Original Hexprotect® — 2005–2010 invention story

The world's first self-ballasting hexagonal floating cover — designed 2005–2008 at AWTT, patented 2010, retired in favour of the Hexprotect® AQUA refinement.

The original Hexprotect® was the world’s first self-ballasting hexagonal floating cover — designed 2005–2008 at AWTT, first sampled in 2008, and patented in 2010. Through field deployment at scale, three operational shortcomings emerged that drove the move to the pre-ballasted Hexprotect® AQUA refinement.

What was the original Hexprotect®?

The original Hexprotect® is the foundational design of the AWTT hexagonal floating cover platform. Each tile was a hollow hexagonal HDPE element with carefully placed side ports — water entered the tile on install through those ports and acted as ballast, holding the tile at its engineered draft on the water surface. The geometry made sure no direct sunlight could enter the chamber and that ballast water could drain back out cleanly when the tile was retrieved.

The design was new in three ways at once: it was the first floating cover element to ballast itself without external water-fill steps; it was the first hexagonal element engineered for 99% effective surface coverage at scale (AWTT-published); and it was the first to deploy onto an operating water body anchorlessly. The 2010 US patent covered the self-ballasting design as the foundational claim.

How the original worked

Tile geometry. Hexagonal HDPE element with a raised central dome. Hexagonal footprint chosen for the tessellation density; central dome for rainfall shed, wind dissipation, and tessellation tolerance.
Side-port ballast entry. Engineered ports on the side wall allowed water to enter the tile on install at controlled rate, ballasting the tile to the engineered draft.
Light-exclusion geometry. Port placement and the dome profile prevented direct sunlight from entering the internal chamber — critical for keeping the tile from harbouring algae.
Drain on retrieval. The same port geometry let water drain back out cleanly when the tile was lifted from the surface.

What field deployment surfaced

Three operational shortcomings emerged through deployment at scale in the early-to-mid 2010s:

The open ballast chamber harboured biological growth. The chamber’s internal volume was difficult to inspect or clean once the tile was in service. Algae, biofilm, and accumulated sediment built up over years. For potable-water applications this was an immediate compliance issue.
Tipped tiles lost ballast water. When a tile was disturbed past the port height — storm wave, debris impact, retrieval — ballast water drained back into the water body. A re-ballast event was required to restore the tile to its design draft.
Narrower side walls allowed tessellation drift. The original side-wall profile gave the tessellation less lateral hold under sustained wind. Tiles could spread, opening seams at the boundaries of the tessellation and violating the 99% coverage assumption.

AWTT documented these patterns and engineered the Hexprotect® AQUA refinement — the pre-ballasted, one-piece moulded shell design released commercially in 2009 and now the workhorse of the AWTT line. See /heritage/hexprotect-aqua-refinement for the six engineering refinements AQUA applied.

The variants tested in parallel

Through the early-to-mid 2010s, AWTT tested multiple parallel variants exploring different approaches to the centre-of-gravity and the ballast-loss problem — configurations with air-filled outer cavities, central self-filling cavities, and multi-chamber designs. All were retired in favour of AQUA. Many of those abandoned designs are now what generic competitors produce — reintroducing problems the original engineering had identified and solved.

Why the original still matters

Two reasons. First, it is the engineering foundation of the AWTT platform — the patent that established the self-ballasting hexagonal floating cover as a category. Second, it is the design lineage that distinguishes the AWTT line from the generic copies on the market today: AQUA inherits the patented engineering and adds the operational refinements; a copy inherits neither.

Sources

AWTT — Hexprotect® AQUA hexagonal cover — manufacturer canonical reference for the original Hexprotect® patent history and the AQUA refinement.

Frequently asked questions

Why was the original Hexprotect® retired? #

Three operational shortcomings surfaced through field deployment at scale: the open ballast chamber harboured biological growth and was hard to keep clean; tipped tiles could lose ballast water back into the water body; and the narrower side-wall profile allowed tessellation drift under sustained wind. The pre-ballasted Hexprotect® AQUA addressed all three by sealing the ballast inside a one-piece moulded shell at the factory.

Why was AQUA released in 2009 if the original patent was granted in 2010? #

AQUA was released commercially while the original Hexprotect® patent was still in examination — the standard USPTO timeline put several years between application and grant. AWTT was operating under the pending patent. The 2010 grant covered the original self-ballasting design as the foundational claim of the hexagonal floating cover platform.

Is the original Hexprotect® still available? #

No — the original is retired from active production. Hexprotect® AQUA is the current workhorse of the AWTT line. Operators with deployed original Hexprotect® stock can extend the service life with AQUA replacement elements; the tessellation tolerates mixed-generation inventory.

Why do generic copies still ship the original design? #

Many copies on the market today re-introduce the open self-fill chamber — typically without the engineered port geometry that controlled light exclusion and drainage on the AWTT original. Buying a copy is, in operational terms, buying a design AWTT has already retired. See [/why-copies-fail](/why-copies-fail) for the engineering analysis.