Durham Boat Company, Inc. is the leading provider of indoor rowing tanks in the United States and has been designing and installing indoor rowing tanks for 17 years. These facilities are primarily used for off season rowing, muscle specific conditioning and technique training. Any size system can be constructed between a one-station reversible sweep tank to a 16-station or more, four-pool sweep/sculling installation. To date, we have installed all sizes from 2-station to 16 station tanks. Our modular design allows for any number of rowing stations.

By optimization of fluid flow, minimizing fluid volume and proportioning outboard lever and blade size, the water volume of our design is only a fraction of other tank designs. The function of most indoor rowing tanks is to instruct novices in the proper blade work technique. Duplicating racing speed cadence has not been seen as cost effective for most customers to date. However, we can quote a mechanically assisted, moving water option that uses our standard modular designs with some key modifications.

We work closely with architects, design engineers, on-site facilities people and rowing coaches to insure a complete ready-to-row indoor rowing system. Our tanks are turnkey installations in that we manufacture all of components, ship them to the site and send in a team to assemble all of the components.

Each of the modular tank sections can fit through a man door (i.e., each fiber glass section is 4.5 ft. long and 9 ft. wide). For example an 8-station tank will have two end sections, a dead-water section and eight rowing center sections. Each section is then bolted together along the common 4" flange and sealed. The rowing unit weldment supports the monorail, seat and foot stretcher assembly and is built in 2 station sections. Load bearing rigger arms are bolted to the weldment so that a walkway can be installed over the rigger. To achieve the correct load for sweep rowing, an oar with a blade area about the same as a standard sculling oar is used.

The most versatile and popular sweep configuration consists of one or two 8-person sweep tank(s) with two or four pools and configured as in a boat with alternating port and starboard stations. This configuration can be used for sculling with special tank sculling oars. No changes to the rigging is necessary to go from a port stroked tank to a starboard stroked tank or to sculling because all tanks are equipped with two locks for each seat that can be used either sculling or sweep. The foot print of each 8-person tank excluding any room for a walkways on the outside of the tank, is 20.5 ft. x 49.5 ft.

In order to allow for aisle space, a four foot space should be provided around the parameter of the tanks. This extra space provides an area for the team to assemble, mirrors, oar racks and access to the equipment to provide periodic maintenance. Site requirements need only compacted sand or gravel for the tanks and a 36 ft. long by 3 ft. wide concrete slab for the rowing unit. If the tank is to be placed on concrete then other site preparation recommendations will be suggested. Our design can be placed in a drained recess or on level floor.

As of January of 2007 we have installed 20 indoor rowing facilities of various sizes (2 to 16 stations) for university, high school and club rowing/sculling programs, since we started offering this product.