Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
Float centers, more so than some other brick and mortar businesses, tend to be desperate for maximizing the efficiency of their space. And float rooms would have so much extra space if they didn’t have to deal with a door swinging in and out all the time. Why don’t float centers do it this way instead?
Well… Graham and Ashkahn explain exactly why centers don’t do this already, along with the vast majority of other buildings being made currently. It’s likely a code violation and even if it weren’t, it’d probably be unnecessarily hazardous to travel through your center that way.
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: Alright.
Ashkahn: Welcome. Welcome everyone.
Graham: I think that might have actually been our longest intro that we’ve ever done. Referential intros’ll get like that.
Ashkahn: My name’s Ashkahn.
Graham: I am Graham.
Ashkahn: And, we had a big Q coming.
Graham: Big Q coming your way. And that is, “I haven’t started construction yet.”
Ashkahn: Nice.
Graham: “But, I’m sitting here, looking at my blueprints and wondering; would it make more sense to have the float room doors open into the hall instead of the rooms, to increase usable space in the small float rooms?” That old doors opening into the hall dilemma.
Ashkahn: The old doors going outside instead of inside so you can get more accessible square footage space in the float room question.
Graham: Classic.
Man, if I had a hundred dollar bill for every time someone asked me that, I’d be able to go out some eat some dinner tonight. That would be really nice.
Ashkahn: Yeah. So, yes. It is annoying that your doors take up a bunch of swinging room in these tiny float spaces that you have.
Graham: But only when the door is actually opening or closing, right? Once you set it, then you get the square footage back.
Ashkahn: Well, kind of.
Graham: You can’t hang a shelf on the wall there, or-
Ashkahn: Your float tank can’t be in the way.
Graham: Your float tank can’t be in the way.
Ashkahn: This is a problem. Yeah, but, even in on of our rooms, the door can’t open all the way ’cause there’s a float tank there.
Graham: It’d be really nice if we could open it a little further. I see where they’re coming from.
Ashkahn: I do too.
Graham: Yeah.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: That’d be cool.
Ashkahn: In fact, I think I’ve thought this when we were doing our thing. They were like, “Let’s just have these doors swing the frigging other way. What are we doing having them swing in?”
Graham: So, in a world where it’s complete anarchy, and there are no regulations you need to follow, you can totally do this, and it might still cause issues. Like, what if someone’s walking down the hallway and someone opens the door with gusto, and they get slammed in the face with the door?
Ashkahn: I mean, I’m pretty sure that’s the biggest problem here, right? I mean, there’s other specifics
Graham: That is the biggest problem. Yeah.
Ashkahn: People just walk down hallways.
Graham: And, your staff, oftentimes, is walking pretty fast down hallways, and trying to get these rooms clean as fast as they can.
Ashkahn: I’m just picturing our hallway, which has six doors, opening up into it in a matter of 30 feet.
Graham: Yeah.
Ashkahn: That sounds really dangerous. And intense. It would be like some sort of video game. Like, some sort of old 90s video game, where you die all the time, and you need to keep starting back at the beginning.
Graham: Paper Boy Extreme.
Yeah. So, that’s the biggest problem, right? If someone is opening the door inward, it’s really rare that someone’s going to be walking into someone’s float room while they’re in there, and specifically right when they’re about to be coming out anyway, on the other side of the door.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: So, making the person, where the door is going to be swinging, in charge of the motion of the door, is just eliminates the chance of accidents happening.
Ashkahn: And, I mean, there’s probably some ADA laws, and stuff like that. I mean, if you look around you in your life, everywhere you go-
Graham: In your commercial bedroom.
Ashkahn: But anywhere, right? Think about hotels. Think about just the bedrooms in your house. Every door into a room swings into the room instead of out into the hallway.
Graham: In general. There are definitely some exceptions for that. I’ve seen restrooms where the door swings outward, and things like that. Especially in high traffic areas. There are definitely some times when that’s not the case. But, usually it’s when the person on the inside is more likely to get hit by a door swinging, right? Or, just, intuitively makes more sense that that would happen.
Ashkahn: I think it makes more sense, too, more than interior or dead end sort of space that you’re in, the more likely you’re gonna be answering the door for someone.
Imagine having a door where someone knocks on it, and to let them in, you had to open it towards them. Right?
Graham: Yeah, that’s awkward. It’s weird.
So, the other side of that is, it is very likely to not actually pass code in your area.
Ashkahn: Yeah, I’d be pretty surprised if this was legal, unless you had-
Graham: And wide enough hallways might be one case. We’re not code experts. But, maybe if people have such a big avenue to walk down the center of a really wide hallway, that doors opening on either side just aren’t likely to hit them in their main path, then it’s okay.
But, in a float center, you’re usually trying to make the most of your space. Doors will be directly opposite each other. So, again, check your local code, if you really, despite our deterrences, are still really eager beaver to get these doors opening in the hallway direction, but even if you’re convinced for yourself, you might still not be able to do it.
Ashkahn: Yeah. So, I’m sorry.
Graham: Shoot the message, not the messenger. That’s what they say.
Ashkahn: Yeah. And it probably does just make more sense to have your doors open. It just feels right.
Graham: Yeah.
Ashkahn: You think about all those Scooby Doo montages or the Benny Hill Show. Think how weird those would look with doors opening out.
Graham: And they’re have to pause right before, which means the ghost chasing them would have to pause, too, just out of politeness.
Ashkahn: Yeah, see, so, yeah.
Graham: But you did the right thing, in that you thought you had a brilliant idea, and then you sent it to us to destroy, which I encourage everyone else out there to do too.
Cruise on down to floattanksolutions.com. If you’re feeling like it, type in /podcast as well. That’ll take you to the page where you can actually submit questions. And, we’ll be here same time tomorrow, if you listen to us at the same time every day.
Ashkahn: Every day. Yeah. We just sleep in this little room that we’re in right now.
Graham: We just sleep in your headphones.
Ashkahn: One of us in each ear.
Graham: We’ll be here when you’re ready for us.
Ashkahn: Snuggled up in there.
Bye everyone.
Graham: Right.
Recent Podcast Episodes
Funding your center through Kickstarter – DSP 119
Crowdfunding has made so many projects possible that would otherwise not exist. It seems perfect for niche ideas, concepts that would otherwise never see the light of day, and passion projects that just need to happen. This sounds perfect for float centers, but there are some caveats.
Crowdfunding is time intensive and there’s not guarantee of success. Aside from that, there are some issues with it that complicate things for float centers that other crowdfunded projects likely won’t face. Graham and Ashkahn talk about the successes of float center crowdfunding and the not-so-successes as well.
Don’t Build Your Own Float Tank! – DSP 118
For anyone considering a DIY float tank, give this episode a listen first. This isn’t a discussion on the merits of doing things one way versus another or expressing an opinion on one side and playing devil’s advocate for the other. Graham and Ashkahn know painfully well from personal experience the pitfalls of falling into the hubris trap of thinking you can build your own float tanks. They built two large open tanks in Float On and even years later they still cause headaches.
What’s more, they’ve spoken with dozens of people who’ve also gone through this themselves and heard their horror stories after they didn’t listen to the advice of not doing it.
The perception that it can be a cost-cutting measure or a more reliable way to get an operating float tank in your center by going DIY is generally pretty flawed. There’s so much to it that you just can’t consider before the fact.
Should Your Float Center have a Blog? – DSP 117
This seems like a good idea on paper. It helps with SEO stuff for Google. It gives you an outlet to write about floating and share information about the industry. And it seems to fall in line with something that other businesses do, right?
So what are the downsides? How much time and effort does a blog really take? What sort of impact does it have for a float center? Graham and Ashkahn lay out the pros and cons as well as things you may not initially consider about the responsibility of having a blog.
Thoughts on Buying Yelp Ads – DSP 116
There are lots of businesses that experience the dogged persistence of Yelp sales people calling them. Float On has done both buying Yelp ad space and living without it and Graham and Ashkahn break down exactly what that experience was like.
They also go into exactly what Yelp ads mean and how it impacts your float center (or doesn’t, as the case may be) as well as how well Yelp stacks up in comparison to other ad sources.
When is it Time to Open a Second Float Center? – DSP 115
Okay, so… Float On only has one location (not counting Float On Hong Kong) and there’s certainly a reason for that. Graham and Ashkahn have toyed with the idea of opening up another center multiple times throughout the years but something else always came up. As they’ve met more people in the industry, they’ve seen some of the pitfalls and successes from people opening additional locations, franchises and whatever else. They share their thoughts on when they think it’d be best to open and why they say to wait a little bit.
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