Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
If you wanna stump the Float On boys, you have to try harder than asking about the cost of utilities for a float center in Maine. They tackled this episode prepared and take the rare opportunity to show specific numbers for utility usage at Float On and what that breakdown would look like in Maine, with help from special guest Jake Marty.
Show Resources
FTS Product – Float Center Business Plan
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Ashkahn: Hey everybody. He, welcome to the podcast.
Graham: Hey there, it’s Graham.
Ashkahn: And I’m Ashkahn.
Graham: And today’s question is, “thinking about opening a 4 float center in Maine, what can I expect for utility bills? Heat, electric, etc, anything else.”
Ashkahn: All of those other utilities, whatever those may be.
Graham: So before we answer this, questions like this are not necessarily the easiest thing because they depend on a lot of variables like how many floats you’re running, what the cost of electricity and gas is in your area, etc.
Ashkahn: Mostly those, yeah, those are the main variables. But, you know, what type of appliances you have, if your HVAC system is gas or electric. There’s a lot of things that make it so that this not the most kind of, it’s not just super easy, here’s the numbers that you’re going to be expecting to see sort of answers.
Graham: Yeah, for sure. So, we can give you some estimates. To start off we were actually gonna do a little guest call here.
Ashkahn: Yeah, this might be a good time to ring in our old friend Mr. Jake Marty, another one of the owners here at Float On.
Graham: Yeah, let’s see what he has to say about this.
Ashkahn: Let’s see, let’s see if we can get him in on this podcast.
Jake Marty: Hello.
Graham: Hey, you are live on the air with us. We’re just doing some podcasting right now.
Jake Marty: Awesome, that sounds great.
Ashkahn: How’s it going buddy?
Graham: Yeah.
Jake Marty: It’s going pretty well, how are you guys doing?
Ashkahn: Good, good.
Graham: Nice.
Ashkahn: We got a question here, about utilities.
Graham: Yeah.
Ashkahn: Specifically, thinking about opening a 4 float center in Maine, what can I expect for utility bills? Heat, electric, etc.
Graham: And, so, we thought maybe a good place to start would be, kind of what we run right now in Float On. We also thought you might know those numbers better than we do.
Jake Marty: Yeah, yeah, so I have, no our 2017 numbers, like what we use for water and electricity and stuff like that.
Graham: Hit it.
Jake Marty: In 2017, yeah, no, for sure, obviously water being one of the big things that we use with so many showers and all the stuff we do with filter maintenance, then, of course, adding the tanks, Float On, in 2017, we went through about 385 CCFs, it’s centum cubic feet, it’s a volume of measurement. Which, all that is to say that’s about 30/32 per month, or about 24 thousand gallons of water actually each month, at Float On, on average. Which is kind of a staggering amount of water. Yeah, a lot of showers, right, long showers.
Yeah, Ashkahn always in the shower. Electricity, another one of those big things, since we have to actually power these tanks, and, not only power the tanks, we actually need to power a lot of other stuff, which kind of makes me just want to throw out one little thing here. This is very dependent on what’s actually in your float center. At Float On, we’re using a gas-powered furnace, but we’re using an electric AC split for our cooling capacity. We also have electric water heaters, where those could easily be gas or something like that. And then, of course, the tanks that you pick, it can be very different, the amount of energy that they’re going to draw. Our 6 tanks at Float On, in 2017, we ended up bring in just north of 100 thousand kilowatt hours of usage, I think it actually broke out an average of about 9 thousand kilowatt hours per month. Of course, that’s going to be priced differently per your region and you area, and what your energy costs are.
For natural gas, we ended up using about 300 therms, which is basically a CCF, similar to a centum cubic foot, as far as volume goes, and stuff like that, converting energy to volume and what not. But that was really heavy during the winter, whereas we didn’t really use a lot of gas during the summer, for heating and stuff like that, so it averages out to 300 over 12 months, that’s about 25 therms per month, but big fluctuations where we’re using a lot in the winter and then almost none.
Ashkahn: Our heater is the only thing that’s on gas in our building, right?
Jake Marty: Our heater is gas, we have a 100 thousand BTU furnace.
Ashkahn: Yeah, and there’s nothing else on gas.
Jake Marty: No, that’s the only thing running on gas, our laundry, our dryer and everything like that, that’s all on electric. And any wall heater panels we have, those are electric as well.
Graham: Cool, we were probably running around 1200, 1300 floats a month during this time, just for a comparison there. And there are minimums and different things that go into these too.
Jake Marty: Yeah.
Graham: The calculations, like you were saying Jake, too, of course there is things besides floats that contribute to the costs. So you can’t just really divide that number of floats by your number of floats and take it.
Ashkahn: Yeah, and there’s base amount of electricity and stuff like that. You need to light your lobby, there’s just things that you’re going to be doing no matter how many float tanks you have.
Jake Marty: Plus, there’s things your going to be paying for anyway, like sewer water run-off, storm water drainage, and stuff like that, that’s just going to be automatic costs each month.
Ashkahn: Yeah, and the reason we’re giving these in, kind of, numbers of usage as opposed to the amount of money we’re spending every month is because-
Graham: We like to make you do the work, you know? Why would we do your work for you?
Ashkahn: Because these numbers can fluctuate a lot from place to place. Like the price of water in your area might be decently different. Especially if you’re out in Hawaii or something. Their utilities get especially different from places here.
Jake Marty: Yeah.
Ashkahn: Think of Maine as Hawaii.
Jake Marty: I’ve heard that actually.
Ashkahn: The Hawaii of the northeast.
Jake Marty: I do think it’s a better way to look at it as well. Just because usage, we have a center that’s actually running, and that’s what we’re actually using, as opposed to just costs, yeah they can go all crazy all over the place, so I think it’s a good way to look at it.
Graham: Cool, okay, I think that’s all we had for you.
Jake Marty: Awesome, great.
Graham: Yeah, thanks for answering. Otherwise it would have been really embarrassing when it hit your voicemail.
Jake Marty: Straight to voicemail. No, it’s good to hear from you guys. Have a great day and best of luck with the rest of the podcast.
Graham: Thanks, talk to you soon buddy.
Jake Marty: Yup.
Graham: Alright, so, again Mr. Jake Marty everybody. Whooo
Ashkahn: Big round of applause, please.
Graham: Um, okay and so, that’s our actual usage, so that should give you just a little bit of numbers that you can crunch on your own for figuring out what things might be in your area. And, just to save some time, and hopefully give a slightly more accurate estimate for, specifically, in Maine. We just kind of entered these numbers into the business plan that we have through Float Tank Solutions, which just has a bunch of different variables, if you are not familiar with it, it kind of customizes itself based on the different inputs that you put in.
All of this stuff gets really confusing, first of all, like the actual rates are not one number, if you use below this amount it’s one number, and if you use above another amount it goes to a different number, so I’m kind of trying to take some averages that I could find for Maine in general. And just entered in the cost per kilowatt hour as 16 cents roughly, and the cost for CCF about $19.50 so getting up near twenty dollars per centum cubic foot of water. And what shot out, we crunched a bunch of numbers for Float On over the years and then ran those through a set of equations, so it does a certain assuming that your going to use 1,000 kilowatt hours, for example, every month, regardless of how many floats you run, and then a certain number of kilowatt hours per float, it kind of does these calculations.
If you were running a 4 tank center and your running at maybe like 50/60% capacity, let’s just say around 450/475 floats, the rough numbers you might be looking at. Electric maybe like $750, water $360, gas, depending on the season, maybe between around $50 and $7.
Ashkahn: And assuming that you don’t have gas water heaters and stuff like that.
Graham: Yeah, exactly. And that number would obviously go up. It’s actually a much kind of more affordable long term is having gas water heaters. But it comes with it’s own other issues.
Ashkahn: This is all per month?
Graham: Yup, it’s all per month. And then if we bring that up to more, you’re running at 75/80% capacity, so let’s say 730 floats, or around there, the utility costs rise, but not just totally proportionally. Per month we’re looking at electric maybe $1,000, water/sewer maybe $550, and again gas depends on that seasonality, but maybe between 50 and 75 or 100 for gas. So overall, it’s right around that $1,000 a month range or a little over depending on how many floats your running, is what you’d be looking at.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: Again, all in theory, all depending on these rates being set in time as well.
Ashkahn: Definitely a lot of electric. We use a lot of electric for the heaters of the float tanks, for running the pumps and the filtration systems the entire time and just for being open and having a retail space with people in it for those lengths of time, and your laundry. These sorts of things all add up.
Graham: And, yeah, I guess that’s about it, so that’s what we do, that’s what you might expect, and again go crunch some numbers yourself, but I wouldn’t expect them to drift too far from that, right, you’re not gonna be looking at like $2,000 a month utility bills.
Ashkahn: $50,000
Graham: for electric. Or in the $500 range for gas, or anything like that, even with gas water heaters probably. At least for Float On, that seems pretty accurate. If you’re, if we were a slightly smaller center with 4 tanks instead of 6, expecting around a little above that $1,000 mark for utilities feels about right.
Ashkahn: Cool, alright, well if you guys have other questions, especially ones that have us do a bunch of math before we hop on here and answer them.
Graham: Guest calls, life lines.
Ashkahn: Go over to that website, what is it? Floattanksolutions.com/podcast and that’s where you can type in questions.
Recent Podcast Episodes
How Often Does Float On Party? – DSP 225
Ashkahn and Graham have developed a bit of a reputation over the years within the industry as party animals. Anyone who has met them can confirm this to be true. But how often to the throw parties at Float On? What are good occasions for float center parties and how do you throw one?
The guys share their party philosophy and offer some nice tips and tricks for throwing a sensory deprivation shindig.
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.
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.
