My faithful engineer has rigged two other underwater swimming timers for me in the two years I have had my wonderful swimming pool with the Fastlane current generator. They worked for a decent amount of time and made my swimming time nicer. But, alas, duct tape only holds up for so long under water, and the recent version using a waterproof iPod bag recently began floating haphazardly in the current while I swam, making it impossible to view the kitchen timer inside. It had functioned well for about a year.
I mentioned the trouble to my engineer and he told me to find some of the same clear plastic, like what was used in the windows for the portable shelter that we keep over the pool during the winter. I went to the shop in town that had sewn the windows in the portable shelter for us, and they had an appropriate sized scrap they sold to me for $2.00.
The scrap of plastic was cut into two 10 inch by 12 inch squares. Then, two open squares (see photos below) were cut out of some approximately 1/2 inch thick plastic my engineer had in his shop. He just used a table saw for this, then sanded the edges smooth with sand paper.
Before he put the kitchen timer into the space (the same kitchen timer that had been kept dry in the iPod waterproof pouch), he wanted to test his design with a paper towel. That is, he put a paper towel in between the layers of plastic, assembled it all with screws, just like he would for the timer, and put it in the bottom of the swimming pool for 24 hours. The next day, the paper towel was still completely dry.
So, he proceeded to insert the kitchen timer between the layers of plastic, then screwed the whole thing together tightly again. He had also drilled extra holes through the plastic frame to be able to thread some shoelaces through and tie the new plastic frame to the same PVC pipe stand that I have used since the beginning. It obviously didn’t have to be shoelaces, but that is what he had laying around, so yellow shoelaces it was! I don’t know why he left the duct tape on the PVC pipe frame… I guess I will look into cutting that off later.
I have used this new waterproof swimming timer several times now. It holds the timer in a more stable position than either of the two previous set-ups. The main buttons are easy to push, for stopping, starting, and resetting the timer. The only one that is a bit difficult, is the teeny one on the back that changes the mode from hours:minutes to minutes:seconds. I accidentally pushed this one once, and it was hard to push again, but the timer really works fine for keeping track of swimming in either mode. Not that I’m swimming for hours yet….
I have saved all the photos for last. Click on any photo to enlarge. The water in the photos is all on the outside of the timer. If you have any questions, please let me know. If you come up with other good ideas based on this, we’d love to hear!
Read here about changing the battery in my underwater timer.
