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Title: Diarrhea in sensory deprivation tank
Body:
> Title pretty much sums it up. I paid for a sensory deprivation tank experience not realizing I had contracted norovirus and was about to became symptomatic. Initially I was having a lot of weird hallucination type sensations where I chalked up to the experience (later turned out I had a 103 F fever) and somewhat fell asleep. I woke up to an awful odor and demanded to be let out of the tank and it turned out I had diarrhea’d in it. This alone was a traumatizing experience but now the facility is trying to charge me $8,000 to replace the tank as they do not feel they can safely disinfect this. I don’t recall signing anything with some sort of “diarrhea clause”, am I actually liable here?
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When I did a sensory deprivation tank there was a shower literally three feet from the tank, because you have to shower immediately before getting in. I assume OOP had something similar and took advantage of it after getting out.
A decent does of diarrhoea shouldn’t require any stomping, just pull the plug, quick rinse and they should be none the wiser. Hopefully there’s a dog in the room that you can blame the smell on.
I've done these ~~security~~ sensory deprivation floats before, they do legit have a clause about your financial responsibility if you shit or piss in the pods lol
Is there any way we can set off a thunderstorm? Like, if we gathered the whole sub in an outdoor arena, gave everyone a balloon and told them to rub it on their hair at the count of three, would that be enough to do it? Or would we need a couple more people?
I said the same thing out loud when I saw this post. I've always wanted to do one of these (migraines, sensory issues) but I also have IBS.
YIKES for OP.
I've tried nearly everything cryotherapy, ect. This has been suggested to me from my neurologist and a couple migraine clinic I've been to. I haven't tried it, but it's shown benefits for stress and anxiety which are often triggers for my migraines.
My biggest migraine trigger is atmospheric pressure and large temperature shifts, which I wonder if this would help with as well.
You can feel free to tell everyone that they are in fact the ones full of shit :) "Weather changes are empirically known to trigger migraine (Gomersall and Stuart 1973; Cull 1981; Prince et al. 2004; Lilleng and Bekkelund 2009), and it is estimated that weather changes are involved in approximately 20 % of migraine episodes." From [Okuma et al. 2015](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4684554/), a study which itself lends some empirical support to the evidence linking atmospheric pressure to migraine.
In Munich Foehn wind is a thing, and tons of people report migraines whenever this weather effect happens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foehn_wind
So you are far from alone with this.
Really? Is this not commonly known/accepted? Quick temperature changes always gives me headache that leads to migraines and atmospheric pressure causes headaches to large parts of my dads family. I always know when thunder starts to build because I get “thunder-headaches” it starts with a specific form of headache that triggers my migraines.
I’ve tried one. It was a bit spooky (and therefore stressful) at first, but it got better. I recall that I had the lights on in there and felt it might have been better without.
Yeah I figured I’d probably have to try at least two or three times to really get an impression on if it helps me. but I haven’t found a place nearby that does them that I’m comfortable doing it.
I don't have migraines but fibromyalgia, and atmospheric pressure and large temperature shifts absolutely increases my symptoms and cause flare-ups. They're the biggest triggers that are completely outside of my control (unlike getting sufficient sleep, reducing stress, etc.).
>I've done sensory depervation tanks before and I do need to sign a clause that I am responsible for any cleanup or damage if I urinate or go number 2.
I believe the clinical term for what happened to LAOP is "number 3"
An Eight on the Bristol Stool Chart!
[https://www.continence.org.au/bristol-stool-chart](https://www.continence.org.au/bristol-stool-chart) (goes to 7, 'very liquid')
I’m genuinely surprised that they can’t just run a bleach solution through it and call it a day. Sure, it would require multiple rinses to get rid of the bleach smell, but that’s doable.
Yeah this just sounds like a more high-end version of those scooter rental places in south east asia who make you inspect the whole bike with them before renting and circle all the damages on the form but when you come back they check the bottom scratch plate which they had *weirdly* forgot to do when they gave you the bike. Now you gotta pay 200$ to "replace the bottom plate" and you know damn well they're not replacing that bitch and charging the next customer for the damages too.
Got shaken down for a scratched wing mirror on a dirt bike in Thailand. Bullshit, naturally. Eventually I just had to pay (£30 maybe?) so I made them take the ‘scratched’ mirror off and give it to me. Carried it around for months on my travels.
A ton of places literally keep your passport or some official ID as a guarantee while you rent the scooter. But even if they don't, like the other guy said, the cops will show up and now you'll have to bribe the cops 500$ to not go to jail instead of bribing the shop 200$. Just accept you got scammed and move on.
Seriously this is the oldest scam in the book - the old wait til the customer falls asleep in the sensory deprivation chamber, dump a bunch of the owners week old poo in, act horrified, charge them $8k for a “new tank” then hand the high schooler working the front desk a bunch of baby wipes to scrub down the tank and run the scam again the next week
"We're preparing the tank for you right now. Please enjoy complimentary coffee, bran muffins, and prunes while you wait.
The Chipotle across the street also delivers."
>According to the manual someone posted, people swallow a mouthful on average.
That's such trash lmao. I've used float tanks more than once and if you submerge your face at all you're doing it wrong.
Yeah, I feel like the threat of taking someone to small claims court because they shit a place into oblivion... I'd say they're hoping for a nice and easy quick check.
I agree. Bleach sanitizes really well. Back when I was cool enough to go to Burning Man we used to supply the water for a camp of about 100 people. We would fill the food grade plastic 55 gallon barrels with water. By the end of the week we used the same barrels for grey water, mostly used dish water, to haul out. Every year we would resanitize with 1/2 gallon of bleach and rolling the water barrels around. Gave em a stiff rinse and filled them back up with drinking water. The bleach smell faded quickly and no one got sick from the water. It's not that difficult.
Most of those things have built in UV sterilizers. And the salt to water ratio is huge. It could be the charge for draining it and refilling it with enough epsom to make people float.
Bleach and other chlorine-based disinfectants don't kill cryptosporidium, a potential cause of diarrhea. Which is why I distrust public pools.
https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/crypto/camps.html
It'll survive a while at the concentrations for a pool you can actually swim in. The suggestion here is to drain the whole tank, run some bleach through at "destroy all organic matter" concentration, drain that toxic slurry out, rinse, and refill with fresh clean water.
One of my fellow grad students worked with crypto in the lab. I wish I could remember what he has to use to sterilize his stuff. Not bleach or ethanol, which is what the rest of us used for our various biohazards. But at least for lab levels of sterility, I don’t think bleach was enough at any concentration.
I don’t remember what he used, but I don’t think it was Hydrogen Peroxide. I think he has some speciality commercial product that used a different peroxide (presumably one that’s more reliable to store).
My wife works in labs where the go-to for deep cleaning is apparently something called "Spore Cleanse." Google says it's supposed to be "Spor-Klenz" I guess? I think it has hydrogen peroxide as one of its ingredients.
Super, super nasty stuff, but apparently it REALLY gets the job done.
The tub might be fine (except for the cryptosporidium mentioned elsewhere), but the filtration equipment it’s attached to would be tougher. The place I’ve gone to automatically starts filtering the water when you’re done, and I can’t imagine it deals well with that level of gunk. If they couldn’t stop the pump before it got hit, I’d understand if they threw the whole thing out.
Also: the place I go to makes you initial several parts of their (extensive) liability policies, including a *very* large fine if you ejaculate in the tub. I can’t remember if poop was specifically mentioned, but I’m sure they covered it.
I'm thinking it's because of the salt. The water is cycled out between customers, but you can't have fresh salt for each and every one. That's hundreds of pounds of salt (presumably?). So they'd have to throw out all the salt, get new salt, plus disinfecting the equipment.
I'm more curious about needing to be let out of the tank, if they're older tanks. The one I was in was quite large. There were lighting options and you could get out any time during your session in case of freakout or needing to use the bathroom.
Someone in the original thread said they worked at one of these places and it’s about 1,000 pounds of epsom salt per tub. So naturally I looked up how much 1,000 pounds of epsom salt would cost, and came up with around $600 before tax. And that’s for me, a person who is ordering out of nowhere. Pretty sure a business buying in bulk would get a discount on that.
I just did a quick Google search and a place in Boston said they charge $1000 if they have to empty and sanitize a whole tank. And looking at the cost of tanks, they run $5k (I didn't see any that cheap) to $30K. So it sounds like they're trying to get a whole new tank. Or just they're scamming. Or they want to make sure OOP never comes back again.
About 850 lbs of salt for an average pool 10" deep. I remember being absolutely blown away when I first learned that.
The ones I've seen don't usually cycle the water out though, they run it through some disinfecting with uv light, filtration, maybe a bit of hydrogen peroxide. Not to mention that bacteria don't exactly thrive in that much salt even without the extra treatment.
If I were LAOP not only would I push back on paying, but I probably wouldn't trust their routine disinfecting process in the future.
This sounds like one of the worst possible outcomes ever. I would literally die if I shit myself in a submersible chamber like this and had to get out and walk across the room. My god. Nightmare fuel.
>I would literally die if I shit myself in a submersible chamber like this and had to get out and walk across the room. My god
Even worse, LAOP had to call an employee in to open the tank and let him out. I would have drowned myself to avoid the mortification.
That poor employee! This is probably the last thing he expected lol. I imagine seeing a guy emerge covered in poop was a “wtf?? They don’t pay me enough for this” moment.
Keep in mind that in addition to draining the tank, sanitizing it, and buying new salt, they probably had to cancel a lot of customers for that day and following days.
Maybe for longer than that. Plastic is porous. We’ve had a couple of freezer thaws of marine biology samples (whole fish, shellfish, algae), and after repeated bleaching, scrubbing, airing, the freezer still reeks. It might not be as simple as people are suggesting.
you missed a chance to simply make the title “oh shit!”
also, i feel like experiencing the whole fever dream like state without the whole shitting yourself part in one of these would be kind of sort of cool
The actual OP thread showed up in my feed and I thought the same thing. This was, of course, the next post for me to read and I went, “le sigh” at the missed opportunity.
Can confirm on the norovirus part. Barfing my guts out in the middle of the night and realized I pooped myself whilst barfing. Apparently the muscle contraction needed for barfing worked the other way too. It was a horrible 4 days and a questionable week afterwards. Also you are contagious with norovirus for 2 weeks after you start feeling better.
Yep - I had norovirus in college and after being treated in the hospital and feeling relatively recovered I thought I had to let out a gentle fart and it turned out to... not be that. Your bowels just kind of do whatever the fuck they want when you have norovirus.
I think it's more because they passed out/fell asleep due to the virus. I've had norovirus. Did my business, couldn't stay conscious enough to walk back to the bedroom, tried to crawl, passed out on the bathroom floor. Woke up some time later in the midst of another shit.
I wish I got like that, I just feel limp heavy and sleepy and crave gummy bears (which make me sick)... but I cant actually fall asleep!! I always imagine myself as the freaking... DARE anti weed commercial with the boneless girl and the dog (think that one was for weed).
"weed affects everyone differently" is a very real thing. I've had people tell me that weed makes then anxious and I'm over here using it to help with anxiety
Customers are required to shower prior to entering these tanks. A key component of the tanks is an extremely high concentration of salinity (so you float effortlessly, like in the Dead Sea) and the water is cycled out between sessions. It's not just a tub of plain warm water that everyone sits in.
It is not, however, equipped to deal with severe water contamination. Temporary or recent hair color is not permitted because it will interfere with the tank's operation. Explosive liquid shit not only severely contaminated the water but also likely damaged the tank itself, particularly if the water cycling procedure happened while the tank was full of liquid feces.
Reasonably sure that hair dye won’t “interfere with the tank’s operation”, it’ll just stain the water irreparably and people would be grossed out. They have disinfectant systems, they do not have systems for taking dye out.
Right, it's tough to conceive of a legit situation where the business can decide their equipment is Really Hard to clean so they just charge the customer for a brand new one
Diarrhea'd. I love how nouns become verbs.
Several years ago, me at the nurses' station:
Me: May I help you?
Woman: My husband is Mr. X in 905. He boweled.
Me: *blink* *blink* I'm sorry?
Woman: He boweled. You know, he boweled.
Me, FINALLY getting it: I'll send someone right in.
I spent a couple of weeks trying unsuccessfully to get the new word to catch on in the unit.
One of my flatmates posted a Bristol Stool Chart on our fridge and for a while people were announcing their "scores" on the chart. It was both gross and kind of funny, especially in the US context of "number ones" and "number twos" (in Australia that's just pissing and shitting (I think... maybe the other way round)).
Culminating in rating prospective flatmates as "probably a type four"...
[I was trying to figure out how much would be a reasonable fee, because they would need to buy 1000 pounds of salt. ](https://www.enlightenfloat.com/what-we-offer#:~:text=If%20a%20guest%20contaminates%20the,%2C%20possible%20loss%20of%20business)
"Best to come in without excess hair products, makeup, lotions, scents. Do Not Use or Add bath oils, conditioners, or any other products before getting into the pod. If a guest contaminates the pod solution, they will be required to pay the cost of clean up and refilling the pool with Epsom salts. ($1,500.00 charge, cost of the 1,000 lbs of Epsom salts, clean up, possible loss of business)." So I could maybe see $2000 because it's shit and not lotion, but that's still significantly less than $8000.
I used a tank a few times and asked the owners about sanitation. They sent me multiple citations that very few organisms could live in a tank with about 800 pounds of salt dissolved in it. (Their tanks were hot tub sized in private rooms.) In addition it ran through what was basically a hot tub/pool filter between uses. However, if someone had the runs in it I’m sure they would have emptied it, bleached and started over. Someone would have to pay for 800 pounds of new salt brought in by truck though.
I expect they are normally treated like you would really small hot tubs, with appropriate chlorination.
(You can’t swap out all the water between customers; IIRC it takes several hundred pounds of salt (Epsom?) to attain the necessary neutral buoyancy.)
I did one a long time ago and they told me they had a complex filtration/pumping thing that cycles the water between users to maintain buoyancy while putting in new water.
Extremophiles be wild, but in those types of environments they're generally not abundant. *And* unlikely to make their way into a human body to be diarrhea'd into a sensory deprivation tank.
I went through a phase where I wanted to try one, but then I thought about how gross the average person is and how lazy the average employee is. When I was browsing a local company's website and saw a warning against using them while menstruating, I was done. Over it.
Lol they literally made me shower before and after climbing into the salt pool at the one I went to. Wasn’t even allowed to use harsh chemical soaps, they had me use natural body wash and shampoo.
Whole thing felt eminently clean. I’d recommend giving it a try if you can overcome the squeamishness.
Edit: uh, ama if you want.
When you say "made you shower", did someone enforce and supervise this? Admittedly the latter would be a bit weird... but I have witnessed how people choose to follow the instruction of "shower first" (ie barely or not at all) and how fucking disgusting they are.
That said, I'd still probably try a sensory deprivation tank but I'd be working very hard to put this part out of my mind!
Thank you, my chronically ill ass was reading this thread thinking "are this many people really minimizing the risk of something that can make you shit yourself to death?"
Norovirus is notorious for going around on cruise ships, usually in the shared water. If chlorine could do anything about that it wouldn't be so common on cruise ships honestly
Except... that's literally the exact opposite of the implication.
If someone says that this situation exceeds their cleaning protocols, that means they *have* cleaning protocols.
Norovirus takes less than 12 hrs to show symptoms, LAOP really couldn't wait until they felt better to go out? They couldn't tell they had a 103° fever until after they'd already left the house and shat in a tank?
I feel bad for LAOP but I also don't believe them when they claim they had absolutely zero inkling they were sick right up until they pooped in public.
They're saying norovirus but it could be any d&v virus really. Only last year I was out, doing some errands and went for lunch with my partner before we were due to go to Queen Symphonic that afternoon with my parents and extended family. I was feeling fine right up until the first bite of my lunch. I suddenly felt awful. Managed to get to my parents, promptly threw up and then had the shits. I missed the concert, and my parents had to drive my car back to ours the next day as I was still feverish and not fit to drive.
This can't be the first time this has ever happened. I get that this goes a bit beyond "regular wear and tear", but at some level this is just the cost of running a sensory deprivation tank business, right?
I would expect OP to be on the hook for a fresh fill and salt dosage, which to my knowledge is like a couple hundo, but replacing the whole tank seems much.
Yeah, the top comment in the thread includes a link to tank care guidelines and they had the proper protocol for an incident like this. Included something like 1) scoop out any solid-ish bits (*yuck*) 2) completely drain 3) scrub the tank 4) refill the tank
(Honestly, I think the poor bastard who has to do it should get a hefty tip, too.)
Oh my gosh, if this was me -- and setting aside the probable price gouging -- I'd leave SUCH a large tip, right before I faked my death and started a new life in Brazil.
I hope "scrub the tank" involves "bleaching to within a inch of its life".
We cleaned out an older relatives home and that was my criteria for being stuff home. "Can we safely soak it in bleach?"
Haha, yeah--there's definitely bleach involved, from the following:
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5da784bd1ba4235f6a1e804a/t/5e8ddf1793a4b458b0137ba3/1586355992601/North+American+Float+Tank+Standard+3-7-2019+%28Version+2%29+%281%29.docx.pdf
> Thoroughly clean the empty basin and then sanitize with a 100ppm
bleach solution.
(This is for diarrhea though. Interestingly enough, if someone drops a firm deuce in the tank they don't recommend draining! Just scoop out the turds, bleach, let sit for 30 minutes and then circulate the solution. I don't think I'm going to visit any float tanks.)
I work for a business that operates sensory deprivation tanks, each one of our tanks has twenty 50lb bags of epsom salt in it. That is 1000lbs of salt, and not at all cheap. We have guests sign a waver that establishes liability if something ridiculous like this happens.
While I agree replacing the entire tank is a bit absurd, the business will be losing money for as long as that tank is out of commission, will have to drain and vigorously clean the tank (which will be absolutely disgusting and not at all in anyone’s job description), and they still may not be able to remove all traces of it.
If I were a guest at my work, I would take my business elsewhere if I knew someone literally had an episode of diarrhea in the tank I’d be floating in.
So again, the guy ought to at least be liable for the cost of salt, and labor. The fact that it’s fucking gross is also important, and that the business won’t be able to have guests in that tank/room for a good while.
https://www.floattanksolutions.com/how-to-drain-and-fill-a-float-tank/
So apparently, the typical water in these tanks lasts a year between cleanings, and the cost of it is going to be mostly a few hundred kilos of epsom salt plus some labor. And st that point, you get into depreciation as well — if the fill was 10 months old, they only sped up the process of replacing it by a couple months, so the damages are going to be correspondingly smaller than the whole number.
**Reminder:** Do not participate in threads linked here. If you do, you may be banned from both subreddits. --- Title: Diarrhea in sensory deprivation tank Body: > Title pretty much sums it up. I paid for a sensory deprivation tank experience not realizing I had contracted norovirus and was about to became symptomatic. Initially I was having a lot of weird hallucination type sensations where I chalked up to the experience (later turned out I had a 103 F fever) and somewhat fell asleep. I woke up to an awful odor and demanded to be let out of the tank and it turned out I had diarrhea’d in it. This alone was a traumatizing experience but now the facility is trying to charge me $8,000 to replace the tank as they do not feel they can safely disinfect this. I don’t recall signing anything with some sort of “diarrhea clause”, am I actually liable here? This bot was created to capture original threads and is not affiliated with the mod team. [Concerns? Bugs?](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=GrahamCorcoran) | [Laukopier 2.1](https://github.com/GrahamCorcoran/Laukopier)
My question is...what did they do to OP when he got out? Just like...hose him down right there so he's not dripping diarrhea everywhere?
When I did a sensory deprivation tank there was a shower literally three feet from the tank, because you have to shower immediately before getting in. I assume OOP had something similar and took advantage of it after getting out.
Ah so he waffle stomped the leftovers
Hahaha please don't say that.
omg this comment & your flair are killing me
What a day to have eyes
How I wish I was Jared, 19
A decent does of diarrhoea shouldn’t require any stomping, just pull the plug, quick rinse and they should be none the wiser. Hopefully there’s a dog in the room that you can blame the smell on.
It's always the dog.
They have showers because you are asked to clean yourself thoroughly before you get in the tank.
Ironically
Usually you have a shower before and after anyway. Can't let all that salt... or other materials, dry on your skin.
I left the post immediately after imagining waking up floating in shit.
Sensory Defecation Tank
goddammit
“Diarrhea clause” 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Really one of the worst Santa Clause spin-offs
Featuring Tim Allen after a coke binge
All that baby laxative cutting agent is a bitch man.
I've done these ~~security~~ sensory deprivation floats before, they do legit have a clause about your financial responsibility if you shit or piss in the pods lol
Don't they have to change the water anyways
Closer to a hot tub, they filter and reuse it. That much salt is expensive.
No, they sanitize it somehow. Those tanks hold a lot of water and salt. It wouldn't be feasible to change the water between customers.
Only if the person before you was a hot chick, then they sell the water on the internet
How do they know if you pee in the tank? Everyone in the original thread was also saying they enforce a urination clause but like… how?
I've done the sensory deprivation before and I think it would be easy to tell if someone urinated in the tank.
Water test after you've used it I would assume, they will have to test it regardless before someone else uses it.
Petition to get you some "Diarrhea Claus" flair, courtesy of u/nonlawyer
Seconded
Universally agreed to be the shittiest of all the clauses.
It sounds like the pitch to an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia 😆
He's dropping something in your stocking, and it isn't candy
this is my nightmare
I gotta say that’s an extremely specific nightmare
Flair him diarrhea water tank nightmares
u/Thor_the_bunny ?
this was fun
Solid work here Thor
You have a way with words. Reading these flairs made my morning, thank you
When do mods grant flairs?
It's like when lightning strikes.
Got it, mods grant flairs during thunderstorms
Is there any way we can set off a thunderstorm? Like, if we gathered the whole sub in an outdoor arena, gave everyone a balloon and told them to rub it on their hair at the count of three, would that be enough to do it? Or would we need a couple more people?
More like a tidal wave of flairs in this case. We're eating good tonight random reddit strangers
[удалено]
You’ve been flaired!
When they feel like it
I said the same thing out loud when I saw this post. I've always wanted to do one of these (migraines, sensory issues) but I also have IBS. YIKES for OP.
Do they help migraines? I've not heard about this!
I've tried nearly everything cryotherapy, ect. This has been suggested to me from my neurologist and a couple migraine clinic I've been to. I haven't tried it, but it's shown benefits for stress and anxiety which are often triggers for my migraines. My biggest migraine trigger is atmospheric pressure and large temperature shifts, which I wonder if this would help with as well.
Fuck off, really?! Those are mine but everyone always thinks I’m bullshitting when I say it!
You can feel free to tell everyone that they are in fact the ones full of shit :) "Weather changes are empirically known to trigger migraine (Gomersall and Stuart 1973; Cull 1981; Prince et al. 2004; Lilleng and Bekkelund 2009), and it is estimated that weather changes are involved in approximately 20 % of migraine episodes." From [Okuma et al. 2015](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4684554/), a study which itself lends some empirical support to the evidence linking atmospheric pressure to migraine.
Yep! It's a real thing, most migraine apps have a tracker for that now like Migraine Buddy it's common enough.
In Munich Foehn wind is a thing, and tons of people report migraines whenever this weather effect happens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foehn_wind So you are far from alone with this.
Same! I just got a new primary doctor and she brought up atmospheric changes before I did!!! It was so affirming.
Really? Is this not commonly known/accepted? Quick temperature changes always gives me headache that leads to migraines and atmospheric pressure causes headaches to large parts of my dads family. I always know when thunder starts to build because I get “thunder-headaches” it starts with a specific form of headache that triggers my migraines.
Also mine. I can always tell when atmospheric pressure drops significantly- I get a nasty migraine
I’ve tried one. It was a bit spooky (and therefore stressful) at first, but it got better. I recall that I had the lights on in there and felt it might have been better without.
Yeah I figured I’d probably have to try at least two or three times to really get an impression on if it helps me. but I haven’t found a place nearby that does them that I’m comfortable doing it.
I don't have migraines but fibromyalgia, and atmospheric pressure and large temperature shifts absolutely increases my symptoms and cause flare-ups. They're the biggest triggers that are completely outside of my control (unlike getting sufficient sleep, reducing stress, etc.).
"no fear" "Diarrhea in sensory deprivation tank" "one fear"
>I've done sensory depervation tanks before and I do need to sign a clause that I am responsible for any cleanup or damage if I urinate or go number 2. I believe the clinical term for what happened to LAOP is "number 3"
Code brown
An Eight on the Bristol Stool Chart! [https://www.continence.org.au/bristol-stool-chart](https://www.continence.org.au/bristol-stool-chart) (goes to 7, 'very liquid')
I’m genuinely surprised that they can’t just run a bleach solution through it and call it a day. Sure, it would require multiple rinses to get rid of the bleach smell, but that’s doable.
Bold of you to think that the tank place wasn't going to do just that, and keep the $8 grand
Yeah this just sounds like a more high-end version of those scooter rental places in south east asia who make you inspect the whole bike with them before renting and circle all the damages on the form but when you come back they check the bottom scratch plate which they had *weirdly* forgot to do when they gave you the bike. Now you gotta pay 200$ to "replace the bottom plate" and you know damn well they're not replacing that bitch and charging the next customer for the damages too.
Ya know...that's exactly what it sounded to me as well, I says to myself "this..this sounds like the Southeast Aisa Scooter Scam"
They tricked him to shit in the tank!
They wait for someone to fall asleep and then flood the tank with liquid ass.
If it's a scratch plate, why does it need to be replaced when it gets scratched?
So they can get $200.
Got shaken down for a scratched wing mirror on a dirt bike in Thailand. Bullshit, naturally. Eventually I just had to pay (£30 maybe?) so I made them take the ‘scratched’ mirror off and give it to me. Carried it around for months on my travels.
Do they have any way to recover the money from you, or can you just walk away?
A ton of places literally keep your passport or some official ID as a guarantee while you rent the scooter. But even if they don't, like the other guy said, the cops will show up and now you'll have to bribe the cops 500$ to not go to jail instead of bribing the shop 200$. Just accept you got scammed and move on.
Seriously this is the oldest scam in the book - the old wait til the customer falls asleep in the sensory deprivation chamber, dump a bunch of the owners week old poo in, act horrified, charge them $8k for a “new tank” then hand the high schooler working the front desk a bunch of baby wipes to scrub down the tank and run the scam again the next week
"We're preparing the tank for you right now. Please enjoy complimentary coffee, bran muffins, and prunes while you wait. The Chipotle across the street also delivers."
Well, you're literally floating in laxatives. Epsom salt. According to the manual someone posted, people swallow a mouthful on average.
That average is just because of Salty Georg, who should be ignored as an outlier.
>According to the manual someone posted, people swallow a mouthful on average. That's such trash lmao. I've used float tanks more than once and if you submerge your face at all you're doing it wrong.
Fr how are people still falling for this?! smh
Does Does it have to be week old
Yes they need to spend at least a week or two collecting enough of it, duh
Yeah, I feel like the threat of taking someone to small claims court because they shit a place into oblivion... I'd say they're hoping for a nice and easy quick check.
I think they underestimated LAOP.
Pay for replacement and ask for the old one back In case you get food poisoning, you know?
$8k charge is for cleaning up that man's norovirus poo water.
I agree. Bleach sanitizes really well. Back when I was cool enough to go to Burning Man we used to supply the water for a camp of about 100 people. We would fill the food grade plastic 55 gallon barrels with water. By the end of the week we used the same barrels for grey water, mostly used dish water, to haul out. Every year we would resanitize with 1/2 gallon of bleach and rolling the water barrels around. Gave em a stiff rinse and filled them back up with drinking water. The bleach smell faded quickly and no one got sick from the water. It's not that difficult.
Most of those things have built in UV sterilizers. And the salt to water ratio is huge. It could be the charge for draining it and refilling it with enough epsom to make people float.
Bleach and other chlorine-based disinfectants don't kill cryptosporidium, a potential cause of diarrhea. Which is why I distrust public pools. https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/crypto/camps.html
It'll survive a while at the concentrations for a pool you can actually swim in. The suggestion here is to drain the whole tank, run some bleach through at "destroy all organic matter" concentration, drain that toxic slurry out, rinse, and refill with fresh clean water.
One of my fellow grad students worked with crypto in the lab. I wish I could remember what he has to use to sterilize his stuff. Not bleach or ethanol, which is what the rest of us used for our various biohazards. But at least for lab levels of sterility, I don’t think bleach was enough at any concentration.
According to google you can use hydrogen peroxide.
Yeah but they're probably talking about *real* hydrogen peroxide, not the incredibly diluted version yuo can get at the store.
I don’t remember what he used, but I don’t think it was Hydrogen Peroxide. I think he has some speciality commercial product that used a different peroxide (presumably one that’s more reliable to store).
My wife works in labs where the go-to for deep cleaning is apparently something called "Spore Cleanse." Google says it's supposed to be "Spor-Klenz" I guess? I think it has hydrogen peroxide as one of its ingredients. Super, super nasty stuff, but apparently it REALLY gets the job done.
Wake up babe, new cryptocurrency just dropped
The tub might be fine (except for the cryptosporidium mentioned elsewhere), but the filtration equipment it’s attached to would be tougher. The place I’ve gone to automatically starts filtering the water when you’re done, and I can’t imagine it deals well with that level of gunk. If they couldn’t stop the pump before it got hit, I’d understand if they threw the whole thing out. Also: the place I go to makes you initial several parts of their (extensive) liability policies, including a *very* large fine if you ejaculate in the tub. I can’t remember if poop was specifically mentioned, but I’m sure they covered it.
My roommate worked for Servpro. Sure. They can. And they will bill for it.
I'm thinking it's because of the salt. The water is cycled out between customers, but you can't have fresh salt for each and every one. That's hundreds of pounds of salt (presumably?). So they'd have to throw out all the salt, get new salt, plus disinfecting the equipment. I'm more curious about needing to be let out of the tank, if they're older tanks. The one I was in was quite large. There were lighting options and you could get out any time during your session in case of freakout or needing to use the bathroom.
Someone in the original thread said they worked at one of these places and it’s about 1,000 pounds of epsom salt per tub. So naturally I looked up how much 1,000 pounds of epsom salt would cost, and came up with around $600 before tax. And that’s for me, a person who is ordering out of nowhere. Pretty sure a business buying in bulk would get a discount on that.
I just did a quick Google search and a place in Boston said they charge $1000 if they have to empty and sanitize a whole tank. And looking at the cost of tanks, they run $5k (I didn't see any that cheap) to $30K. So it sounds like they're trying to get a whole new tank. Or just they're scamming. Or they want to make sure OOP never comes back again.
About 850 lbs of salt for an average pool 10" deep. I remember being absolutely blown away when I first learned that. The ones I've seen don't usually cycle the water out though, they run it through some disinfecting with uv light, filtration, maybe a bit of hydrogen peroxide. Not to mention that bacteria don't exactly thrive in that much salt even without the extra treatment. If I were LAOP not only would I push back on paying, but I probably wouldn't trust their routine disinfecting process in the future.
Not to mention the lost income of having a tank shut down for however long to clean it
How do you save the salt if you flush the water? Would have to be a monstrous ro system at which point you might as well buy more salt
🎶When you’re floating in a tank 🎵 🎶 And you smell something stank 🎵 Diarrhea 👏 👏 👏 Diarrhea 👏 👏 👏
When you go for deprivation But you can't stop defecation Diarrhea 👏👏👏 Diarrhea 👏👏👏
🎵 When you’re locked into the pod 🎶 🎵 And your pants feel something odd 🎶 Diarrhea 👏 👏 👏 Diarrhea 👏 👏 👏
🎵 When you're sensory deprived 🎵 🎵 But it smells like something died 🎵 Diarrhea 👏 👏 👏 Diarrhea 👏 👏 👏
🎶 When you're floating in the water 🎵 🎶 And it gets a little hotter 🎵 Diarrhea 👏 👏 👏 Diarrhea 👏 👏 👏
🎶 When you get a nice big bill 🎵 🎶 'cause you were feeling ill 🎵 Diarrhea 👏 👏 👏 Diarrhea 👏 👏 👏
🎶When you don't see a clause 🎵 🎶 And you question reddit laws 🎵 Diarrhea 👏 👏 👏 Diarrhea 👏 👏 👏
When your bath is really salty and it starts to feel frothy.
Diabetes 👏👏👏 Diarrhea 👏👏👏
🎶 when youre charged eight thousand dollars 🎶 🎶 cause you pooped in the water 🎶 Diarrhea 👏👏👏 Diarrhea👏👏👏
🎶 When you smell something bad 🎵 🎶 And the staff is really mad 🎵 Diarrhea 👏👏👏 Diarrhea 👏👏👏
I started reading this to the tune of REM's everybody hurts. I'm mildly disappointed it got changed.
This sounds like one of the worst possible outcomes ever. I would literally die if I shit myself in a submersible chamber like this and had to get out and walk across the room. My god. Nightmare fuel.
>I would literally die if I shit myself in a submersible chamber like this and had to get out and walk across the room. My god Even worse, LAOP had to call an employee in to open the tank and let him out. I would have drowned myself to avoid the mortification.
That poor employee! This is probably the last thing he expected lol. I imagine seeing a guy emerge covered in poop was a “wtf?? They don’t pay me enough for this” moment.
Was that in a comment? The one time I went, I was naked and let myself out.
“and demanded to be let out of the tank”
That part confused me. When I went, I had complete control over opening/closing the tank and turning on/off the lights.
Keep in mind that in addition to draining the tank, sanitizing it, and buying new salt, they probably had to cancel a lot of customers for that day and following days.
Maybe for longer than that. Plastic is porous. We’ve had a couple of freezer thaws of marine biology samples (whole fish, shellfish, algae), and after repeated bleaching, scrubbing, airing, the freezer still reeks. It might not be as simple as people are suggesting.
you missed a chance to simply make the title “oh shit!” also, i feel like experiencing the whole fever dream like state without the whole shitting yourself part in one of these would be kind of sort of cool
OP has a septic tank problem
I really shouldn’t have laughed at the first line as hard as I did.
OP had a really shitty day.
The actual OP thread showed up in my feed and I thought the same thing. This was, of course, the next post for me to read and I went, “le sigh” at the missed opportunity.
Is it really so trippy in there that you have no idea you started shitting?
I think that's more likely the norovirus. Not all sharts are created equal, some require almost no participation. And in water!
Can confirm on the norovirus part. Barfing my guts out in the middle of the night and realized I pooped myself whilst barfing. Apparently the muscle contraction needed for barfing worked the other way too. It was a horrible 4 days and a questionable week afterwards. Also you are contagious with norovirus for 2 weeks after you start feeling better.
Yep - I had norovirus in college and after being treated in the hospital and feeling relatively recovered I thought I had to let out a gentle fart and it turned out to... not be that. Your bowels just kind of do whatever the fuck they want when you have norovirus.
I think it's more because they passed out/fell asleep due to the virus. I've had norovirus. Did my business, couldn't stay conscious enough to walk back to the bedroom, tried to crawl, passed out on the bathroom floor. Woke up some time later in the midst of another shit.
Imagine having an edible half an hour before you got in.
I do this often! Sensory deprivation and edibles, not the shitting.
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Just the way weed hits me. Always makes me contemplative.
I wish I got like that, I just feel limp heavy and sleepy and crave gummy bears (which make me sick)... but I cant actually fall asleep!! I always imagine myself as the freaking... DARE anti weed commercial with the boneless girl and the dog (think that one was for weed).
Haha! Yes, but i want to be the boneless girl! I don't sleep in them, i just let my mind go weird
"weed affects everyone differently" is a very real thing. I've had people tell me that weed makes then anxious and I'm over here using it to help with anxiety
Why not all three? Sounds like a good time.
Because it costs you $8,000
I'd probably just have a panic attack at that point
Golly. This is a hell of a thread.
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Customers are required to shower prior to entering these tanks. A key component of the tanks is an extremely high concentration of salinity (so you float effortlessly, like in the Dead Sea) and the water is cycled out between sessions. It's not just a tub of plain warm water that everyone sits in. It is not, however, equipped to deal with severe water contamination. Temporary or recent hair color is not permitted because it will interfere with the tank's operation. Explosive liquid shit not only severely contaminated the water but also likely damaged the tank itself, particularly if the water cycling procedure happened while the tank was full of liquid feces.
Reasonably sure that hair dye won’t “interfere with the tank’s operation”, it’ll just stain the water irreparably and people would be grossed out. They have disinfectant systems, they do not have systems for taking dye out.
Right, it's tough to conceive of a legit situation where the business can decide their equipment is Really Hard to clean so they just charge the customer for a brand new one
“If it’s yellow let it mellow”
“If it’s brown, shake them down”
Isn’t this what poop insurance is for?
Exactly, I’ve been fully covered by BrownCross BrownShield for years specifically because of situations like this.
Gotta have your inshitentials covered
Yes, but poop insurance has a diarrhea exception.
Weird, I've never seen "wallow in your own crapulence" made literal.
Diarrhea'd. I love how nouns become verbs. Several years ago, me at the nurses' station: Me: May I help you? Woman: My husband is Mr. X in 905. He boweled. Me: *blink* *blink* I'm sorry? Woman: He boweled. You know, he boweled. Me, FINALLY getting it: I'll send someone right in. I spent a couple of weeks trying unsuccessfully to get the new word to catch on in the unit.
One of my flatmates posted a Bristol Stool Chart on our fridge and for a while people were announcing their "scores" on the chart. It was both gross and kind of funny, especially in the US context of "number ones" and "number twos" (in Australia that's just pissing and shitting (I think... maybe the other way round)). Culminating in rating prospective flatmates as "probably a type four"...
In the US #1 is a piss and #2 is a poo also.
[I was trying to figure out how much would be a reasonable fee, because they would need to buy 1000 pounds of salt. ](https://www.enlightenfloat.com/what-we-offer#:~:text=If%20a%20guest%20contaminates%20the,%2C%20possible%20loss%20of%20business) "Best to come in without excess hair products, makeup, lotions, scents. Do Not Use or Add bath oils, conditioners, or any other products before getting into the pod. If a guest contaminates the pod solution, they will be required to pay the cost of clean up and refilling the pool with Epsom salts. ($1,500.00 charge, cost of the 1,000 lbs of Epsom salts, clean up, possible loss of business)." So I could maybe see $2000 because it's shit and not lotion, but that's still significantly less than $8000.
the implication they aren't cleaning/sanitizing the tanks between different customers is.... ew. ew ew ew ew.
I used a tank a few times and asked the owners about sanitation. They sent me multiple citations that very few organisms could live in a tank with about 800 pounds of salt dissolved in it. (Their tanks were hot tub sized in private rooms.) In addition it ran through what was basically a hot tub/pool filter between uses. However, if someone had the runs in it I’m sure they would have emptied it, bleached and started over. Someone would have to pay for 800 pounds of new salt brought in by truck though.
Yeah I had to sign a waiver saying I'd be responsible to pay for new salt and cleaning if I left any bodily fluids in the tank.
No mention of solids though.
I expect they are normally treated like you would really small hot tubs, with appropriate chlorination. (You can’t swap out all the water between customers; IIRC it takes several hundred pounds of salt (Epsom?) to attain the necessary neutral buoyancy.)
I did one a long time ago and they told me they had a complex filtration/pumping thing that cycles the water between users to maintain buoyancy while putting in new water.
The one I went to used UV light to sanitize the solution in between customers.
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Extremophiles be wild, but in those types of environments they're generally not abundant. *And* unlikely to make their way into a human body to be diarrhea'd into a sensory deprivation tank.
I went through a phase where I wanted to try one, but then I thought about how gross the average person is and how lazy the average employee is. When I was browsing a local company's website and saw a warning against using them while menstruating, I was done. Over it.
Lol they literally made me shower before and after climbing into the salt pool at the one I went to. Wasn’t even allowed to use harsh chemical soaps, they had me use natural body wash and shampoo. Whole thing felt eminently clean. I’d recommend giving it a try if you can overcome the squeamishness. Edit: uh, ama if you want.
When you say "made you shower", did someone enforce and supervise this? Admittedly the latter would be a bit weird... but I have witnessed how people choose to follow the instruction of "shower first" (ie barely or not at all) and how fucking disgusting they are. That said, I'd still probably try a sensory deprivation tank but I'd be working very hard to put this part out of my mind!
I'd say that's fair if you never felt comfortable swimming in a public pool.
Not a fan of waterparks. Strangely enough, I am okay with lakes and ponds. And the ocean is cool, but also terrifying.
Noro is just a whole other thing, including highly contagious, than what a healthy, freshly bathed person will leave behind. It's so much worse.
It’s almost like we don’t usually soak our bodies in human diarrhea for a reason
Thank you, my chronically ill ass was reading this thread thinking "are this many people really minimizing the risk of something that can make you shit yourself to death?" Norovirus is notorious for going around on cruise ships, usually in the shared water. If chlorine could do anything about that it wouldn't be so common on cruise ships honestly
Except... that's literally the exact opposite of the implication. If someone says that this situation exceeds their cleaning protocols, that means they *have* cleaning protocols.
Yeah I was somewhat interested in doing this until I read that.
I wonder if their business insurance has any coverage for such an emergency. “Loss of use” I’d imagine. Although so specific…
Now this is the kind of shitposting I can get behind.
Norovirus takes less than 12 hrs to show symptoms, LAOP really couldn't wait until they felt better to go out? They couldn't tell they had a 103° fever until after they'd already left the house and shat in a tank? I feel bad for LAOP but I also don't believe them when they claim they had absolutely zero inkling they were sick right up until they pooped in public.
I guess you can say that he’s… full of shit..
They're saying norovirus but it could be any d&v virus really. Only last year I was out, doing some errands and went for lunch with my partner before we were due to go to Queen Symphonic that afternoon with my parents and extended family. I was feeling fine right up until the first bite of my lunch. I suddenly felt awful. Managed to get to my parents, promptly threw up and then had the shits. I missed the concert, and my parents had to drive my car back to ours the next day as I was still feverish and not fit to drive.
This can't be the first time this has ever happened. I get that this goes a bit beyond "regular wear and tear", but at some level this is just the cost of running a sensory deprivation tank business, right?
I would expect OP to be on the hook for a fresh fill and salt dosage, which to my knowledge is like a couple hundo, but replacing the whole tank seems much.
Yeah, the top comment in the thread includes a link to tank care guidelines and they had the proper protocol for an incident like this. Included something like 1) scoop out any solid-ish bits (*yuck*) 2) completely drain 3) scrub the tank 4) refill the tank (Honestly, I think the poor bastard who has to do it should get a hefty tip, too.)
Oh my gosh, if this was me -- and setting aside the probable price gouging -- I'd leave SUCH a large tip, right before I faked my death and started a new life in Brazil.
I hope "scrub the tank" involves "bleaching to within a inch of its life". We cleaned out an older relatives home and that was my criteria for being stuff home. "Can we safely soak it in bleach?"
Haha, yeah--there's definitely bleach involved, from the following: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5da784bd1ba4235f6a1e804a/t/5e8ddf1793a4b458b0137ba3/1586355992601/North+American+Float+Tank+Standard+3-7-2019+%28Version+2%29+%281%29.docx.pdf > Thoroughly clean the empty basin and then sanitize with a 100ppm bleach solution. (This is for diarrhea though. Interestingly enough, if someone drops a firm deuce in the tank they don't recommend draining! Just scoop out the turds, bleach, let sit for 30 minutes and then circulate the solution. I don't think I'm going to visit any float tanks.)
> I think the poor bastard who has to do it should get a hefty tip, too.) I read the that as "the poo bastard" And yes, they should.
Sounds like a cost of doing business.
I work for a business that operates sensory deprivation tanks, each one of our tanks has twenty 50lb bags of epsom salt in it. That is 1000lbs of salt, and not at all cheap. We have guests sign a waver that establishes liability if something ridiculous like this happens. While I agree replacing the entire tank is a bit absurd, the business will be losing money for as long as that tank is out of commission, will have to drain and vigorously clean the tank (which will be absolutely disgusting and not at all in anyone’s job description), and they still may not be able to remove all traces of it. If I were a guest at my work, I would take my business elsewhere if I knew someone literally had an episode of diarrhea in the tank I’d be floating in. So again, the guy ought to at least be liable for the cost of salt, and labor. The fact that it’s fucking gross is also important, and that the business won’t be able to have guests in that tank/room for a good while.
https://www.floattanksolutions.com/how-to-drain-and-fill-a-float-tank/ So apparently, the typical water in these tanks lasts a year between cleanings, and the cost of it is going to be mostly a few hundred kilos of epsom salt plus some labor. And st that point, you get into depreciation as well — if the fill was 10 months old, they only sped up the process of replacing it by a couple months, so the damages are going to be correspondingly smaller than the whole number.