Surf’s up…standards ahead! Experts dive into the wipeouts and wins of wave pool innovation.

By Rylee Kelly

Jul 14, 2025

When summer comes around, many people find a swimming pool to beat the heat. In the latest episode of ASTM International’s “Standards Impact” podcast, host Dave Walsh, editor-in-chief of Standardization News, talks with two pioneers in wave pool technology: Thomas J. Lochtefeld, CEO at Surf Loch LLC, and Marshall Myrman, president of FlowRider, Inc.— along with Bethany Suderman, Ph.D., P.E., senior biomechanical engineer at Guidance Engineering.

EXCERPT:

Dave Walsh: We've been talking a lot about the positives of standards, the positives about the fields you're all in, but there are challenges and obstacles as well. So I thought I'd go around to each person in turn, and we'll start with you Tom, what are some of the biggest challenges you're seeing in your field now and in the future? I mean, what's a major obstacle to overcome in the field of wave pools? You know, if there's one area that you could say we're going to need another standard in that area or this needs to be addressed, what is it looking forward?

Tom Lochtefeld: Yeah, it's going to be the integration of surfing waves with other uses. And that would be where you get a particular owner, developer, what that wants, the pool in the context of other pools such as a bathing pool for kids or some type of integration with a water slide pool, lazy river, you name your attraction. Because invariably what happens is when we designed the protocol and kind of the overview relative to the standards was to separate surf pools and surf basins because they were so large. Take for example, water quality, the turnover rate, you don't need to have the turnover rate of a children's pool in a massive surf pool because the best solution for pollution is dilution. So when you’ve got a huge volume of water, you can turn it over less, at least theoretically because then your agents of viral problem or it's spread out over so many more gallons and then you don't have the potential for some type of adverse consequence in terms of a health situation. We got that through in, in terms of the basins where you don't need as, the standards are different than in other types of pools, but now when you have these mixed-use pools, that's going to be a whole other animal and how we design those pools. So that's the next challenge I see.

Dave Walsh: That’s interesting. And Marsh, you're in the same field with Tom. I mean, is that the same challenge you see on the horizon or do you see anything different?

Marshall Myrman: Well, Tom's kind of leading the charge in terms of large acres, huge surf footprint, surf pools or smaller. Whereas, you know, the focus for our business is small footprint, stationary waves, and by small footprint I'm talking two to 3000 square feet. And the challenge for us with respect to the standard is that stationary waves come in all kinds of different shapes and forms and technologies. So when we first got the stationary wave system standard passed, it was really focused primarily on thin sheet stationary waves, thin sheet being, you know, three inches of water going up a ramp and into a recovery and recirculating. And now we have river waves, there are stationary waves which you know, kind of shoot water, let's call it horizontally into a pool to create a wave like what's next. And so how do you accommodate those types of products into the standard?

It's pretty complicated actually because they come in so many different sizes and shapes and technologies. And our challenge is going to be from a standards point of view is making sure that we encapsulate everything into the standard. The one thing I'll say about ASTM that I've learned since I got involved is, you know, I'm just like an administrator and like I said, somebody said, it's like herding cats while the cats are the brains, you know, we've got so many smart people that volunteer their time in these committees from risk attorneys to engineers to corporations like two, you know, all these people volunteer their time to come in and have a say, which, which is really, really important because without that then you don't encompass the population for the products. I think it's really a unique organization that ASTM has built over the years because, you know, while there are ASTM employees, the committees are all volunteers from competing companies and like I'd mentioned others, academics. It's a very unique, unusual situation. But yeah, the biggest challenge is encompassing all the different technologies to make sure that we can embrace them in the standard and make sure that the people have some kind of guideline or roadmap as Tom mentioned to follow.