By Todd Barber, President & CEO, Reef Ball Development Group, Ltd.
Southwest Florida Fishing News
October 2000
REEF BALL UPDATE
By Todd Barber, President & CEO, Reef Ball Development Group, Ltd.
The Reef Ball Development Group, Ltd. has developed new mold systems specifically for students, prison labor or other groups that desire the ultimate in
ease to create a modified "Reef Ball".
The design creates Reef Balls with a bell shape rather than a dome shape to insure that design criteria for stability are exactly the same as regular Reef Balls. The bell shape offers more surface area on the bottom to insure less sinking when deployed on soft sand bottoms.
The molds are simple two piece units that don't require any bases to be built or even the inflation of a center bladder - in fact, the center bladder
that can be used for floating deployment is not even used in casting! The molds can be set up in just a few minutes and taken apart just as quickly. These molds are designed for the amateur or beginning Reef
Builders; they are not as flexible as regular Reef Balls so that errors cannot be made in building. They are also capable of being used in mass production to produce large quantities of designed artificial reefs at an absolute minimum of cost. Units produced by this system are partially stackable for ease of transportation.
They utilize Reef Ball proprietary concrete which not only is pH adjusted for creation of a balanced fouling community but which also does not require re-bar so the units will last over 500 years rather then just a few decades. Patented Reef Ball features are utilized within these new designs including Swiss cheese hole patterns, roughened surface texture and 80% of the weight being in the bottom 20% of the units.
These molds will not be available for public sale until they have been utilized by the Reef Ball Coalition in an educational environment and they will be available to a select few
beta-testers so that we can fine-tune the designs for mass production. We expect the beta phase to last about a year before the molds will be available for broad use.
Preliminary tests indicate that these units, particularly on sandy bottoms, are even more stable than regular Reef Balls! These new molds are covered by Reef Ball Patents, Reef Ball
Copyrights and patents pending.
"CLASSROOM ON WHEELS" FOR SENIORS
Reef Ball will be giving presentation classes to the Sarasota based "Classroom on Wheels" program for Seniors. Presentations will be given on October 6th, November 29th and November 30th. Each presentation will start in the classroom (tentatively the Old Sarasota High School) and conclude at the Southdown Concrete Plant to see how Reef Balls are built. Class periods are 9:45 - 11:15. Seniors interested in attending should contact the Classroom on Wheels program (Brenda) at (941) 921-9392 or 922-0817.
Visit The Reef Ball website at www.reefball.com
for more interesting facts about Reef Balls.
The Reef Ball Coalition it website is at
www.reefballcoalition.org