Simulated Surfing/Wave Tank??

Has anyone ever done/heard of building your own surf pool. I would like to construct something that you could use a blower/generator in an above ground pool of some sort to create a surfable wave. Any ideas??

I'm taking about a wave that is more like a wake surfing wave than a ocean wave.

Flow Rider

RonJon surf park
http://www.ronjonsurfpark.com/

www.wavehouse.com

and this one
http://www.americanwavemachines.com/

I know that there are several parks around. but was wondering if any one has ever done a personal one of their own. I would like to construct something of my own...Small version.

How much do you want to spend?

The least amount possible. I know it will cost but...What are you thinking??

I'm thinking you have no idea what this would cost. Not trying to be rude. I also have no idea what this would cost.

Let's start off with the nearest comparison let’s compare to the cost of installing a below ground concrete swimming pool, a big one. You have the initial cost, you have operating costs and you have maintenance costs.

Initial cost would begin with permitting if you live in a city. You may have to meet some safety standards. You may need to put up a fence for insurance purposes to prevent the kid next door from walking across your back yard and getting hurt on your stationary surf setup.

You probably wouldn’t excavate much but you’d at least have to build a foundation. Then I’d expect that you’d need to poor concrete probably over a form of some sort. The concrete would include re-bar for strength. You’d need a sizable pump and holding tank. My rough guess the cost for a concrete form and the excavation would be about the same as a large pool. I don’t know what that is but I’m sure you could look it up.

You’ll need all of the water chemical treatment systems that a swimming pool would have. Again you can look that up.

You need filtering and something to spread the water to a fast moving sheet. Your pump house would be much bigger than a swimming pool pump house. Say your back yard surf park is 24 feet wide and has a rise of 16 feet. Let’s also say that you push a two inch sheet of water over a form. How big should your holding tank be and how much horse power do you need?

Let’s estimate the volume of the holding tank: Water sheet thickness (2/12) times width 24 times height 16 times the square root of 2 (for a 45 deg flat slope) that’s equal to 90.5 cu ft. Assume you need more holding tank to compensate for plumbing and some reserve so round that up to 150 cu ft or 1,100 gallons.

We need to figure out how big the pump should be. That a mass flow rate problem. Let’s say that the sheet of water is moving 15 mph. m-dot is mass flow rate. That’s density (rho) times the volume flow rate (Q). Density of water is 62.4 lb/cu ft (rho). If flow is perpendicular to area then volume flow rate is area (A) times velocity (v). The cross section area is 2/12*24 or 4 ft^2. So then the volume flow rate Q = A*v = 4 ft^2*15 mph = 60 ft^2mi/hr or 60 ft^2mi/hr * 5280 ft/1mi = 316,800 cu ft/hr. The mass flow rate is then, m-dot = 62.6 lb/cu ft * 316,800 cu ft/hr = 3744 lb/hr =~ 20,000,000 lb/hr. If we revert pounds of water back to gallons of water we have 12,300,000 gallons per hour. I Need to get back to work. I think I’m missing something in the mass flow calculation. Any way you need a good pump and you’ll have a impressive electric bill.

12,300,000 gph hahahahahaha Ed- no offense but it needs to be simplified. The facility I work at has 3 pools one of which is just over 500,000 gallons, and the pump we use for that pool pushes about 6000 gpm(minute) with todays water standards at pool facilities only 50 percent of the water needs to be filtered through the system every 4 hours(seeing as some will always go through the filter more than once in those 4 hours) Call up ronjon surfpark... I guarantee you they don't have anything close to a pump the size you're talking about.

Sid7- I'm currently doing some extensive training on the maintenance, mechanical, and chemical side of things at our facility, so I'll ask our CPO if he has any advice or any places to start researching.

(Message edited by tyboarder03 on November 13, 2007)

Hey, I did this during lunch. The last line of figures is incorrect.

There are some big assumptions like water sheet depth and exit velocity.

These calculations have nothing to do with filtering. I'm assuming you want to move a sheet of water at 15 mph up a hill. The sheet is 2 inches by 24 feet. The cross section is 4 ft. The speed is 15 mph. Checking my calculation I have a mass flow rate of just under 5,000,0000 pounds per hour. That's: 4 ft^2*79,200 ft/hr * 62.4 lb/cu ft = 5M lb/hr

I checked and have 2.4 M gal/hr if you’re going by volume.

What ever pump you chose has to be high flow and fairly high pressure. That might be hard to find. You could get that much volume from 171 of these pumps: http://cgi.ebay.com/2300-GPM-high-volume-water-pump-75-hp-cranberry-growers_W0QQitemZ110027942493QQcmdZViewItem

dang Ed -- I wonder if that agri pump you linked could be modified to fit next to my engine block. just imagine... switch ballast from dark to reg in under 20 seconds.

Too funny. Leave it to me, I always like to refer to case law

http://www.nominet.org.uk/digitalAssets/18067_wavehouse.pdf

Wavehouse domain name dispute in the UK. Section 4. Facts, second paragraph states that Lochtefeld uses 110,000 gpm pumps. What is that 6.6mil GPH?

machine
http://flowrider.com/english/specs.html

pumps
http://www.flygtus.com/115107.asp

Matt we need to figure out how to make a jet boat a good surf boat. Then we can just use the motor/impeller to do just as you suggest

That would be sweet Ed -- or my uncle has a 32ft sea ray type boat -- might be room enough for the pump down in the cabin (it sleeps 8) we would just have to figure out how to make it impossible to get chopped by the prop (maybe build some kind of mesh wire cage to block it?