With the cost of a Wavegarden estimated at between 3 and 4 million euros, building wave pools is a pricey endeavour and that’s before you’ve even started to incur operating costs. Which might explain why so far there’s been a whole lot of rumours about towns proposing artificial wave projects but no one being sure of whether they’re a viable business.

Enter an Indo-based Aussie ex-pat (going by the name of Fred) who has taken an altogether different approach, spending the last 6 years working on a human-powered wave pool machine. In fact the extremely low energy technique is so rad even a handful of kids can operate it manually! Cheap, sustainable but also so much fun!

3 hours from the south coast of West Java in the city of Sukabumi, the wave pool you see here in the below videos is the latest version of a prototype which Fred built for just 70,000 Australian bucks (yep, that’s just 45,000 euros). And with a little extra cash he reckons he can double the ride time, wave height and start producing tubes!

Then of course there’s Dion Agius Wadi wave pool experience that looks a little like this: