 Thank you, Rich. So we actually wanted to open it up for some questions, because I know this is kind of a dense subject matter. To actually ask a question, what we're going to have you guys do is line up at either one of these two microphones on the side here, and we'll kind of just go down the line. And just while some people are getting there, I might just kind of have a quick question for you. Sure. I'll just summarize in like a couple sentences what you think this means for people who either currently run a float tank center or are looking to open up a float tank center. Okay. Yeah, the criteria I think creates an opportunity for the industry to show conformance and help create peace of mind, not just for your users, but also to get greater acceptance, rapid acceptance, lower cost acceptance from the local public health officials. Okay, great. Yeah, Tom, fine. Let's see. NSF does microbiological testing. Has anybody to your knowledge ever tested what organisms actually can survive in the salt solution at the concentration we typically use in the tank, the magnesium sulfate solution? Yes, we've done that type of work with five or six different target organisms that are common in the recreational water world. And there was I think one or two that actually did better than the control sample, but most of them were either stable or had minimal impact, like maybe one log reduction or rate of death. And then organisms that tend to the sixth power concentration, most of those were fairly stable. I think one of them actually grew, and then two had a slight decrease. But that report is something that we did for a particular manufacturer, so it's not data that NSF owns per se, so I'm being very general about the organisms, not getting into those details. But that's the type of work that we definitely do and have done. So actually, things do survive. Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. They don't flourish, but they survive. Okay. Question over here? Yeah. Is this on? Cool. Very interesting, and certification is a very awesome idea, and I'm curious. As the speech went on, I was really surprised at the end to learn that there's already it's almost completed. Can you give me a little more information on how close it is to completion, how somebody's already passed certification, and what kind of requirements we can expect for NSF certification? Okay. A great question. Yeah, so NSF has the standards process. Sometimes the standards process is very slow, and typically it's slow when there's not something to jump-start it. So what NSF will do is we will evaluate a product to a set of criteria, and in this case it was the component certification, specifications, kind of long-winded terms, just basically the criteria. But that criteria that we used is not yet an ANSI standard. NSF standard 50 is the ANSI standard, and what we have is a task group that's looking at the criteria that we already developed with input from public health officials in some manufacturer. So we weren't working with everybody under the sun. We're trying to get something done that would really help kick the conversation into high gear, because otherwise things can languish, and then something bad could happen in the industry and set everyone back a decade. So the idea was let's develop a robust criteria with input from public health officials and evaluate a product to that criteria, and then take that resultant criteria, take it over to this task group, and really give them something to work through that they don't have to think as hard about. It's not like they have to start from zero. They don't have to start from having nothing, but actually have a really well thought-out set of criteria. I think the future of it, though, is it's going to be debated on is this criteria set too high? Is it too low? Should we have forced the criteria to dictate the ceiling height of the structure? We didn't put that in there. We thought, you know, that's something that might be more of an issue of convenience and safety and comfort for the users, but we didn't mandate that in the standard criteria that we've developed as a, what we'll call again, the component search spec. I think there was more to your question, though. I think the only other thing maybe a little more information on is what kind of standards we can't expect from what you've seen so far. Okay. I think it's real common that the flotation, you know, when we don't know what the final version is going to be that it'll go in as a new chapter in standard 50, but I think it's really common sense to think it's going to have some filtration requirements. It's going to have some, you know, bug killing, disinfection tests. It's definitely going to have some requirements for things like the slip and fall. I mean, these are just common sense things that are already in the criteria, and I don't think that would change. I mean, it could, but based on, you know, my 10 years working just in this industry, I don't think so because it's already accepted industry criteria for the disinfection tests that we're doing. So we didn't reinvent the wheel. We actually took existing tires and wheels and brakes and things and built a vehicle specifically for the flotation industry, but what we didn't do is create radical new things. We used existing infrastructure from either the code language or existing standards infrastructure and then tried to leave it a little bit open for some of the special nuances and how a flotation system is different from a pool or a spa, but we didn't mandate requirements for things like air circulation, air handling, air treatment or rates of flow, but it's implied because some of these things are already regulations. They're already in the building code. You're already supposed to have 10 air changes per hour in an enclosed space. I didn't make it up. It's already out there. You're supposed to be following it, but if the industry isn't following it, now's a chance to kind of work through that issue so that we prevent problems or other issues from hurting the industry. So those are some of the really simple ones and some durability tests for the shell. That's really common already for the swim spas and other spa manufacturers. So again, not an alien concept to them. They're probably already systems you're getting and buying or building might already comply with some of these criteria that are referenced in the NSF document. Thank you. You bet. Yeah. I think that this is definitely a great step forward for the float industry, and one of my main concerns is that chlorine is usually required by the government in pools and spas, and I don't think that in the flotation industry it's something that's really applicable since it is a healing and wellness practice, and chlorine is a known carcinogen. Do you think that it's likely that chlorine is going to be required by NSF standards? We tried to write that criteria very carefully to require that you have a system that can deliver chlorine or bromine in case it's required by the local jurisdiction. What we're trying to not do from NSF's perspective is tell everyone what to do. We're trying to look at some of the existing criteria out there and say, if you have to do this, are you sure you want to do chlorination or bromination? Do you think that's really a good idea in enclosed space? Well, maybe it's okay if you have ventilation, but what if you don't have ventilation? Maybe you don't want to do that. Maybe you want to make sure you have a treatment system, and I'm not going to play favorites and say, oh, I like ozone, or I like hydrogen peroxide, or I like UV. It's like, I don't really care. I just want it to work, whatever it is. So have a test to prove that it works. Awesome. Thank you. You bet. Yeah, go ahead. Okay. Kind of follow-up on the last question that was asked to have tests to prove that it works. When you were going through the statute of, and I believe it was on the state of Texas, and one of the criteria under, I'm sorry, I don't know what the acronym ANSI stands for, but it says if your system's not compliant, then you can have somebody who is ANSI certified to come and test it and make sure it meets certification. What exactly qualifies somebody to be an ANSI certified tester? Who is that person? What are their qualifications? What makes them qualified to come in and test the product and say, okay, you're okay? Excellent question. That whole ANSI is American National Standards Institute. So that's a U.S. company that is registering those entities that write standards. Like NSF was the first ANSI accredited standards writer. So we were able to, every time we create a standard, it's automatically an ANSI standard. It's just kind of the way we operate. But in the case of the flotation criteria, it's not yet an ANSI standard. It was developed more in kind of a concentrated small group to create the criteria. And then that's now presented to the standard 50 ANSI standards group to work through it to see if they want to make it tougher or easier in some ways or add to it or shrink the scope of it somehow. But to your point, if Texas or some state is requiring an ANSI accredited entity to do the work, that's just common place that they would do that. What they really probably mean is that thing I was talking about in my presentation, more that 17-0-2-5 test lab, like the laboratory should be competent and accredited to do those tests. And they should be accredited as a product certifier to 17-0-6-5. So these are kind of subtle differences, but technically you can be a certifier and not have a laboratory. That's not how we operate. We do it all. But some might say, well, we're just going to consult with this person and that person and that person and try to cobble together all the test data to certify a product. One more question, and I don't even know if this is your department because you're with the NSF and not with the Center of Disease Control. But you said when you go in and test the water, you're going to inoculate it and you're actually going to put something in it. I think it was enterococcus facium, what you're going to put in the water. What is that? That's essentially like that bad poo bacteria. It's the toughest one to kill. I thought it was because the fecal study and stuff like that, but what exactly are you putting in the water? We put in two common bugs that are present in pool and spa waters. Typically it's pool and spa waters that are not chlorinated or whoops, they forgot to chlorinate. So those are the most common outbreak generators, what they call swimmers' ear, the swimmers' rash. That's pseudomonas aeruginosa. And then enterococcus facium is just a really tough, kind of like an E. coli type bug. It's the hardest one to kill in that class. So that's why EPA requires that testing. That's why we incorporate that into our standard. But we don't put that. We don't go out to a built float. We wouldn't go to float on and throw some bugs in there and like, good luck. I'm out of here. The idea is what we want to do is have, you know, a system like a float tank built at NSF by the manufacturer. They assemble it, follow the instructions. We're just there monitoring it. And then when the time is right, we're like, okay, now it's time to throw in the bugs. You know, it's just one of the many tests we do, but it's probably the scariest one. And then after, you know, the organization, we're taking control samples and things of that nature, then doing triplicate testing to generate this data set. So as you go through your cleaning cycle, we actually verify that it has a three log reduction. So again, if we put in bugs at 10 to the 6, like a million or 10 million, we're trying to make sure that you're able to knock it down to the 100,000. That's not to say that bugs aren't there, but that's like, wow, that cleaning system really works, and you're never going to see in the real world that kind of load of stuff thrown at the system unless someone just has a horrific accident, okay? You have to have a really bad situation happen. So we, again, the testing we do is very robust. You could always make it tougher. You could do essentially what wastewater testing would be, and that's like 10 to the 7th, 10 to the 10th load of organism going in. That's like tons of raw sewage coming in, highly concentrated stuff, but not appropriate, not necessary for this. All right, I was just wondering, thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Sherry. Got another question over here? Yeah, I got three questions and a comment if I could. What's the typical cost to get certified? You know, we haven't done a lot of these, and the one that has made it through thus far, there's some R&D testing done, almost like, you know, think about doing it this way, might do it that way. So when I tried to estimate what it would cost to go through to certify a system, I was coming up with a price somewhere in the teens to the thirties, depending on, you know, the teens of thousands, like maybe in the 17 to 19,000 up into the thirties, depending on how much stuff you're using is already certified and how much, how many different designs and options you have? Like if you have different treatment systems, like, oh, we want to have an ozone system, a UV system, or put them together, so it's always, like, the same treatment system, that can help reduce the work scope. So I don't have, like, a single number for you, but a range to certify a system. And then, if you achieve NSF certification, is it instantly accepted in every health department in every state and you're guaranteed to get your product approved? Absolutely not. Okay. And then, if you build it to NSF standards which you have tested, does it relieve you from all liability that would occur if someone was injured or used it if you made the standard? We have no unicorns here. No, that doesn't exist. Okay. So I would like to make my comment now. I'm in the pool and spa industry. You should run away from this certification. You should run as fast and as far as you can because it'll stifle innovation, it'll stifle creativity, and it'll burden the manufacturers to complete to the code. There's no burden on if you build your own tank, you don't have to be set, nothing. If you buy a used tank and put it into production, there's no standard. All the tanks that are already out there don't have to meet the standard. I would raise my hand in opposition to any type of forced-in standard. They took the spa code for portable hot tubs. They took the swim spa code for swim spas and they took the vinyl liner code and they just mushed them together. And this is an organization that is not going to help the creativity of this industry in my opinion. Thanks. Thanks, sir. I'm not sure you know it. I just want to say, gosh, you're smart and thanks for being here. The questions that I have are along the lines the gentleman had, but are you certifying devices or are you certifying facilities or protocols? I'm unclear and I'm not that smart. It's a reasonable question. Typically what we were certifying in the past was always kind of like the parts that would be used to build the system at the facility. So we caught the standard, Standard 50s titled the Pool Spa Recreational Water Facilities. And it's meant to be very broad-based to cover these different iterations. And the typical chapters that are currently in Standard 50s, there's one for pumps, one for valves and chlorinators and skimmers and yadda yadda yadda. So some of the most recent chapters were things like the spas and swim spas because those are really a system. You've really got a lot of pieces parts, but they still have to meet certain total system standards of performance because just because you're using a listed part doesn't mean that you'll achieve a certain end. It's a lot easier using listed stuff, listed parts, but what you really want to do is just make sure that the total system when it's engineered can achieve the end. So that's why what we've done is tested a built system and we're certifying the system, the system comprised of the pump, the chemical feed system or the UV or ozone system, the piping system. Really, that's kind of all the paperwork that goes into it. It's almost like an engineering assessment. So the competent manufacturers know how to make that type of a system and then what we're able to do is document that system and do the testing on the system and then when we give that to the public health officials, they're like, thank you, that's what we've been looking for. Why was this so difficult to get done in the past? It's not that difficult, but people are afraid and I understand that. So backing up a little bit, you've certified a pump. Is that correct? Yeah, like 1700. So you're certifying that a pump pumps a fluid be apple butter or water or salt water or whatever it is, but you're certifying that it does that and then you're certifying that an ozonator does its ozone and does this and this and this. So you could have a system with 20 components and 19 of them are certified and the tank isn't certified. Okay. And so then you have you're working on a standard for the tank or the room and somebody's been through that. Yeah, like the room, what we've done is we've created a criteria that does cover if your system is like a liner system inside of a structure or if it's an actual vinyl acrylic or FRP-GRP type system. So the criteria already covers those types of designs. And what we did is, truly yes, we did just use the requirements from the pool industry because that's exactly what's used in this industry. It's not novel and revolutionary and new and different. It's been going on since 1958 for Kirk's company. So these are not new concepts. These are not alien concepts. So for me I'm still struggling with once you've got a little tank and you've got all the parts in the tank and everything certified are we going then to the flooring and the drywall the that's more what the code might require as it relates to you have to have a bathroom nearby. That's code language. And there's already plumbing code that tells you how to build the bathroom the spacings, the certification on the plumbing components that's already covered. The issue is that the code language might just dictate that you have a bathroom within I don't know 100 feet of the float tank, chamber, pod, whatever. The code language might also dictate an extraction vent. It might dictate humidity control so you don't rot and create mold in the facility. That wouldn't be put into the product standard but that might be guidance language so right now with NSF and our standard 50 joint committee task group they're creating code language and the standard. So the two work together but they are technically separate documents. The standard you use to evaluate the product or the system and then the code is used to really help design the facility. So we're talking about modifying the uniform building code? I think you're really just going to reference the existing code language unless for when you have a flotation system it's going to be very similar to a pool or a spa that's indoor. You're going to create a heck of a lot of humidity and moisture and you want to deal with that before it does rot out the interior of the structure and cause all sorts of other problems. Well the other thing is who's paying for all this? Yeah. Well that's the beauty of it if you will it's volunteer based which sometimes means things move slow because the paying of the standards development process is all done by volunteers. Can you elaborate? Yeah like people that they already had their daytime jobs as a manufacturer of some widget or their daytime jobs a public health official daytime jobs a facility operator they will call in to call it might go for an hour or couple hours every month in the development of the criteria. The code language again there's people that write the codes and then they sell the code or they give it away free as the case of the CDC when that one because that was actually funded by taxpayer dollars so the Center for Disease Control and Prevention got some funds from the federal government again back in 2005 before things got bad and then there's no money to do anything for public health but they were actually able to use some of those funds to kind of put the infrastructure in place almost some of the administrative personnel that would help track all these different teleconferences and decisions that were made in creation of the code. I think I remember a slide that said something about September was a a date and so in September we'll have some sort of Well what I was trying to do is show again almost like a an analogous industry the pool and spa industry and that there's current state codes and then there's model codes state codes are already on the books the model code is like hey here's a really nice example in case you want to change a section of your code or incorporate this stuff that was really well detailed and thought out by a lot of like I was involved in all those other codes I'm not saying that made them great but the idea is that you can utilize those if your state doesn't have a good code or it doesn't address a certain issue it's information that's out there and accessible for use and incorporation a standard is similar to that so the development of the standard is an open process so it's not some highly paid big wigs in a small room making decisions to benefit their business it's like no that's not how we operate we actually have open involvement but yeah we're going to ask you a question if you say you want it to be five we're going to say well why do you want five what's your logic for that and that's going to be so it's not just meant to help the entrenched industry product manufacturers or others it's really meant to help create a good criteria that can be protective but meet the needs of all stakeholders let me just finish up and let us go but the last question is that when this standard happens will everybody be grandfathered in or will that then be a signal for reform existing facilities are probably before regulation if you will normally when a regulation is put in place they'll say going forward the new facilities would need to comply with this and so it's really not that difficult if someone goes out and I don't know someone made this that or the other to have it evaluated tested and if it passes certified maybe not some manufacturers come through and then oh so and such didn't pass I got to change the pump or the UV system or ozone system and then maybe they can pass and be certified so that any of those systems that are sold and installed are certified and that can help meet the needs of the public health officials so there's no guarantee that things will be accepted but what we find is that certified systems to date are always accepted but I don't want to make a promise for the future because we've got centers right now so they have any concern about their local officials coming in and checking them against the standard I think that's a legitimate concern that they could say oh I know this other criteria exists but the criteria already exists and so might they try to make an existing install or product comply with that that's difficult to do they don't have the capacity to do the testing or assess it the manufacturer might have certain test reports and things that they would then give to the facility operator to help them get product acceptance but normally when a regulation comes about there's a pretty significant lag time between when it would be required it's almost like you create a standard well okay that's good and that'll help you get accepted faster but that doesn't mean it's going to be a requirement everywhere or anywhere it's almost like as a variance you could say okay you don't have a criteria but here's what I've had done and tested and certified and that helps you plow through the variance process very quickly but I think I heard you say that ADA was going to be part of the standard well we just put in again there's already laws that dictate handholds but the law also dictates lifts and so there's no where a lift will go in that you don't have to have that because it's not a pool or a spa the ADA law applies to pools and spas so again this isn't a pool or a spa but the handhold requirement if you have a handhold it should comply with some requirement it shouldn't just oh we're not going to test it whoops it pulls off that just wouldn't make any sense to anyone so you want to have some reasonable criteria for inventing a new pulling a criteria out of someone's backside you use infrastructure that's already out there and accepted and just again incorporate that for the evaluation of a float system that has handholds promise again if you create another criteria it actually creates more problems because now you have two different sets of rules as opposed to just one you know the standard of the test and you just keep using that in similar applications as a spa operator I'm scared to death ADA it should be it's a law that's why it's scary well and it's very difficult to implement thank you great thank you and that will probably be the last question Rich is at the I want to say something it's okay you got a minute for me first off I want to thank Rich Martin and the people at NSF they're getting involved in this industry in the beginning we've worked really hard with these people over the last four years to establish guidelines for operational these facilities to where it's not some person's opinion of whatever which is fine people can do whatever they want to do and that's just that's great but the reason why he's here and Sung is here and these people have been involved in this is because they care about public health and safety the rigorous testing the robust testing that is required to be a legitimate industry now people can get up and they can you know we go to state after state and we have constant situations with building departments health officials this state official that state official this county official these guys those guys and it's up to us then to conform into these makeshift guidelines they put together based on a pool or a spa or a hot tub or this or that because there is no guidelines for this industry so what we've been doing is trying to establish credible guidelines so there is an industry here with these float chambers that are very important these chambers are a very strong asset for people to have in their own life and to be good stewards about presenting this type of technology to people is very important and if we can get the backing and support of a credible third party accredited testing facility to establish these guidelines we don't have to get beat up by these people anymore they're insisting upon these chemicals we didn't use any chemicals in our testing there's no chemicals in there not any peroxide no chlorine no bromine none of these things they don't have any business in these chambers it's a confined area it's a single use and we're working they didn't insist that we use that they insisted we am I over that is that supposed to be music at the end or something but you know once again I'm probably speaking out of turn here but when I see some guy come up here and say something about oh you shouldn't get regulated it's like saying through the restaurant industry you don't need health checkers food out you're going to come in and eat at or any other industry self-regulated this guy tells me other day each local government does regulate it what? each local government does regulate it like I told you we've been dealing with each of these governments independently they're working off a spa you have been you have been not we well that's because we go to state to state just like most things someone's buying somebody out what? buying somebody out I don't even know what you're talking about alright alright Rich and Sung here sounds like someone had a bad day they have a booth just outside I'm sure they're happy to answer questions throughout the rest of the weekend I encourage everyone to go up and talk to them and talk to each other and I mean it's great to have a platform to even have these conversations so thank you all for being willing to come out and listen and talk and share your opinions just give another hand for Rich for coming up here and presenting with us