Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
Graham goes solo today while awaiting Ashkahn’s return.
Graham takes a question about cement backer board and the reasons it should be avoided in a float room. It’s a dense episode. Real dense. More dense, in fact, than cement backer board.
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: All right, hello, everybody. My name is Graham, and that’s it, my name’s Graham. There’s no one else in the studio here with me today. Ashkahn’s gonna be back very shortly, and we’ll have the old Grashkamn duo.
But, for now, I’m just gonna launch right into answering today’s question, which is: “You mentioned not to use cement board when using tiles on the wall. What is the reason for that?”
There’s a couple good reasons, besides just we said so. They are related to soundproofing, and then salt, I guess, like so much else in the float world. The salt aspect, I guess we’ll talk about first because that’s more core to what cement backerboard is.
Basically, just in case you’re not familiar with it, it’s a different kind of material that you’re putting behind typical tile wall. It’s kind of porous, but still very dense, kind of inflexible type material. Typically, you’d put this directly on the studs rather than putting on drywall or something on top of them.
The kind of classic application is that the tile going on top is itself kind of permeable, especially the grout. For instance, in a shower area, you expect a certain amount of the water to kind of seep into the grout, and perhaps get into whatever’s behind it. If that’s regular drywall, then you risk it getting that wet, and molding out, and stuff like that. You want this kind of material back there that’s more solid, that’s not going to mold, but that’s also semipermeable so when the water gets in there, it’s allowed to evaporate over time, which is kind of the idea.
With our application, we’re using porcelain tile with epoxy grout, so we’re not really expecting water to get back there. The main protection from the walls is actually just that impermeable surface of the tile and the epoxy grout.
The other thing is, if water did get back in there, and if you weren’t using kind of a permeable solution with the cement backerboard, salt would also theoretically be able to get back there. That’s terrible because while water is able to evaporate, saltwater will get into something, and when it dries, the salt crystals will expand, and that thing will just start to get destroyed, which is where so much of the salt damage that we see in our space comes from. That’s kind of just on the salt-proofing side, why you don’t really see that cement backerboard.
The main reason why you see the alternative, which is some kind of either adapted drywall setup, usually MMR, mold and mildew resistant, maybe multilayered for soundproofing, or specifically soundproof drywall, something like QuietRock, also maybe MMR, mold and mildew resistant. The idea with that is in addition to trying to make these wet rooms, which is usually where cement board is going, you’re now trying to soundproof those, and turn them into the equivalent of a sound studio almost. Cement backerboard is not going to provide you the same kind of soundproofing as a really heavy drywall set up, or especially something like QuietRock.
Since you want that soundproofing, is also one of the reasons that we go with a totally impermeable surface on the outside. Other than saltwater, you just wanna make sure that now that you’ve put up this heavy soundproof drywall, you’re protecting it. So kind of for both of those reasons, and they mix together a lot, but that’s typically why you’re not seeing cement backerboard in a float center type application. Instead, what you will see, if you are using tile, is this heavy layer of soundproof drywall, again, whatever, whether it’s custom made or just multilayers of drywall with something like green glue in between. Then you’ll see the porcelain tile on top of that.
All right, that wasn’t so bad. I think that the Graham only show can hold its own, maybe we’ll just kick Ashkahn off for the foreseeable future, you know, just kind of wing it on my own.
If you do not wanna see that, let me know by going to floattanksolutions.com/podcast and I will talk to you tomorrow. Thanks, everyone.
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Opening up a float center is a lot like climbing a mountain. Even if you can see the peak, it’s a lot further away than you think, and when you finally get there, the journey and the destination usually end up being different than previously assumed.
In this post we’ll lay out a general process and timeline of what you may encounter on your path, from initial idea to actually operating a center.
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So you’re thinking about using volunteers in your float center?
Before we clarify what a “volunteer” actually means, we’ll first explore why a float center might be considering them in the first place. While it can be a way to provide floats to people who are otherwise unable to pay, the impulse to bring in volunteers can also stem from a desire to get some sort of free labor (later in this post we’ll dive into why you can’t actually do this, but it’s important to recognize that the instinct is understandable, especially when you have someone lined up and willing to work for free).
In addition to a desired boost in overall productivity, it’s also a way to invite more people into your center to experience what you do. Some customers actually want to help out and see what happens behind the scenes at a center.
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One of the beautiful things about the float tank is that it serves to rejuvenate the whole person. — the body, mind, heart.
Broadly speaking, it’s a tool for homeostasis, an ideal environment that supports balance, health, and growth. This piece will look specifically at floating and athletics. For anyone who defines themselves as an athlete, or as a general pursuant of athletic endeavors, the float tank can be a powerful asset.
In this post, I’ll discuss individual athletes who float and how to look at this from a marketing perspective. I’ll also discuss past and present research, and share some thoughts on how the relationship between the athletic and floating communities might continue to unfold.
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I think it’s time we addressed the giant metaphorical elephant in the salty metaphorical room — there are lots of exaggerated and untrue claims about the benefits of floating being spread around the industry.
Some are anecdotal, some are only half true, and some are just patently false. Floating has historically had a strong oral tradition tied to it — the practice has survived through word-of-mouth, one passionate floater teaching another everything they know. The unfortunate thing about this is that the information disseminated can’t be reliably tested or shared with others on a broader scale. You can’t use “my buddy Chris” as a source for a health benefit of float tanks in a newspaper article, much less for a research paper.
Now that we’re becoming a bit more mainstream, we thought it would be nice to add some clarity to what we should and shouldn’t be telling people about these difficult-to-understand, saliferous containers.
