If wave pools, and the parent companies backing them, were depicted as a smattering of stereotyped high school personas, it might go a little something like this: Kelly Slater Wave Company, the jock with straight As; American Wave Machines, the party girl; Wavegarden, the popular kid whose friends with everyone; Endless Surf, the foreign exchange student who has a way with the ladies.
Then, in the corner, the steampunk outcast: Surf Lakes.
But don’t let this farfetched fantasy fool you. Surf Lakes, and its patented Mad Max-style plunger system, is pumping out some of the most exciting, high-performance, diversified artificial waves on the market. And in a new video, they break it down just how it all works. See below.
The pool is divided into four sections – quadrants, if you will. And each one caters to a different style of wave, a different level of surfer, thanks to the bottom contour. It goes from Learner to Intermediate to Advanced to Expert to Pro. And it breaks down like you’d expect – beginner features soft rollers for folks to learn how to pop up, all the way up to the death drops and psycho pits in the Pro section. It produces 2,080 rides per hour, and can handle 208 surfers at a time, each getting 10 waves. Something for everyone. As they say, “Every ability surfs together.”
Related: America’s First-Ever Endless Surf Wave Pool Is Coming Soon
For more on how this manmade wave operation functions, here’s Surf Lakes:
“Activating the Central Wave Device (CWD) [the plunger] to oscillate up and down creates pulses of swell that radiate out in concentric circles around the lake. These swell lines hit the various reefs around the lake in a simultaneous fashion, allowing 5 levels of surfers to ride each swell. This maximizes variety and throughput with over 200 surfers able to ride 10 waves per hour.”
Speaking of high school stereotypes, this feels like being dropped back in 4th period physics class.