Here you can see some of our employees working together at the marina to insert a ballast tank into one of the side spars of this SeaPod base. These fiberglass tanks have several internal chambers which can be filled with water or air to help balance or adjust the overall buoyancy of the SeaPod.

We are using a telehandler crane which helps us lift and lower the tanks easily and safely. In the video, you can see that we originally secured the tank using a rope around the outside. We found that the opening for the tank was too snug so we had to find a different way to lower it down without having the rope on the outside.

We decided to tie a plank of wood to the end of the rope and slide it into the opening of the ballast tank. Using the tension from the weight of the tank, it stays in place. When we lower the tank to the bottom of the opening, then we can easily remove the piece of wood by removing the tension from the rope.

Each of the three side spars will have one of these tanks inside of it so after we insert this one, then we will do the other two. When all three of them have been installed then we will fill them with water which will reduce the overall buoyancy of the platform and make it sit lower in the water.

For the electrical protection that we are using for these outriggers, we want them to be submerged under the surface of the water so that they can properly be protected from the elements. By using these ballast tanks, we can control how high the platform sits in the water and we can adjust it accordingly.

The final SeaPod will have sensors that will automatically sense when the pumps need to add or remove water from the ballast tanks for balance or buoyancy. You will also be able to adjust this manually if you will have more weight on your platform and you want to raise where it sits in the water to counteract that.