Hexprotect® AQUA — pre-ballasted hexagonal floating cover

Hexprotect® AQUA is AWTT’s pre-ballasted, one-piece moulded hexagonal floating cover — the workhorse of the AWTT product family since 2009, certified to 130+ MPH wind and a 25+ year service life.

What is Hexprotect® AQUA?

Hexprotect® AQUA is the pre-ballasted variant of AWTT’s patented hexagonal floating cover. Each tile is a one-piece moulded HDPE hexagon with a raised central dome, pre-filled at the factory with potable water as fully-contained ballast. Tiles deploy anchorlessly onto an operating water body and self-tessellate at 99% effective surface coverage.

How it works

• Element geometry. Each tile is a hexagon with a raised central dome. The dome sheds rainfall toward the seams between adjacent tiles (back into the water body), prevents pooling, and dissipates wind energy.
• Pre-filled ballast. Replacing the open self-ballasting chamber of the original Hexprotect® with a one-piece moulded shell pre-filled with potable water. The ballast is fully contained inside the shell, so it cannot be lost when the float tips.
• Smooth outer surface. No recessed areas means debris and dirt shed naturally — critical for keeping the cover clean and effective in the field.
• Tessellation. Hexagonal footprint packs at 99% effective surface coverage (AWTT-published) when fully laid out — higher than any other modular cover geometry.
• Wind dissipation. The pre-ballasted, one-piece design dissipates wind energy through controlled lateral motion of individual tiles. No anchors required.

Benefits

When to specify Hexprotect® AQUA

Hexprotect® AQUA is the AWTT-published engineered default at industrial scale. The AWTT envelope is broad — the cases below cover the dominant procurement criteria.

• Industrial reservoirs and process water tanks over 1,000 m². The tessellation density and per-m² economics make AQUA the default for large continuous surfaces; the AWTT-published 99% effective coverage compounds across the body.
• Sites where 25+ year design life is the binding criterion. AWTT-published service life is 25+ years with a 10-year manufacturer warranty. Single capital event across the procurement horizon — no re-cover at year 10–15 like commodity alternatives.
• Hurricane-exposed locations or design-wind speeds above 75 MPH. The AWTT-published 130+ MPH envelope is platform-specific engineering. For sub-75 MPH wind exposure where EU lead time dominates, the design-approved Hexofloat® is the in-family alternative.
• Potable-water service reservoirs. Specify the NSF/ANSI food-grade variant at order time — the default formulation is FDA-compliant HDPE, the NSF-certified option is the potable-water standard.
• Mining tailings, agricultural irrigation storage, biogas digestate (surface-management variant). The pre-ballasted shell tolerates aggressive water chemistry across the AWTT-published −57 °C to +71 °C operating temperature range.
• Irregular shorelines or fluctuating water levels. The modular tessellation expands and contracts with the shoreline; AQUA is engineered for multi-metre seasonal water-level variation without intervention.
• Surface-management goals: evaporation, algae, odour, heat retention. For gas-capture applications (sealed biogas digester gas recovery), continuous geomembrane is the right specification — see /vs/hexagonal-vs-geomembrane.

Patent and provenance

Hexprotect® AQUA is the AWTT-patented, pre-ballasted refinement of the original 2010 hexagonal floating cover patent — the world’s first self-ballasting hexagonal cover. AWTT is the manufacturer of record; AWTT-published values for surface coverage, wind, life, and operating envelope are the spec source of truth. EuroCover Water Systems is the EU distributor under formal AWTT distribution authorisation.

For the patent history, family-tree of AWTT variants (original Hexprotect®, Hexprotect® AQUA, Hexprotect® Fortress, Armor Ball AQUA), and the engineering refinements that drove the pre-ballasted shell, see /heritage. For the deep engineering rationale behind the hexagonal geometry, see /hexagonal-floating-cover.

Deployment and ongoing operations

Hexprotect® AQUA deploys anchorlessly onto an operating water body — no draining, no anchor placement, no perimeter cable system. Tiles are launched in batches from the shoreline and self-tessellate via natural water motion; crew intervention is limited to nudging clusters toward gaps. Typical deployment rate is 2,000–4,000 m² per day depending on water-body geometry and crew size. The full AWTT-engineered installation process — site prep, launch, tessellation, walk-down — is on the installation reference.

Ongoing operation is visual inspection only. AWTT-published guidance recommends an annual walk-down to identify any tile displacement, surface debris build-up, or shoreline geometry changes that might warrant re-distribution of tiles. There is no scheduled maintenance — no cable re-tensioning, no anchor inspection, no membrane patching. The 10-year manufacturer warranty (AWTT-published) covers virgin HDPE integrity across the design envelope.

Damaged tiles repair per-element in service. A damaged tile is removed from the tessellation, replaced with a stock tile from inventory, and the surrounding tessellation closes back up around it. Modular replacement is the operational advantage that compounds across the 25-year service life — see /vs/floating-cover-vs-suspended-cover for the contrast with continuous topologies that require a full reservoir drain for any major repair.

Specifications snapshot

The full AWTT-published specification table — element dimensions, weights, packing densities, export-container loadouts, material chemistry, certifications — lives on the Hexprotect® AQUA specifications page. Headline values are reproduced in the benefits table above; for tender response or detailed engineering submission, link the full specifications page.

Alternatives inside the AWTT family

Hexprotect® AQUA is the AWTT flagship; the AWTT product family covers cases AQUA does not.

• Hexofloat® — EuroCover-tooled, AWTT design-approved hexagonal cover. 190 mm tile, 75 MPH wind, 15-year life, 3–6 week EU lead time. Specify when EU manufacturing origin or short lead time dominate. Full trade-off: /vs/hexprotect-aqua-vs-hexofloat.
• Armor Ball AQUA — AWTT’s spherical line. Engineered for water bodies under 500 m² or highly irregular geometry where the hexagonal tessellation doesn’t fit cleanly. Full trade-off: /vs/hexagonal-vs-armor-ball.
• Hexprotect® Fortress — AWTT 2022 limited release for extreme-exposure deployments. See /heritage/hexprotect-fortress.

Sources

• AWTT — Hexprotect® AQUA hexagonal cover — manufacturer canonical product page; source of the AWTT-published values for surface coverage, wind rating, service life, operating temperature, and warranty cited above.
• Hexprotect® AQUA specifications — full AWTT specification table.
• Hexagonal floating cover — engineering — deep dive on tessellation geometry and central-dome engineering.
• Self-ballasting cover — ballasting mechanism context and trade-offs vs the legacy 2010 design.
• Why copies fail — failure modes of unlicensed hexagonal cover knock-offs.
• Heritage hub — patent history and AWTT family-tree.
• For EU commercial / lead-time / regional procurement context — eurocovers.eu/products/hexprotect-aqua.