Thermal... The Pat at Glenelg with slightly modified banks?

amb you are a bloody genius

Yeah Adelaide has to be a contender! I reckon the Pat would be a great location for it.

Looking at the finer specifications of the wave generating mechanism it appears that it is a hump sliding along the pool floor, creating a breaking wave along the humps profile.

Does this not create a hazard if one falls off, ie the hump will continue moving and the surfer is likely to bump into this hump as it continues moving down the pool?

This isn't like other wave generating pools where the wave is set in motion and moves along a sculptured flat bottom floor, much like reefs/beaches we normally surf, but there is an actual moving obstruction directly under the wave.

You can read/see more here.. http://www.google.com/patents/US20100017951

Thanks for link. Really interesting. The moving mechanism couldn't be worse than a shallow reef covered in coral. Surely the board you'd riding would be more dangerous. Though the cable pulling the hump could be a different story.

I'd take my chances and sign a waiver if it's anything like their test pool from a few years ago. Bring it on.

I agree, falling forward & getting tangled under the cable pulling the object seems possible & dangerous.

So are they talking height of face or height of swell? My guess is that at 1.9m they are talking overhead, not double overhead. Key question which needs to be answered is wave speed as this is critical to wave quality. Energy, and therefore energy costs, increase with the square of the speed. They mention a "typical" wave speed of 6m/s in the patent but I'm guessing that is towards the lower end of what we usually surf.

1.2m would appear to be wave face, based on the suggestion that it is 30cm higher than the previous one which was barely waist high.

Craig if you read the interviews and watch the videos etc. they say that the hump/s are in the middle of the pool, and the wave pulse is directed towards and breaks on the outside along the shallow sides of the pool. If the pool is 35m wide on either side (based on the pic above), you'd need a lot of Huntington hops to get 30m out on a fairly flat face.

Cheers Alakaboo, yeah it looks like hump is separated form where the wave actually breaks, so there's no chance of hitting it or getting caught in the cabling operating the hump.

the hump the hump the hump....southport has a hump lol

We're supposedly getting one in Bristol http://www.the-wave.co.uk and another in North Wales http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-west-wales-21937751. I'd put a fairly large amount of money on neither of them ever being built

I wonder if they plan on charging more for the "offshore" direction. I imagine wind chop would be fairly minor unless the wind was blowing exactly along the major axis of the pool, but wind direction is still going to affect whether it barrels or crumbles.

thank the great lord!tasmania might get a decent wave that breaks more than once a month.if you guys want land ,my back yard is perfect.let me in for free and its all yours.seriously the hobart city council just built an ice skating rink at the docks,they would be right up for a pool next to it it.keep it toasty warm and and ill cancel the ticket to indo,and just camp out at the pool.awesome.

what's the use of patents -this one in 1975 looks very much like two others that have been featured on this site?

http://www.google.com.gt/patents?id=Se03AAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=...

And that reminds me Bob - did Kelly ever secure his patent?

Stu's first article on Greg Webber's wave pool (Nov 2011) mentioned that Kelly patent application was rejected in May of that year. At the time, Greg Webber held the only US patent for a wave pool of its kind. Here is the article Stu wrote:

http://www.swellnet.com.au/news/2651-kelly-slater-almost-sunk-in-wave-po...

Shortly after it was published, Kelly then rebuked the story, writing his own article which was published on Surfline and The Inertia. These developments were detailed in a follow up article written by Stu:

http://www.swellnet.com.au/news/2661-kelly-slater-enters-the-debate

Needless to say, now that we're 17 months since all this went public, I'm not sure whether Kelly ever secured his patent.

Stu? How complex is it to find out this information?

TBen , I think he would have . I heard there is enough difference to make each unique. Makes you wonder about the use of a patent? Both Kelly and Greg seem to have similarities with the 74 patent above . I think its all about getting a rich sugardaddy with a big honey pot to put a straw into? call me a skeptic? Positioning for credibility to invest in?

Not very hard Ben.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=...

How many of these can you build next to one another, side by side? can you create different types of waves?Can you build a massive complex of 4or5,6 of these things so you could really have a wave park? that would be sick!!

Thanks blindboy (although that link didn't work), turns out a search was easier than I thought. Although, it's not particularly clear that the patent has been granted on that site (ie do they also list pending claims?) it seems it may have been granted on September 11, 2012.

It seems Wavegarden have gone and used an idea I alerted GW to of which someone may have already had a Patent on .

And Craig , this principle has as little danger of the person being injured by the implement and chain thats created the wave they are riding , as just like GW's Trawler and future designs the waves will trail the Foil by a fair margin . Of which i see you have already realised .

Sounds good. buts its still all talk .

Untill they build one of these things INDOORS where they can control the wind surface flow ( slightly flare open the Baz ) will i be waiting in line .

And that really puts these things too Far away in the Money stakes .
Pools in Paddocks are one thing , but housing such structures enclosed is another world .

Hi Ben, sorry about that I didn't check the link.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html
Go to this page and use "wave pool" as Term one and "Kelly Slater" as Term two

Yeah already been through it blindboy - seems a patent may have been granted on on September 11, 2012 (although it's not particularly easy to understand!).

....oh and on the top right it has the date of 11 September 2012 so I am assuming that it was granted as the application date is much earlier. I will ask a friend of mine who is a hydraulics engineer to check it out. My impression is that the Patent Office has forced them to be highly specific so it would not cover other variations on the same basic ideas, such as the circular pool and the use of a moving foil. Whaaaat may be able to throw some light on that.

I remember a phrase that described a developer.
"he is one who thinks of a project and then finds someone to pay for it"
Hard road -the development game with only a few sustainable success stories.
Add an "out of the square" innovation and it makes the task all the more difficult to finance.
I recently talked about amalgamating some legacy business interests with another.
The Gm said he had a silent business partner to consult before he could proceed.
My antennae tingled and I asked "I hope its not some outlaw group".
he responded with "no far worse -a merchant banker"

I cant help but see most of what is in patents to be either 1. smokescreen, 2.bluff, 3.technobabble, 4. superfluous and then finally confusing . particularly when competition is involved.

but if anyone is interested our Hunter based Group is planning a symposium for next year with Innovation in Surfing (from outriggers , logs to windsurfing/ tow ins, 3d gopro etc) .Its about Where is surfing going in the next 20 years and beyond? "waving to the future" or WTTF (say it fast) So far the future for cost per wave in natural circumstances being unsustainable? That is for the 70-80% of us that would like to practise the sport for one or two good waves on a daily basis? So that we can rip when it really costs us to be where it is good in the ocean in perfect natural circumstances.

www.barbusters.com.au has a preliminary poster heralding the symposium.
More info to come as interest from corporate sponsors , commercial product display interest presenters and participants evolve. Anyone wanting to sell to government and councils might want to display?
interest and questions welcome -of course.

Suggestions ? well that's even better what innovations have there been to create a "big bang" theory video with a Billy Joel we didn't start the fire type background sound/lyrics?

every new innovation is welcome of course in trade booths for investors to suss out?

bob my guess would be that the patent is the best way to make money out of wave pools. If you have already constructed one that works I think most developers would rather pay for the patent than risk untried engineering. The patent holder makes their cut regardless of the success or failure of the actual business enterprise. Personally I hate the whole wave pool concept and, pending my engineer friend's feedback, suspect that there are quite a few unresolved issues.
I was talking to a Japanese friend who used the wave pool in Yokohama a few times. It worked out at about $10 a wave for an average shoulder high wave but only the first five waves of a fifteen minute session were clean after that the side wash kicked in. If you think about the amount of energy that you need to put in to the pool to create any sort of reasonable wave, it has to be a very difficult technical problem to keep the pool still for the next wave.

BB, yes i agree with all of what you wrote; but that does not mean we should discourage innovation and the progress it should bring. In fact without encouragement some very useful progress could not have taken place for everything we enjoy..
I went to Crescent recently and it was a 700km round trip and 3 days work productivity to catch 2 reasonable waves (amongst 40 or 50 other surfers.) What is the cost of that per wave? We each have our own value of time and productivity lost and I would gladly pay for a local "squash court" type facility to train on daily.

yes they all have technical problems but "necessity is the mother of all invention" and I think that the fun of surfing is creating that necessity?

What's the use of eggheads if they cant solve issues?
Yes they do deserve the proper reward for solving the issues and a patent is supposed to ensure that protection.

I think the fun of surfing is in having the knowledge to be in the right place at the right time, being prepared to work for your waves by paddling, duck diving etc, in enjoying a natural environment, in having open, unstructured fun, etc etc. The idea of training never enters my head. Riding waves in a pool is 10% of the surfing experience. The only reason for all the interst is that it is hard to make a dollar out of the far more rational process of constructing artificial reefs.
We all have times when surfing has to take a back seat in our lives. Live with it. If you don't have time to surf then that is result of your priorities.

How about days like today? There's barely a foot of weak swell on the Northern Beaches. I'd much prefer to spend an hour or two in a wavepool offering clean 3ft waves rather than wallowing in the shorebreak on a fish just to exercise my ocean knowledge.

Maybe but remember, assuming that the technology actually works well enough to produce consistent quality waves, it will cost you $100 plus for a decent session. It is below minimum requirements today but I had surprisingly good waves yesterday. I probably only average five days a week with work and other interests so I have no real desire to fart around on a fish or a mal or an SUP when it is this small. I have two main problems with wave pools: the first is that they reduce the experience and turn an open skill imto a closed one and with that degree of predictability it simply becomes gymnastics; the second is that in terms of making more waves available to more people they are a very poor investment compared to artificial reefs. Associated concerns are that they would be the start of a new round of commercial activity in surfing and increase the surfing population by orders of magnitude more than the increase in available waves. They would also increase the percentage of surfers lacking basic ocean awareness. Training in an inland wave pool might teach you to ride waves but it is not going to teach you about the real ocean or real crowds or how the water moves at a real surfing location. If that seems a minor problem have a look at the comments on longboards and leg ropes. A lot of surfers already have serious concerns about the steady, on going erosion of the skill base........and then there is all that chlorine and the risk of tinea!

yep , again I hear all you say and basically agree with it all, except at 65 I know I cant be the surfer I was at 25 and anything of acceptable quality appeals to me. The tinea and chlorine are real turn off! Each to what they can or have to do? yes it does become gymnastics and yes it will train very many more that those fit enough don't need in the ocean next to them. I'm not here to sell wave-pools -there's plenty more trying to do that. But the artificial reef model of more waves is kaput. Its better to form "pocket beaches " with artificial headlands . Then each headland can be a left and a right in opposing wind swell directions. Do the statistics and its got to supply wind/swell/tide conditions that beat a reef 1000 times or more. Oh of course a good shaped headland will work in all tides. sorry I was a reef advocate until I learnt better and the idea of reefs for surfing is fatally flawed - in my view anyway.

Blindboy,
You questioned whether 6m/sec (21.6 kph) is slower than the swell speed we surf in the ocean.
When I calculated the speed swells moved toward shore at the Superbank, the number was 22kph, so the wavegarden crew have got their swell speed spot on.

Phil.

Thanks Phil I did a search but couldn't find any data. What sort of swell was it that you measured?

It's just a shame Clive Palmer doesn't surf...

wave garden the full monty on vimeo