Archive
January 2023
18 articles
Underwater Room Progress
We’re walking on the underwater room ceiling! How do we achieve such a performance?Well, to be honest, that’s because it’s on the factory floor and we’re yet to start welding it.The new seapod’s underwater room is progressing very well but at the moment, we understand that it can be hard to see a ceiling right…
Welding Layers & Wiring
The floor is ready! After doing three passes on each of the three steel sections, we’re done with that part.As a reminder since we are not all welding professionals, welding in multiple passes, also known as multi-pass welding, is a technique used to improve the quality and strength of a weld. It is commonly used…
Floor of Underwater Room Welding
Factory update on the underwater room. Today we’re doing great progress on the floor section. Thanks to the great work of everyone here who worked so hard to shape these huge and heavy sheets of steel to the right shape so that we can go on with the next part: welding. As you know, welding…
Cutting Floor and inserting structural walls for jetski lifting mechanism
Part of the perks of living on the ocean is to have easy access to water toys such as Stand Up Paddle, kayak, or….Jet Ski! For the latter, our engineering team is working on an innovative solution to make its use easier and very much “James Bond Style!Imagine yourself suddenly deciding to have some fun…
Raising the first wall of the underwater room
We never have enough heavy lifting at the factory and that’s an excellent thing because for the actual part of raising the wall of the underwater room, a delicate operation has to be done.The telehandler clamps are securely grabbing the heavy steel sheet to lift it into place.It’s a centimeter-by-centimeter operation as we need to…
Why are we creating an underwater room?
Underwater habitats, also known as underwater stations, submarines, or in our case, the underwater room, provide a unique and valuable opportunity for scientists and researchers to study marine life and the ocean environment from a controlled setting. These habitats allow for extended stays underwater and enable more in-depth and prolonged research than would be possible…
Preparing to raise the walls of the underwater room
Another heavy lifting day at Ocean Builder’s factory as Grant is witnessing the handling of the first underwater room steel wall.To prepare for raising the wall of this innovative part of the SeaPod, we are using our best tool ever, the telehandler.It’s a delicate operation for which we definitely need it because the steel wall…
Making Underwater Windows Waterproof
Our underwater windows are coming along nicely! We’ve been seeing some great progress on the frames and now we are starting to waterproof the first completed window.Since these windows will be underwater, they must resist the water pressure at depth. That means that the window and the frame have to be incredibly strong but another…
Underwater Window Production Frame
Now that we have the panes for the underwater room figured out, we are working on getting the window frames manufactured here at the factory. These frames will have to withstand high pressures since the room is underwater so they have to be robust and strong enough for the job.The design of the windows features…
Building the floor of the SeaPod Deep water model
The crew has been working on getting the floor of the new Deep Water SeaPod Eco installed and it’s coming along nicely!Installing the floor requires quite a few steps. We start with building the subfloor and all bulkhead supports beneath the floor. This acts as the foundation and provides the structure and support to hold…
Fiberglass Chopper Spray Gun
Grant is on today to explain to us the way the fiberglass gun works. It can take a lot of time to apply the material on whatever surface we want to apply it onto, so we always try to improve all our processes.Unfortunately, the machine we received isn’t working how we hope to, so we’re…
Solar Power Test
Grant may not be much of a cook but he is a master reheater! So he put his skills to use on the SeaPod Eco to use the stove to warm up some food as a test of the batteries which were charged completely by solar power. Up until now, the SeaPod has been tied…
Expedition Vessel Completed
We are happy to have the expedition vessel completed! This tiny boat will bring us massive views of the underwater world so that we can better plan and find locations to anchor our SeaPods, especially in deep water.With the ability to “see” about 2000 meters below the surface of the ocean, we should have no…
Outer Wall Molds
Here we have a look at the master plug for the walls of the SeaPod Eco model. This plug is the exact shape of the final product and will be used to create the production molds which are negative molds. Having the production molds ready to go means that we can start full-speed production of…
Expedition Vessel in production
“Ocean Builders Deep Sea Explorers”: How does that sound? Mysterious and exciting at the same time right?Well, with the device we are crafting right now, it will be exactly who we will be because in about a month, we will be doing seafloor topography mapping!Indeed, we aim to conduct some underwater exploring to potentially find…
Building an underwater room
On our factory update today, we want to show you how we are working with steel to create an underwater room. Yes, THAT! Underwater….room! As you can imagine, it’s a rather complicated process altogether, even though we are well equipped to deal with that kind of task.It differs from the tubes we usually make because…
Underwater Room Steel Arrived
“Special delivery for Grant Romundt of Ocean Builders, can you sign the receipt?”Looks like our underwater room has arrived! Well…not exactly, but thanks to Grant’s detailed explanation of what the steel delivery will be used for, you can almost imagine the end result.Along with the underwater room steel, we also received the center spar material,…
Floor Near Complete
Grant Romundt Construction
We are turning on the fibreglass spray gun today for some action on the underwater room flooring today!You know how we like to play with our factory toys right? Well, we managed to fix the fibreglass spray gun that was not working the way we wanted when it arrived, so we toyed around to cover…