of these make it seem like you really are running something commercially out of your home, as opposed to you just have a float tank that other people can get access to.
Ashkahn: Yeah, and what your setup is, I think probably changes a little bit at the point you start charging money. If you’re not charging money it’s a lot easier to … Maybe there’s a little bit of noise that gets in here or there, or you’re just not quite fully set up to be accommodating to strangers, but at the point that you’re charging for a service, I feel like you got to step your game up a little bit. You maybe do want to invest in some good blackout curtains to really make sure there’s no light leaks and you probably want to make sure that the float tank is decently close to a bathroom with a shower in it so people don’t have to be walking through your house with a towel.
Graham: Covered in salt.
Ashkahn: Yeah. There’s just a few more accommodations like that that I think you need to figure out as you change from floating your friends to floating customers.
Graham: Yeah, and there does seem to be a difference, too, between people who do have a tank in their house as an interim and they’re planning on developing into a center in the future versus people who actually are just setting up a full-on float tank center in their house and that’s where they want it to be, and maybe they’ll expand to a center someday but there are two- and three-tank centers that people are operating just out of their homes with a commercial residential license.
Those I got on this track because I was thinking that very much is the case with them, especially, right? It’s like a whole section of their house is almost set up like a business. You can go into a lot of these places that are home float tank centers and you barely even recognize them as a home for how they’re set up.
Ashkahn: Depending on how long you’re doing this, it gets more serious the more you’re thinking of this as a permanent installation. If you’re thinking of this as a stepping stone, you maybe can get away with not having to worry as much about waterproofing and stuff like that, but if you’re really, seriously trying to put float tanks into your house and run it as a home float tank center, you’re probably going to want to step your game up in terms of the waterproofing and what you’re doing to protect the rooms or you’re just going to destroy your house. It’s going to doubly suck. Your business and your home will be ruined simultaneously.
Graham: Yeah, there’s no getting around it. If you’re only having a float tank in there for a year and you’re only doing scattered appointments, it’s like all that damage is stretched out a little bit over time, so you don’t see as much just immediate destructive qualities of salt when something’s in your home as opposed to in a commercial space.
Ashkahn: It should be noted, too, that I think there’s some nice things that come with having a float tank in your house, especially if you are using it as a stepping stone and you’re trying to get a feel. It’s not just getting a feel for the operations and maintenance and salt of the float tank center, but it’s a really nice way to talk to people.
When someone comes out of a float and you have one float tank and it’s in your house, they very often will just hang out with you for another 30, 45 minutes, sitting down on your couch and chatting. That’s a really great place to get feedback on what their experience was like, if they got cold or hot or if they heard noises. You’ll just get a lot of those great one-on-one interactions with people as they’re floating under your belt, which will be very informative, I think, going into opening a commercial space.
Graham: It’s true. You just meet lots of cool people if you’re running a float tank out of your house. Maybe even more so, as far as being able to sit down for just 40 minutes. I guess this is true of one-tank centers in general that aren’t home-based, but if that’s all you have is one customer and there’s no one coming in after and it’s just you there, that’s your only responsibility is to hang out with them, which is pretty cool. Yeah, there are perks that even commercial centers don’t get sometimes for running a smaller home-built float center.
Ashkahn: I will say, the other thing to consider, if you’re getting a float tank and you’re putting it in your house and you’re starting to get to the point where you’re having multiple people come a day and they’re customers and stuff like that, you should have a commercial float tank in your house, because they make home float tanks that have sanitation systems that are made for home use, but if you’re at the point that you’re doing a higher-capacity thing, then you need to get a proper float tank for it.
Or you just need to realize that you’re using a home float tank and you probably need to filter for hours between people instead of the 15 minutes that people do in commercial setting, but even that might not totally be enough to be doing the commercial level of sanitation that people are doing in brick-and-mortar float centers.
Graham: Yeah, as soon as you and your family are opening anything up to things that aren’t you and your family, especially with sanitation concerns, there just becomes this added risk involved of now strangers are getting into the tank and other strangers are getting in after them and cross-contamination, I guess, just outside of people in your immediate sphere becomes a little more of a risk.
Ashkahn: You should consider that that’s where the home-use tank stops, is at the point that it’s not just you and your close friends and family using it for your own recreational purpose.
Graham: Occasional pets or whatever, yeah. Alright. Yeah, hopefully that was a good … Let’s see, did we miss any parts of this? Guidelines, would I treat it like it’s a multiple-tank business? Anything helps, thanks for everything. No, I think we got it.
Ashkahn: Yay, good. Inhaled another one. All right. If you guys have any other questions you want to send us, especially if you reference other episodes, like DSP …
Graham: Makes us feel very official. Very important.
Ashkahn: Yeah, it’s nice. Go over to FloatTankSolutions.com/podcast. You can enter your questions there, and we’ll talk to you tomorrow.
Recent Podcast Episodes
Are Tankless Water Heaters the Best? – DSP 270
Graham and Jake take on talking about Tankless or “On Demand” water heaters today. They break down a lot of the benefits of them compared to storage water heaters like the fact that they provide a nearly limitless source of hot water, require less energy consumption, etc. They’re not perfect though, and any float center considering one should look closely on how best to implement them. Jake shares some of the pitfalls of them as well as how to maximize their usefulness.
Should Float Centers use Light or Heavy Gauge Studs? – DSP 269
Still no Ashkahn today. He’s taking a couple of post-conference days to himself.
Jake and Graham are on the scene though to answer construction questions, though. Even the straight forward ones, like today. Jake informs us which to choose when doing construction, light or heavy gauge studs when constructing a float center, while getting a little sidetracked when comparing wooden and metal studs.
Construction to Make Your Life Easier – DSP 268
Graham and Jake cover a wide range of construction tips to make running a float center easier. Everything from making sure you have extra storage to installing mop closets with sinks in them for dealing with heavy duty chemicals.
The advice is pretty much a shotgun approach of tips, tricks, and hard lessons learned throughout the years.
Draining Float Tanks into Septic Systems – DSP 267
Graham and Jake tackle the difficulties of draining float tanks and how that process can differ based on different municipalities, different water treatment systems, or whether you’re using a septic system or not.
Water treatment typically involves whole contained ecosystems and highly concentrated epsom salt water can impact that pretty drastically. The guys provide good tips for each type of system and what to be prepared for if you’re operating in a rural area with a septic system.
The Difference Between STC and Decibels – DSP 266
Post-Conference Ashkahn is still out of the recording studio, but fortunately Jake is keeping Graham company in there.
Graham and Jake break down the differences between decibels and STC ratings, two very important to understand when figuring out soundproofing. There’s a lot to digest in this episode, but fortunately the guys keep it easy to understand by providing a broad level overview of the different concepts.
Latest Blog Posts
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #28
Home sweet home! After so many months on the road, it was strange being back here in Portland. We were exhausted, excited, and a little travel weary. The first night back, I slept in my own bed for the first time in three months and the world just melted away.
Having travelled across the United States, I’m reminded of how insular Portland is. We are aggressively fixated on keeping things local. Local beer, ketchup, bikes, pet food, pillows, phone cases… it’s part of our charm. We want to reward people for living here and being a part of the community. It’s so pervasive that, after living here for so long, I kind of forgot that Secret Aardvark hot-sauce isn’t available everywhere, and that most cities don’t even recycle, let alone compost.
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #27
Our northern neighbor – a sister city, of sorts – Seattle is the largest metropolitan area in the Pacific Northwest. It’s the land of Microsoft and Kurt Cobain, and the culture here embraces both simultaneously. It’s tech business professional in the front and rock n’ roll grunge in the back. This blend creates a perfect storm of high energy business life and high energy nightlife, making relaxation a valuable commodity. Floating helps fill the void left by nightmarish traffic and overcrowded restaurants.
Given that it’s so close to home, the float centers in Seattle are a lot more familiar to us. Our visits here were more like a high school reunion than they were like the first day of school. During some of our visits, we were picking up conversations right where we left them.
The Float Tour Blog Issue #26
Vancouver is the largest metropolitan area in Canada, and third largest on the West Coast. It’s a major hub for international trade, with one of the largest ports in the world, giving it a large migrant population, mainly from Asia, the Middle East, and Australia. It’s also been a long-time home to the Canadian film industry, and has even been nicknamed “North Hollywood.” Dozens of film and television productions from major studios film here every year.
Vancouver is very much an international city. It has large boroughs dedicated to varying cultures, including one of the largest Chinatowns in the world. The society here is more receptive to new ideas, always looking for the next big thing; it’s not surprising that floating has blown up in Vancouver as much as it has.
In the last 3 years, 10 float centers have opened up, most of them being larger 4–6 tank centers. The really interesting thing is how they all opened within the same short amount of time about 1 ½ to 2 years ago, within months of each other.
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #25
We finally made it back to the West Coast! We went through the Canadian Rockies and were overwhelmed by the beauty of it all. We drove through hours and hours of winding mountain roads, fertile valleys, and tiny towns so picturesque they looked like movie sets. It was so captivating, in fact, I suspect Graham and Ashkahn may have secretly replaced themselves with robotic doppelgängers to hike throughout Banff.
This post will focus on the smaller communities in B.C. that are bringing floating to new people every day. We also get to visit Canadian manufacturer Pro Float. They’re relatively new to the scene, just opening up earlier this year – another exciting sign of the growth in the industry.
