3 must-knows before buying ice bath equipment

When people are looking for an ice bath, they think of the tub with everything inside.

But when you're looking at a commercial setup, everything becomes more modular.

Not because of the space you have, but because of the work that each component will need to do.

The chiller needs to be far more powerful.

The filtration system needs to be geared up for hundreds of users daily.

The pools themselves need to be built for volume.

Chillers

The chillers you see attached to smaller domestic baths like the late and great Odin's and similar, they are built for home use.

3-4 people per day, time in between to bring the temperature back down, small water volumes.

But if you speak to anyone who has them in a commercial space, they all say the same thing.

"It struggles to keep the temperature down"

This isn't necessarily a design flaw with that style of chiller, it's built for purpose.

You can't get upset with this the same way you can't get upset if your car isn't able to pull a plough through a field.

When you go into a commercial setting, dozens if not hundreds of people per day, you need something that is built for purpose.

Something that can handle that load.

Filtration:

I might do another newsletter on this by itself, but this is currently the biggest point of vulnerability for recovery spaces in Australia.

Councils are having a field day with site visits and fines.

The tiny filters you see on chillers are not compliant, and definitely not capable.

They remove bits of hair and dirt from the water, but they don't even come close to removing or killing the bacteria.

They are built for home use, just you and your own germs.

In a recovery space, there are hundreds, if not thousands of people who go through that same water, all adding their own sweat, skin, bacteria and pathogens.

You need filtration systems that are geared up for that volume, but also chemical dosing systems that kill the bacteria the filters don't catch.

And what we're seeing more of - it's not the council visiting that is catching people.

It's a group of people all getting a skin infection, then tracing it back to the one recovery room.

Pools

There's a reason a lot of these tubs don't cover warranty in a commercial setting.

They are built for your average person using them at home once a day.

Maybe a few people stepping in and stepping out, but that's about it.

Yet in a commercial setting, they have multiples of that per day.

That's a lot more pressure, movement, and potential for breaking.

This is the reason so many of them crack and leak.

Again, it's not a design flaw.

They have them built overseas in a factory for the lowest price possible, but with the goal of being able to handle domestic use.

They aren't built for commercial use.

When looking for a pool for your commercial space, you need something that is built for purpose.

I can tell you from seeing the aftermath, a few hundred litres at best, often thousands of litres at worst does a significant amount of damage to recovery rooms.

What should you take from this?

You can save money up front by buying these domestic units.

The chiller might keep up in super low volumes, the tub might as well, and you might not get caught without compliant filtration, but it's only a matter of time until you need to do it properly.