Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
Hard water is something that comes from having too many minerals in your water source. It can cause a lot of problems with plumbing if it’s too hard, and most buildings will have resources for dealing with this to help avoid calcium buildup in pipes and along tubs or pools. As for how it interacts with a float tank, specifically, it seems like the larger issue is going to be how it impacts the rest of your building.
Graham and Ashkahn break down what they know about how hard water affects float tanks and the differences you’re going to have to look out for if you’re using well water over municipal water sources.
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: And today’s question is – actually questions are “hard or soft water? City or well water? For one tank only please.” Well fortunately, those aren’t really going to change for multiple tanks.
Ashkahn: Yeah, they should be the same.
Graham: That’s the good news, yeah.
Ashkahn: Okay.
Graham: So there’s a difference between them.
Ashkahn: Between hard and soft water?
Graham: Yeah.
Ashkahn: Yeah, should we explain what that is?
Graham: Yeah, I think we totally should.
Ashkahn: All right so hard and soft water’s usually referring to the amount of mineral content of your water. Hard water has a lot more minerals and metals and stuff like that in it and soft water doesn’t. Typically, I think there are some issues that come with having hard water. People usually want to have softer water. If you’re in a city with very hard water, you usually have a water softener. If you’re in a city with soft water, you don’t have a water hardener or something connected to your building or anything like that.
Graham: Yep. There are some things that come along with overly soft water, as well. But the interesting thing is this doesn’t really effect the float tanks themselves too much.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: It’s a lot of your other building appliances and things like that, especially if you’re filtering the water going into your float tanks which we fully recommend. If you don’t have a full point of entry building water filtration system, then at least filtering any drop of water that’s being added to your float tank when you’re topping it off or doing a full refill will often get rid of a lot of the minerals and different things you’re worried about building up and being deposited.
Ashkahn: So water hardness can affect pools and hot tubs and stuff like that. They’re often controlling their water hardness and measuring it every day because it can lead to scaling, that’s the term for … people are probably a little bit more used to seeing this in their showers in cities where they live with places with hard water, those buildups of calcium and lime and stuff like that that form that weird almost scummy looking surface thing that usually builds up on tiles or something. So pools and stuff, they can deal with that and it doesn’t look good aesthetically but also that scale can build up inside of pipes and that can constrict pipes and hurt your flow rates. It can also build up on the outside of things like your UV light, that sleeve glass tubes that the light bulbs are in can have scale building up on them. That means the UV light won’t be able to penetrate through that and it will hurt your UV ability. Or scale can build up on the heating elements of a heater and eventually damage those or make them less efficient.
Graham: Yeah, really common on hot water heaters. A lot of the time, the first times you’ll see an impact of having a really hard water going through anything in your system will be around the hot water heater and gathering on those elements or down on the little unions. The heat definitely because it can evaporate out water, gets the minerals just that much closer to coming out of the water and bonding to something else.
Ashkahn: But for some reason, we don’t see this happening in float tanks. Obviously, some reason to do with the Epsom salts but I don’t exactly know why. We tried looking into it and it gets to be some complicated chemistry out there.
Graham: We’re not scientists. We’re simple people.
Ashkahn: There seems to be some information about magnesium prohibiting calcium from really being able to form calcium deposits very easily.
Graham: Yeah like it’s crystalline structure gets disrupted by magnesium maybe if we’re reading these articles correctly.
Ashkahn: Here’s what I do know, I’ve never seen it happen in our float tanks. I haven’t seen it happen in anybody’s float tanks.
Graham: Or in our pipes or anywhere. It really does not seem like the hardness of the water, even if you’re not filtering the water going into your float tanks, has a big impact on the actual float system.
Ashkahn: So that part is pretty cool. It doesn’t seem like we have to worry about it that much, at least from what I know now and what’s been going on. Much more likely, you’re dealing with hard or soft water, probably just for normal things in your shop. Probably your showers are the biggest concern and your hot water heater that’s giving hot water to showers and your sinks and all the normal-
Graham: Bidets.
Ashkahn: -Non-float tank plumbing things that you’d have in your building are probably actually why you’d be trying to make sure you have a water softener if you have really hard water and dealing with that. Not a very float tank issue but still something you would have to deal with just because of the amount of other water fixtures that you have in your building.
Graham: For city versus well water, the advice just ends up being the same for both which is regardless, make sure you’re filtering it going into your float tank. Well water can end up with interesting minerals. City water is often has trace elements of chloramines for disinfection or bromides that they’re putting in there. You want to filter that stuff out but, again, you want to filter in either case. There’s nothing different that needs to happen as a result of having a different water source at all.
Ashkahn: Yeah. Probably not going to. As long as your well water is decent and there’s a lot of cities that can inspect wells and make sure everything looks good and how the well is set up. Only if you’re using a horrible well, it’s all weird and stuff, you might have problems but assuming that’s not the case, then you should be really fine both ways.
Graham: Yep. Watch out for, if you are in a well, that might mean you’re also on a septic system. That’s something to check in. Depending on the size of the system, especially the salt water, you can risk killing off the different bacteria that are making that system function. So I’d say that’s almost more of a concern than the water going into the tanks is what you’re doing with the water coming out on more of land use kind of level.
Ashkahn: Totally.
Graham: Cool.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: Well thanks for the couple of questions.
Ashkahn: Yep. And if you have more questions, you can go to floattanksolutions.com/podcast.
Recent Podcast Episodes
When DON’T you Feel Like Floating? – DSP 275
Graham has Juliet on the podcast today since Ashkahn is doing some post-Conference traveling.
The duo talks about times when floating just doesn’t feel like a good idea, which is something they have a bit of disagreement about. Juliet shares her experiences being cautious of her experiences in the tank and how she tends to have to be more mindful of when she floats.
How do you Handle Changing Memberships? – DSP 274
This year at the Float Conference, Derek hosted a marketing forum and took questions that he wanted to share with everyone here.
This episode focuses on how Float On handles memberships, including tiered memberships and how to gracefully transition from one type of membership to another.
Are Vapor Barriers a Good Idea for Float Centers? – DSP 273
You can tell when Graham starts to miss Ashkahn when he makes a soundboard made up of sound clips from previous episodes just to have Ashkahn do another intro.
Jake and Graham break down barriers in this episode. Vapor barriers, that is. These tools are a little confusing in the construction world and their efficacy is hotly debated in just regular construction, never mind the demands that a float center has, especially in regards to moisture protection. Fortunately, Graham and Jake know a thing or two about a thing or two and explain what vapor barriers are, how they work, and what the source of contention is.
What to Consider with Plumbing in a New Float Center – DSP 272
Graham and Jake talk about the confusing world of plumbing for your float center. There are any number of unpleasant surprises that can come about when planning the water lines to showers, getting floor drains in place, and making sure everything lines up how it’s supposed to. If the sewer main is too deep or not where you think it is, it can add a significant amount of cost to your build out just to get floor drains installed. Fortunately, the guys have some useful tricks to help mitigate costs and plan accordingly.
Should I use Spray-in Insulation for my Float Center? – DSP 271
Graham and Jake are still in a sans Ashkahn world at Daily Solutions, but they’re not letting it harsh their mellow.
The guys are talking about the different types of spray-in insulation today. It’s a pretty common material in construction and it can be a fantastic insulator for float centers, if you get the right type.
Jake and Graham go over the differences between open cell and closed cell insulation and why, specifically, float centers should avoid open cell insulation. They also provide some excellent pointers on the materials themselves and good conversations to have with a contractor regarding insulation.
Latest Blog Posts
Oh, the Questions You’ll Hear!
When you run a float tank center, you’re going to get asked a lot of questions. Do I float naked? Can I drown? Is this sanitary? Many of these are easy to answer: It’s recommended. Not without a conscious, and determined effort. Yes! There are some questions, however,...
Happy TANKSgiving (Giving Gifts to Monthly Members)
Monthly memberships are an important way to ensure that your float tank center has a consistent, if not dependable, amount of business.
While pricing structures for memberships vary widely across the industry, we’re focusing less on the strategy of what to charge and looking more at the benefits we’re actually offering. Once we’ve established a solid offering, then we can revisit pricing.
Running a successful monthly membership program takes more than just charging customers and making sure they use their credits. With a little creativity, we can find ways to increase engagement.
Your Flow Meter May Be Inaccurate (and what to do about it)
Float tanks tend to use a lot of parts borrowed from the pool and spa industry and, whenever that happens, it’s always important to question whether that pool part works accurately with our salt water solution. We’ve recently gained some insight into that question on...
The Float Tour Blog Roundup!
The following is our collection of links to the all of the Float Tour blogs. My chronicling of our adventure, highlighting all of you out there.
Thank you for the memories.
