I’m Jeff Tesch, the founder and owner of EXERTECH. I built my first hydrostatic weighing system in 1980 when I was a lab tech at a university exercise physiology laboratory. Some years later I partnered with an engineer at a local hospital to put together one of the first computerized, hydrostatic weighing systems in the world using electronic load cells. After that, a number of universities, hospitals, wellness centers and health clubs contacted me to design a hydrostatic weighing system for them.
Over the years I spent a lot of time designing custom made weighing systems for “one off” water tanks and pools at various fitness facilities. I was always thinking about how to come up with a “universal” system for hydrostatic weighing. My “Eureka moment” happened when I realized that a weighing system on floats would work in most any water tank or pool. The “Floataweigh” was born.
The first step was to obtain a patent to protect the idea from competitors. It took several more years of collaboration with some very talented colleagues to design and test a battery-powered, radio-telemetry circuit to transmit the data from 4 load cells to a computer, develop a light weight framework on floats and an underwater platform with adjustable depth. Dozens of different materials were tested for the framework, the floats and the platform. After many failures and exhaustive testing, I thought we finally had it right and a dozen or so original Floataweighs were shipped for testing and evaluation. The Floataweigh was well received by the hydrostatic weighing community including some of the most prominent researchers in the field.
The new Floataweigh “Tetra” is a complete redesign. It weighs half as much as the original Floataweigh and comes with 2 rechargeable batteries instead of 6 disposable C cells. New features have also been added to the software. I think it’s a winner!