Designed By Pressure (HydroPOD)

From The Desk Of Bernhard Leitner, CEO

In all the products we have designed at Leitner designs nothing has elicited more questions and awe than our integrated shower kit that we affectionally call the hydropod. Customers ask, what is it? What does it do? Why does it look like that?

They walk around it like the primates in Stanley Kubrick's A Space Odyssey when encountering the monolith. They call their friends over to investigate with them to feel safer in numbers and not feel so defeated by its purpose on a truck that usually does not have such a round and bulbus structure. The brave few turn on the tap just to be blasted by 30 psi of water.

In engineering, automotive or otherwise designers are often faced with an issue commonly referred to as “packaging”. No, not the cardboard box kind but the kind of making something fit and function properly in a predetermined space. It’s the bane of engineers everywhere when tasked with adding a new feature but with limited room to work with. This is where you really need to be creative.

For the Hydropod we had to be innovative in its structure to not only be easy to fill and use but to hold 5 gallons of water under 30 PSI of pressure in a small space on the side of our rack in line with our other accessories like the gearpod.

From sketches to stress tests: every failed shape led us closer to the one that worked.

If you think about it everything that holds pressure is either a perfect sphere (best case scenario) or a tube with round ends (second best scenario) This allows all the pressure to be equally distributed on the inside walls keeping the container from deforming and bursting. Just look at your BBQ propane tank and you will see what I mean. If you’re lucky enough to work for NASA take a look at their Liquid oxygen tanks, their perfect spheres and hold back 2800psi!

I almost gave up on the hyropod after working on it for 2 months. Square looked good held the required amount of water but failed under computer simulated pressure testing. Perfectly round would not fit inside the lines of the rack. A tube with round ends did not hold the required amount of water.

Stress-tested. Pressure-approved.

After putting the project aside for a few months, it occurred to me that I could take a cylinder shape and bend it in the shape of a U. This maintained its structural integrity under pressure, held the required amount of water and fit perfectly inline with all our other accessories.

And that’s the story of the development of the Hydropod.

Available now. Ready for your next adventure.