Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
Ashkahn is busy preparing for everything that happens tonight and tomorrow for the Conference, but that doesn’t mean Daily Solutions will stop being daily.
Graham and Jake talk construction and what to expect when you’re expecting… a giant expansion for your float center. What’s it look like when you go from one tank to three? How do the demands change? What needs to be put in place to make sure that you’re not hitting snags?
Fortunately, these guys know the score and are happy to share.
Show Resources
The Float Conference is happening right now! There’s still time to sign up for Friday Activities later tonight at FloatConference.com/friday-activities.
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: Hey, welcome everybody. I am Graham.
Jake: And I’m Jake.
Graham: And Ashkahn is working on some of the conference logistics so he won’t be jining us today. Instead, we’ll be rocking out construction questions with Jake here. Today’s question is, kind of half of a statement and then a question at the end, it’s, “Expanding from one to three tanks, going to a new space. Any suggestions?” Question mark.
Jake: It’s a pretty broad question, I guess you start there.
Graham: Yeah well get ready for insanity. It’s a big step from one to three tanks.
Jake: Your game is definitely going to change. Obviously three tanks is going to be much harder on the space than the one tank you had before.
Graham: Yeah so especially if, you know, often times with one tank. It’s in the house or maybe detached to a spa as kind of an afterthought. Yeah, it’s not, you don’t do as much planning around it and because it’s only unit you kind of don’t have to do as much planning around it.
Jake: Yeah your materials, your build out materials can be a little less robust if you only have one tank generating humidity, one tank drawing power, one person showering, where if all the sudden you triple that load, you’re using that much more water, so appropriately sized supply lines. The drainage that comes from all that. You might have been able to get by with one tank in your garage at home and just cleaned up all that salt. You’re not going to want to do that if you’re turning over three tanks and trying to keep good customer service with your clients like you want drains, so you can push all that saltwater away.
The waterproofing, that goes through the roof as well. You’re no longer just throwing up some pond guard rubber or something like that. It did well in your home, all of a sudden now you’re using waterproof panels, or you’re using porcelain tile or something like that.
Graham: It’s kind of the short answer, you just have to start worrying about things a little bit more. The kind of low demand that’s put as a result of a single tank onto a building, and the fact that you can pay attention to everything that’s going through that room. You individually get to talk to every customer. You personally get to go in after every customer and make sure that the room is looking nice and everything is good.
Jake: And the tanks in good repair.
Graham: Now if you triple the load, it’s just there’s so much more to pay attention to. You need seating for everyone. You need to make sure your water supply lines are the right size. You need to worry if the electrical is going to get out of hand, if all of these different things kick in. Then you’re not even, when you’re doing the transitions, it’s hard to pay attention to every single room and really make sure that salt water isn’t going everywhere. I would also say if you were in a house beforehand, people just tend to treat those a little more respectfully.
Jake: Absolutely.
Graham: They recognize they’re in someone’s home. As soon as you move to a bigger commercial space, it’s almost like some people really want to get their dollar’s worth. They’re just like, “I paid 70 some dollars for this and I’m going to make as much mess as I can.”
Jake: I’m going to swing my hair all over the room. It’s on the ceiling.
Graham: Right? It totally happens.
Jake: It’s part of it, yeah.
Graham: Just get prepared for really actually being concerned about all of these individual variables that you might have just kind of skated on by before.
Jake: Of course, like a real basic one, anything that failed at your first center, try to do better at your next center, right?
Graham: Learn from the past.
Jake: Try to at least learn that, if your floor drains failed, maybe spend a little extra money, get nicer floor drains, or something like that.
Graham: Yeah, what else in general? There’s so much stuff that we could just go into all of the details of construction that you need when you’re building out a serious float tank center. I was trying to think of the main differences.
Jake: Yeah, I was thinking of just some quick bullet points.
Graham: Yeah.
Jake: Your waterproofing, you’re going to need more of that. It’s going to need to be more robust. Your HVAC, how are you going to handle all that extra humidity? Like you said, the load calculation of electrical. How much power are you going to be drawing? A commercial space, you need more power if you’re running three tanks, depending on what type of tanks you get and how much they’re drawing. Parking, I guess.
Graham: Yeah, parking and seating.
Jake: Parking and seating, because-
Graham: Restrooms.
Jake: Yeah, restrooms, that could up that camp too.
Graham: Now you’re going to have multiple people, which means perhaps needing a second restroom.
Jake: You could have six people at one time, right? Three people leaving and three people coming.
Graham: Scheduling maintenance. When you only have one tank, it’s really easy to schedule someone in, or know when it’s going to be busy. Now when you have three tanks, it’s a lot more to keep track of. We of course, recommend using The Helm.
Jake: We track all of our metrics through there, yeah.
Graham: Which also doubles as tank chemistry, which again when you have one tank you can keep track of what’s going on in there in the water a lot easier than when you have three tanks. Now you really, the importance of keeping logs is so much greater when you have that many tanks that you can lose track of. Really rigorous chemical logging is important too.
Jake: Having extra chemicals on hand, having more storage. You’re going to have more salt on hand because you’re turning over three tanks.
Graham: Yeah, right all of a sudden if for some reason you need to change out two tanks, that means you just need to have twice as much salt in back up by nature.
Jake: Are you doing laundry in house? What might have been fine with your residential unit with one tank, now all of a sudden you’re running three towels and three robes every transition or something.
Graham: Oh, laundry is a good one.
Jake: Laundry is a good one.
Graham: I hadn’t even thought of that one.
Jake: It just popped in my head right now, just sitting here.
Graham: Bam. I’m shocked too, we’ve had to deal with laundry on so many occasions, how is that not just burnt into my brain?
Jake: I think the most important thing to take away from this is go for it, definitely expand to three tanks. I think that’s awesome. I love that idea.
Graham: Yeah, I guess we were talking about the things to be careful of, but the things you have to look forward to. A, people love coming in with someone else to float with, and not everyone wants to wait around for their friend to get out, and then they go in, kind of the one at a time thing. Even just going from one to two tanks. You’ll see just a natural uptake in clientele because there are some people who don’t want to go in and do this weird thing without a friend also doing it at the same time. Multiple tanks is going to be awesome for that size of business. Of course, you just get economies of scale.
Jake: The revenue yes, absolutely.
Graham: You can have one person taking care of one tank, or you can have one person taking care of three tanks. Now all of a sudden, you’re getting way more out of each session that you have coming through there because you’re not tripling your payroll with the tripling of the number of float tanks you have. Yeah, there are some things that will be harder, but there are also some real serious upsides that come along with expanding, which again I’m sure is why you’re doing it.
Yeah, you’re nodding at me like you want me to close out the episode.
Jake: Yeah.
Graham: You want to try it? You want to try the little close out this time?
Jake: Alright, well thanks for listening. I really, really appreciate you spending your time with us here today. You can go to floattanksolutions.com/podcast
Graham: Nailed it, good.
Jake: -If you want to ask anymore questions. We look forward to lovingly reading all of your submissions.
Graham: My only critique was that it was too good, and now I’m going to feel bad when in the future I close out episodes.
Jake: Alright, here’s the nod one more time.
Graham: Alright, we’ll talk to you all tomorrow.
Jake: Alright, thank you so much.
Recent Podcast Episodes
Is there a “Best” Float Position? – DSP 224
Ashkahn and Graham thoroughly debunk the myth of a “best” float position. The Float On boys explicate their philosophy that there is no right way to float and instead talk about all the different positions they enjoy floating in. They learn more about each other than they expected to in the process.
What to Look for When Hiring a Float Center Employee – DSP 223
What makes a good float center employee? What does Float On look for when trying to find someone to take care of their salt monster tanks and their blissed out customers at the same time?
Ashkahn and Graham break down the qualities they look for when hiring, and what makes the people at Float On so special.
How Do you Incentivize Return Floaters without Memberships or Packages? – DSP 222
How many times has a float center owner had a first time floater come out of the tank and said something along the lines of “that was amazing! I need to do this every week!” and then they never see that person again? How do you get them to come back without committing to a membership or a high ticket package of floats?
Ashkahn and Graham share their thoughts on this exact problems and some of the creative solutions they’ve implemented at Float On to combat it. The key, for them, has been keeping it simple and making it accessible.
How to Schedule Your Float Center During the Slow Season – DSP 221
For most float centers, the summer months drastically change how busy it gets. It seems that zenning out to nothingness is moderately less appealing when there’s a lot of outdoor activities to enjoy.
Graham and Ashkahn share their thoughts on a reduced schedule. Float On runs 24 hours almost every day throughout the year. so reducing their schedule is typically against their philosophies. They explain some of the reasons people might consider it, what are some good ways to go about it, as well as explain some practices to consider avoiding when cutting hours.
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.
Latest Blog Posts
Float Quarterly – January 2016
It’s been our pleasure to be actively involved in the float industry for over five years now. In 2016, we’re already on track to have more new centers opening, more press covering floating, and more resources for people just entering our salty world than ever before.
With so much action, we’ve decided to send out brief, quarterly updates on our industry to keep people posted on the all the latest happenings. Welcome to our first installment!
Training to Become a Certified Pool/Spa Operator
Each year at the Float Conference, we put on a Certified Pool/Spa Operator (CPO) training course. At first, that might strike you as an odd thing to have as part of a float tank conference. This post will explain what CPO training is and why we think it can be a really useful certification to have on your belt.
Increase Sales by Offering Retail in Your Float Center
On their own, float tanks have a limit to their profits. Retailing has the potential to bring extra money into your shop, but it also requires a lot of work and attention on your part to really be successful at it. At Float On, our retail contributes 6.5% towards our overall sales and 3% of total profit. While this might not seem like a large contribution, depending on your sales, it could end up paying the wages of a whole extra employee.
The Health Department and Float Tanks… How to get Approved!
If you’re working on starting a float center, chances are you’re nervously anticipating having to call the health department. We’ve all heard horror stories of people being asked to follow pool rules that don’t make sense for them, or having to do costly changes to their pump systems.
float tanks not regulatedBelow is our best advice for working with your health department to get your float center approved, but before we dive into that, it’s important to get a bit of an understanding as to how the health department works.
