Case study · Independent project
Pump-Dive
Diving is wonderful; getting to the water is not: tanks, checks, weight. Pump-Dive is a surface-supplied diving system built from scratch: air pumped down from a floating platform above, no compressed-air tanks, and the depth limit built into the hardware itself.
- Role
- Independent project: designed and built together with my father
- Status
- Open-water tested in Mallorca, summer 2024; still in development
- Timeline
- Ongoing since 2021
- Scope
- System design · Custom engineering · Open-water testing
01Motive
I have been diving since I was sixteen, and the equipment was always a hassle. Tanks need filling, hauling and checking; a casual shallow dive carries the same overhead as a serious one.
Pump-Dive began as a question: how little machinery does a shallow dive actually need? The project became a shared build: designed at the kitchen table, tested on the beach. (The idea came before you could order a system like this online.)
The tank was never the point. The water was.
02System
The answer floats on the surface: four air pumps running off a lead battery fill two reservoirs riding above the diver, and air travels down a five-metre tube. The tube is the safety argument: at five metres, decompression sickness is designed out, and the system’s reach is its own depth limit. There is no gauge to watch, because you cannot exceed a line you are attached to.
Below, the diver wears a custom buoyancy-control device: weights and a manually inflatable bladder, enough control to hover over a reef, simple enough to service on a beach towel.
03Build
Just about everything is home-made: the pump manifold, the reservoir plumbing, the buoyancy vest. Built as a two-person team, every component earns its place by working; the design reviews happen in the water.
The system is still in development; each summer’s dives produce the next winter’s revisions.
04Water
Summer 2024, Mallorca: the first open-water tests. The system ran dives straight off the beach, exactly the kind of casual entry into the water the project was built for.
It isn’t finished, and that is part of the point. Pump-Dive is the ongoing project where everything else on this portfolio (research, form, electronics, testing) gets exercised (the aesthetics for this project are obviously still to come).
