What to do if your Float Center Loses Power – DSP 184

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

Graham:

Ashkahn:

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What do you do with your float center if an emergency happens? What if your center loses power for several days and there’s nothing you can do about it? Float tanks rely on having a well regulated system to stay functional and we know that if it gets out of whack, everything can get pretty messy. So if you know this is happening, how do you prevent the worst of it?

Graham and Ashkahn work through this problem and come up with some solutions to prevent things like salt crystallization and upsetting your tank chemistry too much.

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

Ashkahn: We have a question for you.

Graham: Which is, of your – I think they meant if. “Of your float center loses power for an extended period of days, what do you do to keep the float tanks from cooling down too much, and the salt from crystallizing?”

Ashkahn: A few days. This is like, natural disaster, sort of category.

Graham: Yeah. And we do have another podcast that covers a little bit of salt crystallization. But actually, just having your power go down for a few days is a pretty precise question, so maybe worth going over. Panic, first of all. Just panic. Run around, scream.

Ashkahn: Well, there’s one main solution.

Graham: So let’s talk about if you, there’s one main solution. Well so you either know your power’s going to go down ahead of time, or it spontaneously happens.

Ashkahn: Right.

Graham: And I guess the solution could be the same for both.

Ashkahn: But no one knows their power is gonna go down for like three days, that’s extremely unusual.

Graham: Well, if they’re doing work or scheduled or replacing a transformer.

Ashkahn: Every time I ever heard of someone losing power for that length of time it’s ‘cuz crazy shit is going down.

Graham: Yeah and so at some point if you know it’s gonna be down for a few days, then your solution becomes a little more apparent. But if at each moment you’re expecting the power to suddenly come back on, it gets a little more-

Ashkahn: So I’m guessing that something crazy’s happening, and you’ve lost power. And usually the city would be like, “We’re not even close to having this back.” And the problem is that the longer you wait, the more your water cools, the more you’re gonna get close to the saturation point. Because the saturation point is based off the temperature of your water – the warmer the water is, the more salt you can dissolve into it. And we’re pretty much right below the saturation point at float tank temperature, so when the temperature drops and there’s the same amount of salt in there, you cross the saturation point and salt starts to crystallize. And literally it will start crystallizing your pipes, it will start crystallizing around your pump equipment, around the impeller in your pump.

Graham: The entire pump will just become one solid piece, essentially, eventually.

Ashkahn: And after a while you’ll just start to grow salt crystals on the bottom of your float tank. Which looks super cool, but you won’t be thinking that when it’s happening to you.

Graham: It doesn’t really cross most people’s minds when that’s what’s occurring.

Ashkahn: The easiest solution is to, if the problem is that your water is too salty and that’s why it’s crystallizing because now you’re at a lower temperature, one solution is to make your water less salty.

Graham: And then the other solution would be to figure out a way to keep it at temperature regardless.

Ashkahn: Yeah. So, making your water less salty unfortunately costs money. Because what you’re gonna have to do is dilute it down. So at some point, you’re either gonna put more water into it to begin with and get your float tank up to 14 inches or something like that, and have it low enough specific gravity, probably 1.2 or lower, to not need the saturation even at room temperature, and that way you won’t hit the crystallization point. Or, and then once you want to get your float tank back up and running you’re gonna have to drain some of that water. A good amount of it, and then add more salt in to get it back to normal. Or you could start by draining some and adding water until your float tank’s at a more normal height but at the right specific gravity.

I guess there is a third solution other than keeping it heated and diluting. Which is just to let it happen.

Graham: Yeah? It’s kind of a hassle to deal with.

Ashkahn: It’s a hassle but it would cost less money than dilution.

Graham: Maybe if you don’t take into account staff time

Ashkahn: If you were able to get it back to the point, ‘cuz if you have power again, you probably don’t wanna kick your float tank’s heaters back on, because they’re gonna get real hot sitting right up against the salt that’s crystallized on your tank. But assuming that you don’t kick your float tank’s heaters on and use an aquarium heater or something to get the water back to being warm, and then you get someone inside the float tank to crunch up some of that salt, I’m just saying it’s possible. It’s possible to save some money and add a bunch of labor, and redissolve crystallized salt back into a float tank if you want to.

Graham: Redoing it from the pump is also just a huge hassle. Getting the salt crystallized inside, you’re talking about hours of labor going into this.

Ashkahn: But it’s one option that’s on the table for people.

Graham: Just selling your entire center is an option too. Just get rid of the thing! Obviously you’ve realized what a hassle it is running a float tank by now, just ditch it. Sell the salt crystals on the street.

Ashkahn: You can dilute your float tank down.

Graham: Or you can wheel in some kind of generator, or if one of your neighbors has power and you don’t, you could, in the dead of night sneak over and plug in an extension cord and run some aquarium heaters in your shop.

Ashkahn: They make these aquarium, they’re just these big heating sticks that you can plug in and put into one of the float tanks and be able to keep the temperature up.

Graham: And if you do go the aquarium heater route, they have ones that are surrounded by nice sheathes, so the heater won’t come in direct contact with any parts of your float tank, stuff like that. So be sure you’re not just using the cheapest thing you can buy, but you’re making sure as you’re heating the water you’re not also melting the fiberglass or gel kit or anything.

Ashkahn: I think they’re 100 bucks for the nice ones. But you still have to make sure the water in your pipes and pump that you filter all that stuff, that stuff’s gonna still get cold in that scenario.

Graham: So that means either having your tanks on a timer that is going off at least twice a day…

Ashkahn: You’d have to get your float tank plugged into the whole generator.

Graham: Oh that’s true. You’re probably not doing that.

Ashkahn: You might just want to close the ball valves on your filtration system, drain everything out of that.

Graham: That might be the best option you have for that one. Especially your pump, just draining out the salt water and rinsing it out with fresh water before all of this happens. And I guess that’s it, right? It’s either you can stop your tank from losing temperature, or you can dilute down the water.

Ashkahn: You could totally drain your float tank.

Graham: I had one more thought about this too, which is something that we’ve definitely done in the past. Which is if the plan is to dilute things, it might just be that your tank has gone a while without being changed, or one of your float tanks has. And you just want to fully take this as an excuse to fully drain and change the water. And if you’re doing that, if you have multiple float tanks and you’re doing that with just one tank, then you can fully drain one tank and dilute all of the other tanks. And you can throw some of that diluted water into your extra tank you have left over and save a little bit of money that way.

So again, it might just be a good excuse to think about what you want to do with the water overall. The worst time for this to happen is when everything is totally fresh and you just changed float tank water and now if you dilute again you’re just gonna be throwing a certain amount of money down the drain. But yeah I think this is the best option you have.

Also you still will need to maintain your disinfection levels in there so be sure that you have someone going in and actually dosing your hydrogen peroxide or making sure you still have some chlorine readings or whatever you’re doing.

Ashkahn: And you’ll probably want to if you UV or something, do a few hours of filtration to get things back on board.

Graham: Yeah for sure. Pay very close attention to what happens when you’re getting your tanks back up. It’s amazing how quick just leaving a tank totally uncared for and especially diluted down when you don’t have that same concentration of harsh salt, for other organisms, things can just get a little funky in there. So pay attention to it and don’t think you can just sort of leave this – if three days turns into a week or something like that. You still want to be going into the shop and taking care of your tanks even though you’re not running floats or don’t have power there.

Ashkahn: Good luck. This sounds like a rough situation.

Graham: Hopefully this wasn’t just a disaster that spontaneously occurred, but it’s kind of hard to imagine a scenario where it’s not, so. Good luck. And if you have your own questions, go over to floattanksolutions.com/podcast and ship them our way.

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