OWENS CROSS ROADS — Huntsville innovation and ingenuity doesn’t stop at the edge of space with aerospace and defense industry engineering in Huntsville.
In fact, it also goes past the water’s edge.
The country’s third-largest swimming pool liner manufacturer, Tara Pools & Outdoor Products, has been making a splash in Owens Cross Roads for four decades – long before AutoCAD computer-driven design and high automation processes.
The first thing you will notice when you walk into the plant is that wonderful childhood smell of a toy store. Remember that aroma of fresh rubber dollies and Silly Putty, pogo sticks and summertime favorites like rubber floats and beach balls?
Tara Pools is known for made-to-order designs and custom-fitted vinyl swimming pool liners available in elemental stone and pebble prints, mosaic, tile, marble, and artistic wave prints. And they are available in every possible shade of glistening blues, greens and earth tones. They even carry prints that have iridescent inks embedded in their patterns that glisten and shimmer with added brilliance under the summer sun.
No custom-built pool should be without a safety cover and Tara makes customer fitted pool covers that attach by springs to anchors in the surrounding pool deck. It has straps that run across the entire cover so it is sturdy enough for an adult to walk out on it and pull back a child that might have wandered out onto its surface.
But just within this past year, Plant Manager Kevin Summerford perfected an idea he has had for the past three years: Use leftover decorative vinyl liner material to make the biggest, sturdiest and most luxurious lake and pool floats available on the market.
The pool liner material comes in gigantic rolls in two sizes – one size for the walls and one for the floor of the pool. The idea is like a printer who tries to use as much of the paper as possible to cut down on waste.
Tara only makes liners for custom inground pools but does not provide material for above ground or standard packaged pools.
The customer sends Tara the specifications for their custom build and with AutoCad, the pieces are laid out much like a seamstress lays out a pattern, and they are then welded using thermoplastic welding methods.
The pool itself is usually made of either galvanized steel, aluminum, or a composite plastic polymer. The liner sits inside the pool and is set using a special vacuum to remove the air behind the liner and suck the liner tightly against the walls and floor of the pool to conform to the shape. The weight of the water does the rest.
Thomas Kennedy, marketing director for Tara Manufacturing, said because AutoCad is so precise, there is not a lot of scrap material left over and what little there is can be sent back to the manufacturer and recycled for other purposes like waterproofing.
“But not all of the material can be sent back and that is the material we wanted to find a way of using if we could,” said Kennedy. “That is when Kevin began building a prototype for the floats.”
Summerford presented the idea to owners Marshall Richardson and Tara and Larry Furlough who gave their approval to pursue its mass production.
Summerford said it took several iterations over several weeks to get it right.
“It was not without its challenges,” Summerford said. “The first floats took too long to make and used too many materials. The cost would have been too expensive for people to buy.
“But after a lot of trial and error between the AutoCad design and the welding department, we worked together in the afternoons to make the modifications needed.”
He said one of the big holdups was the inflation valve.
“We eventually had to tool a custom valve inhouse that would work with the heavy liner material that didn’t leak, but after about three weeks of adjustments, we got it right,” Summerford said.
Sold through their distributors, Tara floats are available in two sizes: The pool floats are 6-foot by 8-foot; the lake/ocean float is 6-foot by 12-foot.
And they are not only gigantic in size, but due to their thermo-welded seams and sturdy 20 mil thick pool liner material, they are very durable and leak-proof, unlike floats bought in big box stores.
Carrie Doran, AutoCad manager for Tara, said they put the floats through rigorous non-conventional testing to see how they held up.
“We took it out with our pontoon boat to the river and let all of our kids jump up and down on it,” she said. “One of the children weighs 50 pounds soaking wet and we catapulted her off it several times – safely of course – and it holds up great.
“We all had a lot of fun with it.”
She said the lake float is so large it takes up too much room on the boat so they attached a rope to it and can tow is like a dingy behind the boat.
Having been in business since 1984, Kennedy said Tara has undergone a lot of changes in their processes.
“There is a lot more automation that has been added since we started, and the patterns have significantly improved with a lot of new patterns that look spectacular when the sun hits it,” he said. “And there is embossed material we use for the pool steps that give a lot more traction.
“Before AutoCad, everything was done manually. We literally laid out the liners in pieces like a seamstress and cut them out manually and put them together manually.
“Today we use a cutting table and computerized laser cutters, and modified welding machines to make us more efficient.”
During COVID, there were a lot of shortages in resins and polymers, but Kennedy said they have always kept a lot of inventory in-house and that helped.
“We had always bought more and kept more inventory because that has always been our primary business. So, although we may not have all the patterns people requested during the pandemic, we always had a lot more inventory in-house than most of our competitors.”
But there is one thing for sure – whether you are headed to the beach, the pool or a lakeside campsite this summer, click here to find a Tara distributor and find out how to get a custom pool or giant Tara water floats.
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