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
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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
Customers Who Overstay Their Welcome (Rise) – DSP 149
Graham and Ashkahn sat down with Mark and Jennifer Gurley at Rise to talk about an issue that can seem scary for float center owners, especially those who haven’t worked in customer service. What do you do about the customer who takes advantage of your generosity and overstays their welcome? How far is too far? And what are the appropriate steps to take when you have someone who won’t respect your boundaries?
Graham and Ashkahn share their experiences from the handful of times it has happened at Float On over the years and how it’s worked out and compare notes with the Gurleys and their float center.
Should I Filter Tap Water When Filling My Tanks (Rise) – DSP 148
Graham and Ashkahn got cornered at Rise with a question from one of the attendees, a float center owner named Gina. And even though the event is over, it’d be a shame to not share this episode. They answer all her questions and concerns about municipal water systems and the levels of filtration that should be done when using water straight from the tap (which probably almost everybody does), they also talk about what you really need to worry about in your tap water.
How do you do All the Things? (Rise) – DSP 147
This episode from Rise comes at you recorded live with another very special guest, Rick from Float St. Louis. Not only does he work in a float center, he’s also releasing a float themed quarterly magazine called Third Wave Magazine. While he was a bit tight lipped about the magazine, his choice of question may speak to just how demanding it has been on him lately.
Listen to him chat with Graham and Ashkahn about how to do all the things and when doing too many things is too much.
Live at Rise Float Gathering! – DSP 146
Graham and Ashkahn are coming at you LIVE (well, recorded live) from the Rise Float Gathering! They managed to wrangle Jake and Kevin, the organizers of Rise and the founders of Float STL in St. Louis. Check out this episode where they talk about bath robes, hosting events, and just how amazing this industry is.
Book Recommendations for Float Center Retail – DSP 145
Lots of float centers sell different books, usually about floating. Float On even publishes a few of them (through our Coincidence Control publishing company).
Graham and Ashkahn give their recommendations for books to sell and provide a list of the ones we have available at Float On. They also discuss how well they sell as well as the tertiary benefit to having them around as resources for your floaters on coffee tables and as conversation starters.
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