Anyone who visits the Surf Snowdonia construction site in the rural Conwy valley is guaranteed to leave with a sense of excitement. “I don’t seem to have problems in keeping a smile on people’s faces,” says managing director Steve Davies, “because this project is ground-breaking, literally and metaphorically.”
In the space of just one year, the polluted, concrete-covered site of a former aluminium factory will be transformed into the world’s first inland surfing centre with waves that move with constant energy. The facility’s guaranteed waves, whatever the weather, will make the sport more accessible to people of all abilities, including beginners, who can cut their teeth on the smaller waves at each end of the new lagoon.
Davies says the International Surfing Association, based in California, is keeping a close watch because the technology to produce identical waves, time after time, could open the door to surfing becoming an Olympic sport.
The construction is rapid. The ground-cutting ceremony was on 26 June 2014, and opening is planned for 1 July 2015. However, many years of development work lie behind the initiative, principally by a Spanish company called Instant Sport. At a research site in northern Spain, it has tested and refined a product called Wave Garden.
Details of the technology are secret – not all countries respect international patents – but the system that Surf Snowdonia will use is broadly as follows. A specially shaped ‘plough’ will shuttle back and forth along an underwater track in the centre of the surfing lagoon. Each run of the plough will generate a wave on both sides of the track. The wave will progress along the lagoon, providing an ideal profile for surfing for 18 seconds. Each two-minute cycle will give surfers two waves, travelling eastwards then westwards.
The lagoon will be around 300m long and 113m wide. The wave will interact with the contoured lagoon bed to provide different profiles at varying points. The wave will be 1.8m tall (from trough to crest) nearest the plough, and 1.2m tall alongside the shore. As the wave loses energy at the end of its run, it will provide suitable conditions for learners, with a wave height of about 70cm.
The central track and associated equipment will be encased in mesh, designed to keep surfers safe while not impairing the form and energy of the wave arising from the plough inside the elongated cage.
The plough will be hauled by a cable above the water surface, connected to a 2.5MW motor. The propulsion system is supplied by Italian firm Leitner Ropeways, which has more than a century’s experience of ski lifts, cable-car routes and funicular railways – applications that place either continuous or relatively steady loads on
the motor.
The activity cycle for Surf Snowdonia’s motor will oscillate between stasis and full power every minute during routine operation. Careful attention is being paid to cooling the motor.
The lagoon’s surface must be flat for each run of the plough. The gently inclined shore will be fitted with a porous honeycomb sheet which will dissipate the energy of each wave much faster than an impermeable perimeter would.
The lagoon will be sealed to prevent any interaction with groundwater. Lagoon water will be filtered as it enters the site from the outlet of the adjacent RWE Innogy hydro-electric plant.
“The water coming in is bordering on drinking quality,” says Davies. Chemicals such as chlorine, commonly used for hygiene in swimming pools, are impractical here, because the water will eventually be discharged into the river Conwy. Quite apart from general environmental considerations, a mussel fishery downstream supplies food for human consumption.
All of the water in the lagoon will be replaced every 24 hours during the operating season, to prevent contamination such as algal bloom. That will require 2,200m3 of water to be filtered every hour on the way in – and again on the way out. “The sheer scale of the water we’ve got to move around is a challenge,” says Davies.
Pipework will distribute incoming water around the lagoon and to a separate activity lake, which will provide watersports suitable for young families.
Lagoon water which is due for replacing will flow through 12 outlet ducts to a dry well, then be pumped to the exit filtration system. The number and position of those outlets were determined by calculating the displacement of the water by the passage of the surfing wave. Davies says: “Our contractor, ATG UV of Wigan, Lancashire, had to do a lot of computer modelling to ensure that we wouldn’t have any dead spots of unclean water.”
Early in the design phase, Surf Snowdonia engaged with Conwy County Borough Council’s environmental health department and with Natural Resources Wales.
Davies says: “One of the challenges was what to call this in legislative terms. It’s not a swimming pool. It’s not a lake, because it’s sealed.
“We couldn’t pigeonhole it. We asked the council to come up with the water quality standards with which we needed to comply.”
Innovation by the private sector can sometimes make public authorities nervous, but Davies says Conwy council and the Welsh government quickly grasped Surf Snowdonia’s potential – in a region that has seen sustained investment in facilities and marketing for activity holidays.
The project must also comply with reservoirs legislation – originally put in place in response to a fatal dam failure in 1925 in the uplands just a few kilometres west of the Surf Snowdonia site in Dolgarrog. The ground at the site may appear to be level but falls by 4m over the lagoon’s longitudinal footprint. A low dam will therefore contain the lagoon at its western end.
After retiring as an army officer, Davies was director of the National Railway Museum in York. Having organised a reunion of all surviving A4 Pacific locomotives, to mark the 75th anniversary of Mallard’s record-breaking run, he chose to leave on a high and moved to the embryonic Surf Snowdonia project.
“I’ve never constructed anything in my life,” he says, “but the biggest challenge here is the coordination to pull myriad organisations together.”
The site and Surf Snowdonia belong to the Ainscough group of companies, best known for the crane hire business which it sold in 2007.
Rigby and Partners, of Chorley, provides engineering and design consultancy. Civil engineering has been overseen by D Morgan of Ellesmere Port.
“Morgan’s aren’t an organisation whose primary focus is looking for the flaws in the plan to extract more value from the contract,” says Davies. “I’ve been impressed by their willingness to propose solutions to problems. If we’d waited until every last square inch of the design was in place, we would never have started. Many of the solutions only become apparent as you tackle the ground.”
Constructing this innovative facility on the valley floor has required piles totalling 10km in length. Piling was particularly intense for the central track, which will have a vertical tolerance of only 5mm.
Davies notes that creating the contoured bed of the lagoon would have taken much longer were it not for the excavator drivers receiving precise instructions via GPS from the computer-generated plan.
Surfers’ paradise on the way
Surf Snowdonia, being built in the village of Dolgarrog, is scheduled to open next summer. Facilities will include a café and camp site. A pipeline on a distant hillside carries water from reservoirs to a hydro-electric power station. Some of the water from the power station will be filtered and used to replenish the surfing lagoon
Making tracks
Steve Davies, managing director of Surf Snowdonia, on site. The central concrete strip behind him is the foundation for the underwater track for the wave-generating plough. After the machinery has been installed, the area both sides of the concrete strips will be excavated to form the lagoon bed
Sealing the lagoon
Newly laid membranes on the low dam at the western end of the lagoon site. The lagoon will be sealed to prevent any interaction with groundwater