Excerpted from The IPSSAN, IPSSA's official member newsletter — September 2026 issue. The full feature covers how The Cold Standard trains and certifies technicians nationally; this excerpt focuses on the technician side of the story, including FieldPay customer Pyramid Pool Service.
When Alex Golding installed cold plunges at his San Diego gyms, he ran into a problem familiar to anyone who's ever tried to keep water equipment running: he couldn't find anybody qualified to service them.
Cold plunges were being installed faster than the trade could keep up with them — expensive equipment sitting broken, no dedicated technician to call, no maintenance process to prevent the next breakdown. So he built the company he wished existed: The Cold Standard, now the architect of what it calls the national standard for how these systems should be maintained. The company has since launched Cold Standard Certified, an eight-month training curriculum covering chiller mechanics, water chemistry, commercial compliance, and brand-specific service — built explicitly so manufacturers and gym operators have somewhere to refer warranty and service work, and so technicians already working in adjacent trades have a clear, credentialed path into a category that barely existed five years ago.
Why IPSSA members specifically
Cold plunge is following the same trajectory the pool industry has seen before: a fast-growing category of expensive residential and commercial equipment with no established service infrastructure behind it. But it's a bigger opportunity for IPSSA members than for the trade generally, because of who IPSSA already requires you to be before you're allowed to call yourself a member. IPSSA membership matters enormously to a manufacturer or gym operator deciding who gets dispatched to service a $15,000 chiller under warranty. The single biggest liability question in any referral network — "is this person actually insured, actually competent, actually licensed to do this work?" — is one IPSSA has already answered for its 4,000+ members, chapter by chapter, since 1988. Cold Standard doesn't have to build that trust from zero with an IPSSA member the way it would with an unaffiliated technician; it only has to add the category-specific layer — chiller mechanics, commercial compliance, brand-specific service — on top of a base that's already vetted.
The skill overlap underneath that is real too: water chemistry, filtration, pump and equipment diagnostics, route-based service delivery are what a pool tech already runs every day, and they translate directly into cold plunge maintenance. But the credential-plus-liability story is what actually shortens the distance between "interested" and "dispatched," and it's why we wanted to bring this story to IPSSA members directly, rather than letting the category get defined by technicians with no pool background — and no equivalent insurance or certification bar — at all.
From the field: Pyramid Pool Service
Pyramid Pool Service (Austin, TX), IPSSA members, took on their first cold plunge repair jobs through The Cold Standard in August.
"Cold Standard has given us the exciting opportunity to expand into the growing cold plunge service and repair market in Austin. It's been great working with Alex and their internal tech support for our onsite technician makes completing the jobs seamless and easy."
The bigger picture
Golding's team has said publicly that the goal isn't just to service cold plunges — it's to build the certification and referral infrastructure the entire category is missing nationally. For IPSSA members specifically, that's an on-ramp into a growing adjacent market where the hardest part — proving you're insured, tested, and licensed — is already done. Eight modules and a route.
This is an excerpt. Read the full feature — including how Cold Standard Certified works and more from technicians in the network — in the September IPSSAN.