The White Beauty 3 (FAILED DESIGN)

TLDR:

this design failed for these reasons:

cost – estimate from Boat Outfitters was $4000 to $7000
even if they did it, it would be too high to comfortably step in
repair – with custom builds, if anything goes wrong, you must ask the manufacturer to build again. with just stock parts, you can always build yourself!

CURIOUS? read -on

In 2011, the Black Beauty DIY Isolation Tank was built and used for 6 months of great joy before job requirements forced me to sell my $5,000 mobile home for $500 and relocate from Florida to New York for work. In other words, the Black Beauty was a working tank that was built and worked and was used heavily.

Table of Contents

Now, in 2024, the White Beauty 3 has begun forming with the same design intentions as the Black Beauty:

Easy to build – more like “snap together, done” – no sawing, measuring, nailing and all that jazz
Passive heating – no heating of the water while floating. Before you start complaining understand that I learned about passive heating from Tim Strudwick, who developed the i-sopod floatation tank that retails for 20k and it exclusively uses passive heating. We can get into whys and wherefores of that some other time.
Open Source – as much as I like Shane Stott after meeting him in person in Utah, I am not happy with how Zen Float Co bailed on it’s customer base. The original Zen Float Tent was brilliant and their inflatable one that was in the works was even more genius. But such is the way of commercial ventures: their goal is to suck funds from people and hide their trade secrets so they can suck even more funds from people. Capitalism has it’s place but typically in the realm of spirituality and religion, I am more of an open-source and home-church guy than a proprietary and commercial property guy.

So while the Black Beauty carried the torch for this approach for over a decade, I kept searching for a way to make things even simpler. And with some furious Google searching, I did succeed.

So with no further ado, I reveal the current plans for White Beauty 3

The tank

The tank is very simple. You find a custom dock box builder, such as Boat Outfitters, and you tell them:

Hello, I am seeking a dock box with these dimensions 96″x 60″ x 33″. The height of the dock box, including the door that closes over the top, must be able to fit through a standard door. Because a standard door is 36 in wide I suggest that the height, INCLUDING THE TOP, be 33 in. A schematic is attached with the expected dimensions.

The custom dock box builder will say:

Thank you for reaching out! Our max size for starboard sheets are 54″ x 96″ so the biggest that we could go is 95″ x 53″. Here is a former design that we did:

And then you say:

Make the following alterations to this schematic and send it back for confirmation:

Regarding top view:

the width of 70 inches should be 95 inches
the depth of 18 inches should be 53 inches

Regarding front view:

the height of 18 inches should be 33 inches – we need to be able to bring this dock into a house and carry it through a standard door, which has a width of 36 inches

Regarding top view open:

the 67.5 inches should be 92.5 inches

The Spa Pack

The spa pack provides a pump and filter in order to sanitize the water.

Here are 2 very good articles on how to filter/clean the tank:

(Passive) Water Heating

Unlike most tank designs from the past into the present, The White and Black Beauty follow the wisdom of the i-sopod and remove all heating from the water during the float.

A submersible aquarium heater for a large tank will allow you to specify a temperate of 93.5 for the water and have it heat the water. 300W is fine for 300 gallons of water, but I think I would just go ahead and get 1000W or 2000W since they cost about the same.

Why am I revealing this now?

because someone was wondering if there were new developments in tank design since the original Black Beauty.

typically I do before I speak lest I become one of the 8 million people flapping their wings about “I’m going to build my own tank” who never do a thing 🙂

DIY Tanks