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The Cool Bottle
653 Plays1 month ago
Michael and Andrew reveal the Cool Bottle - their (plus Phil Hare's) project that will allow any cyclist with aero extensions to have on-bike per-cooling. Andrew takes us from the birth of the concept, through design iterations, manufacturing hurdles, to final product.
To learn more about the Cool Bottle and pre-order yours at a pre-launch price of $149 USD, visit our site and use code COOL2024 at checkout.
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Transcript
Introduction & Product Launch
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey folks, um the episode you're about to hear where I interview Andrew, as it were, is a real special one for us. It to sort of is the culmination of at least two years of of Efforts and the really exciting part the the exciting news that i want to share with you is that the product that we were working on these past two years one of the reasons we were not on the air um is now available for sale which is i think pretty cool.
00:00:34
Speaker
ah If you want to check it out, learn more about it. You'll learn more about it in the show you're about to hear. But if you want to see some photos and actually pick one up for yourself, head on over to EITech.io. So E I like endurance innovation tech, all one word.io and see for yourself.
Journey and Emotions in Product Development
00:00:59
Speaker
Hi, everyone. I'm Andrew. and you're listening to the Endurance Innovation Podcast.
00:01:18
Speaker
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Endurance Innovations. I got Andrew here with me, and so it's just a Michael and and Andrew operation today. Andrew, I'm very excited to be having this conversation because it's been a very long time in the making.
00:01:33
Speaker
Yes, we've hinted at it and we've teased and we've, I don't know, postponed, not postponed, procrastinated. That's the P word I'm thinking of. We are finally ready to talk about it in public. um And it's, ah you know, in some ways it feels like exposing ourselves a little bit, but not in the bad way. This is ah exposing our our hearts and souls and what we're really passionate about.
00:01:57
Speaker
Yeah, it's ah that's a really interesting way of thinking about it because um it is it has been a lot of work and it has been a lot of time, as you say. um And it is a little bit of a of a kind of heart in your throat moment, like what what you know what happens next. Because you know a lot of what happens next is definitely up to us, but but a lot of it is also not up to us. So it's ah it's a letting go moment a little bit, as you say.
00:02:22
Speaker
Yes, to paraphrase, Michael is basically putting the blame on everyone listening. if he So if you guys don't support us, then we're in trouble. No, just just joking. there's There's obviously a lot that um that our dedicated listeners would be able to help with, but we believe in releasing a very good product and something that will speak for itself. And if you choose to support, we are obviously thrilled about that, but we believe that what we're offering is unique and provides something that has been, in our opinion, missing in the sport so far.
00:02:56
Speaker
Yes. I mean, I obviously agree with that, Andrew, but I also think that we are, you know, we started out by saying that we've been teasing and being coy about it. And I think we're continuing to do that. Are we continuing to tease? Yes, we're continuing. So why don't we do this?
Revealing the Cool Bottle
00:03:08
Speaker
Why don't we describe the product, what it is, what it does, and then we'll kind of, you know, go in the way back machine and I'll ask you and we'll discuss kind of the history of the making of Hazessa.
00:03:22
Speaker
That sounds good. So to pull off the cover, to to expose everything, ah what we have is a water bottle, um which doesn't sound groundbreaking, but we have a very special water bottle. um So this is something that um is basically used for cooling your body, but not cooling it in the traditional sense of drinking cold water. We're actually leveraging phase change, so ice going into liquid water, um and that will basically pull heat out of your body. So this was inspired by nature. This is something that we've been thinking about for a long, long time. um But it's it's something that is not yet applied in this sport. And we're hoping that this will create kind of a new area of the market that um
00:04:06
Speaker
that will be active cooling for athletes. um It's something I strongly believe in. It's something Michael strongly believes in. We have scientific proof that it works. um So there's a lot of good reasons to go ahead with this. And we're super excited to be finally getting to the point where we have a product that's ah that's viable and ready to ready to rock the world. Yes, that's an awesome way to explain it. Folks, I think at at this point, if you're if you're listening to this and you're interested,
00:04:32
Speaker
You can just check out our website, that's eitech.io, um and you'll you'll get as much information as you want on the the Cool Bottle, which is the the very you know engineer title for for what we've got what we got cooking up. um and so you can You can see all the details, you can see what it looks like, because obviously this is a podcast. so it's in a picture is worth a thousand words. um So go take a look on our website as to what it what it does or what it looks like um and then ah and you'll get ah a more detailed.
00:05:07
Speaker
sort of written explanation of of how it works, but today we're going to tell you in ah in words. Absolutely. And in those words, I guess we're going to be weaving a story for the the early inception of the bottle, or at least the discovery of a problem, ah my problem, which is, as we've discussed before, that I kind of suck
The Science of Cooling
00:05:28
Speaker
racing in the heat.
00:05:28
Speaker
so I really, really slow down. And I'm sure it's maybe not to the same extent for everyone, but it's ah a pretty common problem that people go through. And I'm going to interrupt you now because i was just I'm just scrolling as you're talking about this through our through our archive of of past episodes. And I think ah like off top of my head, there's at least two episodes where You talk about how much how much the heat affects you. So he's he's not lying, folks. We have proof in the in the archives. Yes, and I have a DNF at Ironman Cozumel to prove as well. yeah that's so That's the painful way to learn that. Yes, that was an expensive DNF. but
00:06:05
Speaker
No, it's, it's like I said, no secret. We've talked about it many times. And it really, I think it's a good thing because I think it has led to me trying to solve a problem that that I have and that other people have by using science rather than just using training. And this is a way that we can leverage something, a very powerful ah physical, thermophysical property of phase change. It's something that contains a lot of energy. It's something that honestly feels good, feels very relieving to to be in contact with ice. And it offers both a physiological benefit as well as I think a psychological benefit. One thing that your story just to reminded me of again, is as I'm in our our archive, is the very first episode that we did, which we titled humans are slow, um the kind of the the arc of that episode was, we're not naturally super fast. There's lots of animals that are faster than us that can do, you know, this
00:07:04
Speaker
uh, endurance see work better than we can in some respects. Um, and the, the focus of that episode was on the, on how we mean we may be slow, naturally slow, but we, we've got big brains and we can figure out solutions, scientific and engineering solutions to us, our slowness. And I, I really dig the the, you know, the, the big, let's say five year story arc from that episode to this episode where wherere we're, uh, we're you know, using our brains to solve another one of these solutions. I just wanted to kind of like sneak that in there because I like, ah yeah, I like callbacks like that. um And the the other thing you're talking about is ah is phase change. So let's definitely playing the long game then. We are definitely playing the long game, absolutely. um But you mentioned phase change. So can, before we go into the the history of it, um since you've mentioned it twice now, I think,
00:07:59
Speaker
ah Can you let folks know just how much, ah you know, and you also mentioned, I'm gonna interrupt myself now, you also mentioned that it's better than just drinking cool water. Can you talk about like the sort of the magnitude difference between using ice for cooling versus using ah cold water, even water that might be at near freezing temperature for cooling?
00:08:20
Speaker
Yeah, so um a lot of people experience phase change in the other direction. So they're they're used to seeing steam and hot water. So you get, when you're obviously boiling water, it's converting a liquid phase to a vapor phase. the One of the reasons that steam burns you so badly, and I don't encourage anyone trying this. ah If you're smart, you wouldn't even consider this. but If you have water condense on you, so basically your skin is acting as a cooling source for the steam, causing it to go from a vapor phase to a liquid phase, it releases a huge amount of energy. um And that's how steam turbines work. This is one of the the principles that that power plants, any power generation cycle is going to operate on. um The amount of energy stored in condensing that steam or creating that steam is very large.
00:09:11
Speaker
The same thing happens when you're going from a solid to a liquid. um And solids don't work as well in turbines. um And by as all I mean at all. But they they do contain a lot of energy. So when you put water in the freezer to make ice, it takes a long time for it to freeze because you're constantly pulling that energy out. So it's about using a comparison of the amount of equivalent amount of energy.
00:09:38
Speaker
taking ah freezing water, or yeah, zero degree water, so just at the edge of freezing. and taking that to about 80 degrees Celsius. um I'll have to double check the numbers, so please don't, to any listeners who want to do the math, don't double check. It's about right. I remember double checking this very recently and it's it's very close, plus or minus a degree or two. Yeah, so it's about 80 degrees Celsius that um the same amount of energy from zero to 80 is what you get just converting zero degree ice to zero degree water.
00:10:10
Speaker
So looking at it the other way, you could take one kilogram of ah one kilogram of ice, cool down water by converting the energy from 80 degrees to zero degrees. So that would be the equivalent, right? So that's why ice lasts so long it drinks. so Why this isn't a benefit when you're just drinking ice water? Well, it is. It is a benefit, but you're not you're not taking advantage of the phase change. You're just taking advantage of the energy going from ah zero degrees to your body temperature. um so You're just warming up the water that you've just consumed, right? Exactly. Yeah, so if you were to ah eat a slushie, you would be getting a huge amount of energy on top of what you would get from just ice water. And it's why whenever I have a slushie, I feel, or even a smoothie, I feel super cold for a long time afterwards, because there's so much energy that you're taking into your body, or really the energy taking out of your body to melt that ice.
00:11:09
Speaker
um so I think the the rough number is if you were to take one kilogram of ice and melt it, it's enough to lower your core body temperature by about one degree Celsius, um obviously depending on your weight, but it's in and around that magnitude. so If you think of a liter of frozen water ah cooling your core temperature down by one degree, that's a lot of energy. That's a lot of benefit you can potentially get if you're on a hot day and you're overheating.
00:11:35
Speaker
yep and then if you if you as our cool bottle does if you stretch that out over over a period of time the magnitude of the of the effect may not be as large while it definitely is not as large but the the duration is uh the duration of the cooling times of magnitude is is something that that makes a real difference in the way that you feel and the way that you in your core temperature and heart rate. um And I think that's probably a good place to dive into the, ah Andrew, you talked about what made you want to evaluate this and investigate if there's a technological solution. But um can you talk about the ah the study that that you conducted while you were still with Stack?
00:12:19
Speaker
Well, let's um let's actually take a step further back and we'll talk about the kind of when when the idea first came to me river and when we had first started investigating it. so I remember the the exact race. It was the Welland Multisport Canada race, ge which is always hot.
00:12:39
Speaker
So it's one of these super hot, humid events. And I think it was about 32 degrees that day, ah which, you know, there have been hotter days, but as we've discussed, it is not my forte. So I remember running and my pace was at about 530 per kilometer. So not not a particularly high pace, but as soon as I took some ah took some ice from one of the aid stations and put it down my tri-suit, ignoring the fact that it migrated down a little bit far sometimes, which was its own kind of discomfort. But ah that ice against my skin, I noticed that immediately my pace started to increase. And so it was the perception of being cool as well as the cooling from that that
Innovative Cooling Inspired by Nature
00:13:22
Speaker
ice directly against the skin. yeah And that takes advantage of the phase change that I was talking about earlier. So um so it's the same kind of benefit. You're you're directly cooling the skin.
00:13:31
Speaker
so This led to this thought process of you know what is the most effective way to get ice against your body? and Yes, you can you can shove it down your tri-suit all the time. That's a great way to do it, but the problem is- Very effective. Very effective. May want to invest in some kind of belt to prevent it from going below the waistline. but That's my own personal practice. There's quite a concentration of, you know, of arteries and veins that are that are close to the surface of the skin down there. That's exactly the problem. But but but it's it's an effective area for for heat exchange.
00:14:12
Speaker
It is, yes. not Not one I'm willing to go down, or not a path I'm willing to go down. But it led to the thought process of what's what's a good way to get this this energy in your body. And also, when you're putting ice down your tri-suit, you lose the water. So you've got to carry this weight of ice, and the water just disappears. So um like you are getting a benefit. It's kind of replacing sweat or adding to the the effect of sweating. But ultimately, it's just running off your body if you're doing it in large amounts.
00:14:42
Speaker
So, there there's this extra mass that you would have to carry if you wanted to just shove ice down your shirt, um and you're not like you're benefiting from the cooling, but nothing else. So, this this kind of led to the idea of what if you use it to ah to to cool a water bottle, and you use your body's energy to melt it instead of relying on the ambient air melting the ice.
00:15:04
Speaker
um So the advantage there is now we've got the same mass that we're using, that we're carrying for cooling. The same mass can go towards drinking. And not only that, but you get a nice cool drink when you finally melt all the ice. So it's kind of this double benefit. It's mass that you would be carrying with you anyway. so It's not even really a penalty, um because it's not like the mass of water ah changes when it goes from ice. the The volume changes, but it's going from one kilogram of ice to one kilogram of water, which is still one kilogram. um so that's That's really the the benefit of of converting this or converting your body heat into melting this ice.
00:15:44
Speaker
but Then the question came, how do we do this? How do we get it into the body? What's a good position to ah to have this water bottle and to create this heat transfer?
00:15:56
Speaker
Well, I remember watching, it was one of the BBC documentaries, but they were talking about kangaroos in the OPEC. And this is going to seem like such a random a tangent that we're taking. But they use... We're we're we're going somewhere close. There is a point. um But these kangaroos, um they have evolved this method of cooling themselves and it's licking their forearms.
00:16:19
Speaker
So they use their own saliva to wet a large surface, which is their their forearms, and then the the saliva evaporates, and that cools down the forearms. And the reason it's a benefit is the forearms are highly vascularized. So there's a lot of blood flow available, and that blood basically cools down and then returns to the core, which cools down the core, and then the cycle repeats.
00:16:46
Speaker
So this idea, it took a little bit of time, it wasn't a single aha moment, but it took a little bit of time to come up with the idea that what if we cool the forearms? This area that's highly vascularized and also happens to be stationary on a tri bike. using this external water bottle and basically use your body heat or get rid of excess body heat um by melting this one kilogram. And I keep referencing that, but the bottle's about one litre, so one kilogram of ice that we have on board.
00:17:18
Speaker
And that one kilogram, as I said earlier, can lower your core body temperature by about one degree Celsius, or the equivalent energy of one degree Celsius, which is a pretty substantial amount of energy. right So yes, we we came up with the the idea of how to ah how to remove the heat, where to remove the heat. We had this David Attenborough nature inspiration, which was fantastic. um So what we needed to do next was really prove that the idea worked. So scientifically or theoretically, we had the proof. Nature does it. um The math works out. So there's many reasons we thought this would work. So we went through the process of doing a rigorous scientific study. And this study, I think I've referenced it before, it was one of the most miserable experiences of my life. so
00:18:10
Speaker
we did We did. You're absolutely right. there was I was trying to find the episode we talked about it on, but we did we did cover it in a previous episode. Yeah. so It was basically a heat chamber time trial. um so A very controlled set of circumstances for for cycling and the The bottle itself wasn't used, but we cooled the forearms the same way that the bottle would ah with chilled water. um We were able to measure the amount of heat going in and out of the body. We were able to measure the heart rate, the cadence, and the power was held. um
00:18:43
Speaker
fix like erg mode on a trainer. um And really, the the results from this study were very encouraging. So in in my particular case, um we did a control and we did a cooled study. So we couldn't do a blind because obviously with a ah blind, you would feel the difference in the yeah in the cooling. It's hard to blind that part of it. It is, yeah. ah But it was a 40-minute time trial, or 45-minute time trial, and it was 30 degrees Celsius and about 80% humidity. And there was no fan or anything like that for cooling. So it was hot. And no water consumption. And no water consumption. We were measuring sweat rates. There was no water consumption at all. um So hence me saying why it was one of the most miserable experiences of my life. um And on top of that, it was in this dingy,
00:19:35
Speaker
climatic test chamber at an old building in Toronto. um So it's one of the military test facilities where they they um contract out research projects. But we we had this great setup. We had someone um Len Goodman, who is very interested. He's a triathlete himself, um where he's the the guy who administers the lab or administrates the lab. um So we had a lot of great people involved. And um I was, like I said, I was involved in the study. I can't claim that I was responsible for doing most of it. um We had a great team that was led by one of our partners, Sean Peterson.
00:20:14
Speaker
um We've also done an interview with him in the past, but he set up this this study and we we did this 45 minutes of cooled and uncooled. and Ignoring the the pain I went through, the the difference in the results for myself, I think it was around seven beats per minute heart rate at the conclusion of the study, which is a very significant amount.
00:20:37
Speaker
um And I think it was half a degree average core body temperature, half a degree lower average core body temperature um for the cooled versus the uncooled. um On top of that, the RPE was lower with the cooled case. So everyone enjoyed, especially in that hot room, having this nice cooled surface that was up against their forearms.
00:20:59
Speaker
And I think the the the surface temperature that that we ended up replicating is very similar to what we've measured um on the actual cool bottle itself. So that's the the nice tie-in to our our current study. And so we've proven that we've been able to replicate basically the same skin conditions.
00:21:18
Speaker
um we've tested this in a lab had significant differences, statistically significant differences in our results. It's a peer reviewed paper that we've got published on our website. um So you can go check it out. um It's maybe not the most exciting read if you're not into scientific papers. But ah I have a strong suspicion that some of our listeners would be very interested in reading it. For sure. And I'll put i'll put a link to it in the show notes as well, folks. And it's, ah it's mercifully short, like I was just doing some research for other episodes. And there are papers that are
00:21:49
Speaker
you know, in the 30 plus page category. And I was like, Oh boy, I gotta, I gotta shop in for those. Uh, but this one is, this one's shortened to the point. And but one thing I wanted to mention, just cause I, I looked at, looked through it recently. Um, the numbers that you, uh, that you quoted for yourself, Andrew, I believe they were fairly representative of the average, uh, of the participant. So.
00:22:12
Speaker
your seven beats in half a degree and a lower RPE, they they weren't an outlier. Yeah. Yeah. So I think the core body temperature difference was very representative. I think I tend to have a high heart rate anyway. So um I think it was maybe a little bit larger difference than most people saw. But in general, there was almost in every case a lower measured heart rate and lower measured core body temperature.
00:22:38
Speaker
um There might have been one or two outliers, but of the yeah of the the study size that we had, that was not a statistically significant outlier. so um Yeah, we're we're very confident in the results. um As I said, it was peer reviewed and published in 2019. So this has gone through the scientific review process. We had other experts weigh in on it. um So it was able to pass muster as a valid scientific experiment. So this isn't just a white paper. This is a peer reviewed paper, which is much, much more difficult to publish. Perfect.
00:23:13
Speaker
Just one more thing that I want to emphasize here too is that when when you were doing kind of your in the basement tests with with our new cool bottle, ah you attached some thermocouples to your forearms and you were seeing, and I know this you said this, I'm just emphasizing it, you were seeing a similar sort of skin temperature to what you saw when when you were doing the study with ah in that in that lab that you just described, right?
00:23:41
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. So the actual conditions were about 8 or 10 degrees Celsius water that was going through little cooling plates that were um the same reference area that we have on the the ah the cool bottle itself. um But we were getting that 8 degree, 10 degree boundary. um And while we didn't have thermocouples in that experiment, we did take thermal images afterwards.
00:24:03
Speaker
um But the the measurements I was getting when we did this with our bottle ah were very, very similar. So if not, actually lower in some cases where we had basically close to zero degrees. So not not quite the level of frostbite, but definitely very, very cold skin. um And I've taken some thermal images as well coming off the bottle. And you can see even after and an exercise event, it's still quite cool. um And it's quite cool to the touch. So it's it's very noticeable how much of a difference this makes. um There is some interesting, I don't know if it's sensory adaptation or acclimatization, maybe not acclimatization, but um you you get that initial
00:24:46
Speaker
burst of cooling, like it feels really cold at the start. But then your body kind of numbs out the the discomfort. And it's still a nice cool sensation, but it it loses that initial impact as as you continue. But what you can do is move your arms around slightly. If you get a different contact patch, um not only does the heat transfer rate go up slightly, because the skin isn't cold anymore, it's warm. So warm skin against a cool surface is gonna extract more heat, um but you also reinvigorate that to that psychological feeling that you get with the ah the cold surface that you're up against. so Let's go to the next phase of the of our of our story here. so you have you know you You don't perform super well in the heat, you've come up with ah an area that might be an interesting one ah for for cooling, especially on a tri-bike with
From Lab to Race-Ready
00:25:37
Speaker
extensions. ah This all makes real good sense.
00:25:39
Speaker
ah You've tested it in the lab, you've proven that it does what you think it's going to do, but um there's still quite the gulf between between having a lab set up with you know temperature controlled water flowing through heat exchanger plates that are velcroed to your forearms to having something that you can actually put on a bike.
00:26:00
Speaker
and and go out and and race in. Let's talk about that the the actual product development. Well, it turns out you'd need a really long hose if you had those heat exchanger plates. ah Yeah, 180 kilometers of hose.
00:26:16
Speaker
ah But what we what we looked at initially was obviously between the arms is where we wanted to target. So we had a couple different um patterns that we looked at. And I think our coolest design was actually one of our first designs. um It was less practical and more expensive and more complicated, but it was really neat because it used heat pipes that were submerged in ice water or in our cooling medium.
00:26:40
Speaker
um And these heat pipes, which you often see in CPU coolers, um and they're starting to make an appearance in other places for electronics, but the heat pipes are really good at moving heat from one place to another. So by dipping one end in the water, it doesn't really matter how high your water level is as long as it's still submerged, and it would very easily conduct the heat up to your forearms. So that was able to take a vertical bottle orientation and make it effective no matter how high the water level was or the ice level was in the bottle.
00:27:10
Speaker
Cool. So even as you consume the water, it would still provide the cooling? Yes. Yeah, exactly. So as long as some of it was in contact, it would very effectively um continue to to get that heat or that coolness feeling up to the forearms. Very cool. So um yeah, very neat design, but heat pipes are not easy to work with.
00:27:31
Speaker
there expensive, there's other problems. um So really, that wasn't a viable and solution. um Maybe if we'd continued developing, ah we could have figured something out. But ultimately, we came up with something that was I would say more traditional looking um and a lot simpler. And really, we just went with a conduction path, a simple conduction path. So if you can imagine a horizontal ah BTA between the arms bottle, um that bottle has been contoured to match
00:28:04
Speaker
the shape of your forearm and what you do is pressure forearms up against the surface and we've got a thinned out plastic region where we're targeting heat transfer and that thinned out plastic reduces the thermal resistance between the liquid and your skin and allows more conduction because plastic is not a good conductor so it's one of the reasons that well when you pick up a a cold, ah if you imagine like a cold glass of water versus a plastic ah glass of water, um like glass glass versus plastic. The glass is a better conductor and will feel a lot cooler. Where the plastic kind of has this insulating property, it'll feel not warm, but just not nearly as cool. so
00:28:48
Speaker
making that as thin as possible reduces the thermal resistance allows us to get more heat faster from your body to the ice to melt it. And i'll tell um and the the horizontal bottle shape also allows you to drink the water. So as you go through the um the melting phase, you can continue to drink it and it doesn't really appreciably change the the height. um it'll It'll go down. The water level will go down, but it's not like a vertical bottle where you have maybe 30 centimeters of total height. and you're going to As you get to the bottom of the bottle,
00:29:20
Speaker
you would have um very it'd be very difficult to to get that heat up to the the surface of your skin, where in in our case, because it's a horizontal bottle, it's maybe eight centimeters high. So the contact patch is still in contact with the the water.
00:29:37
Speaker
Yeah, and then also with modern bike designs, vertical bottles are becoming more and more difficult to integrate, especially with with anything that is a a one-piece extension where there is no daylight between the the two extensions. ah Obviously, a vertical bottle would be ah a non-starter for those designs, and they are becoming increasingly more popular.
00:29:57
Speaker
yeah Yeah, absolutely. um and that was That was one of the big challenges. um so We've got this yeah this design where we've we've come up with a way to cool your body. We've come up with a shape of the bottle, but how do we be actually connect it to the bike? so Oh, boy. yeah this is the This is the million dollar. This is something ... Folks, we're recording this. You'll hear this a little bit later, but we're recording this. in in kind of mid-October, and we're still having those conversations. yeah And we do have solutions. But the problem is, as you said, Michael, the the the methods for mount are the methods for designing aero bars have been changing. Because it used to be you'd have two extensions, like your ski pole extensions, and there'd be a gap in between. That was no problem. But now you're getting these monopost designs where there is a single extension in the middle. Now we can't
00:30:47
Speaker
protrude downwards. um We can't fasten off the the actual round extensions. um So the some of the BTA solutions would wrap around the the extensions. Obviously, that's going to be more challenging if we have something ah just a single monopost. So it is a big challenge. And we've come up with something that we think is a pretty as close to universal as we can currently get. um And we've got a couple solutions for it. But this has been the the cause of a lot of different headaches um and trying to really nail down what the most universal geometry could be. um But the the realization that elbow pads are the one common feature across most extension and setups, it's pretty important for us because we thought, okay, why not just clamp something in between the elbow pad? If we have a thin gauge mount that goes there, it doesn't change your stack height very much. And we have a nice secure area that that is really generally horizontal or very close to horizontal. um And we've got a nice reference that that we can bolt onto.
00:31:55
Speaker
And even if it's inclined it's your your arms are inclined with it so it's gonna be exactly Kind of in plane with your art with your forearms even if it's inclined or horizontal so yeah I think using the use I can't remember which one of us came up with the the elbow pads as a reference I think it was a great idea because to your point like if we're if we're looking at If we take that as our as our sort of our reference, um then our you know the inner forearm that we want to make contact that we want contacting the model is going to be within a fairly constrained you know region ah relative to that elbow. so um But on top of that, we've actually added quite a bit of adjustability, at least with our
00:32:38
Speaker
with our stock mount of ah both Reach and Stack on the bottle so that we can, we can ah you know, optimally position that bottle so that it does make ah good contact with that area of skin, which is actually fairly large on the forearm, that has all that um all that superficial capillary density for cooling already. All that cooling action, exactly. All that cooling action. so Yeah, there was um a lot of discussion, and this is condensing you know a fair amount of design work down into a five-minute explanation. Yep. But that was that was kind of where we landed for a general solution, and it doesn't suit everyone.
00:33:19
Speaker
but um but that was our our first attempt. So we've got these, we're calling them wings, but they they attach to a ah little mounting block and this mounting block can move up and down, which is great. You can change the angle of it to match your forearms exactly. And then it also allows the bottle to slide back and forth. So it mounts on a rail, which was the idea of Phil, our designer. um So brilliant idea for this sliding rail. It has a spring pin that locks it in. So it's nice and secure retention, but it takes about two seconds to put the bottle on or take it off, which is a lot easier than some of the other methods that we've seen. um So really, at the start of a race, it allows you to very quickly attach this bottle. And should you choose to, if you want to drop it off at a special needs or or even pick up another frozen bottle at a special needs, um I mean, it's something it's expensive to dispose of, but if you're a pro and have the ability to get it back, um you could you could do something like that in the race and not lose that much time.
00:34:21
Speaker
So there's a lot of flexibility with this. It's refillable. um It's heavily adjustable. And we think a very solid design. um One of the other things that that was basically, it was a bit of a limitation in the design process, but it turned into a strength that that we were able to leverage, is we we required this thin area of the plastic for heat transfer. And most bottles that you see will be blow-molded. So it's a very common, inexpensive manufacturing process. It's very robust, um but the problem is you don't really get good control over the thickness of the part. So we wanted to injection mold so that we could get these nice, thin sections to optimize heat transfer. The problem with injection molding is you need to get a tool in and out of the bottle. So blow molding will fit an external cavity. You're basically blowing it up. It's like blowing up a balloon on the inside of this cavity. And then you just... You've got good control over the outside, but you have zero control over the inside. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So with injection molding, you have to get that tool on both sides because it's very high pressure that it's injected at.
00:35:30
Speaker
which means we needed to have a bottle that could be split apart. So this was initially a drawback, but we also realized that um most bottles are fairly disgusting. So at least with me yeah for a while, they're really hard to clean out. And you're putting super sticky, very bacteria friendly stuff into them all the time. For sure. Yeah, you can scrub out, but it's a pain. Especially with like traditional you know BTA bottles. like A typical round bottle, yeah you can you can clean it out reasonably well, but if you think of folks, if you've ever ridden with you know anybody's traditional between-the-arrow-bar bottle with a straw, um those are notoriously difficult to clean.
00:36:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, small opening and a lot of depth. So you need a a pipe cleaner or a straw cleaner to get out of there. too Yeah, so not easy to clean, but we've got these two pieces now that that come apart nicely and they're very high quality plastic. They're polycarbonate, so they're very strong and impact resistant, but they can also withstand pretty high temperatures. So you can put it right in the dishwasher. um There's no crevices or anything to worry about. It'll clean out nicely and you can sanitize them that way. so um So not only do you get the good heat transfer, but you also have a product that will likely last a lot longer than the other offerings out there. um Yeah. It's a lot more durable material. Yeah. Yeah. You have a lot more flexibility with the plastics you use for injection molding. Right. and And then, so then the last, I think the last element of the design, Andrew, that was worth talking about, and this is a question that I get any time I speak to a ah potential partner, be it an athlete or media person,
00:37:10
Speaker
uh, who is kind of thinking ahead of how they're going to use this in a race is, you know, so I, you know, I fill it up the night before and I pop it in the freezer. And then I have a trip to my, to transition, which might take, you know, half an hour, an hour, and then I'm waiting for my swim start. And then I'm swimming again from, you know, let's say.
00:37:36
Speaker
45 minutes to an hour and a half, and then I am you know back in transition. So it could easily be three to four hours between the bottle being in the freezer and frozen ah to me jumping on the bike in T1. So what do we do to to reduce the melting of the ice and the heat transfer to the environment, which is doing me exactly zero good?
00:38:02
Speaker
um What do we do to reduce that and make sure that most of the ice stayed as ice until it's got forearms pressed against the sides of the ball? Yeah, so it's a pretty simple solution, but it's basically just a a little cozy. If you imagine a cozy for a teapot, that's kind of like what we have here. um So it's neoprene. It's a material that I'm sure most people listening are quite familiar with. A lot of insulating properties. um It happens to be buoyant, which i don't I hope you don't need that property, but to each their own.
00:38:35
Speaker
um But it's a very good insulator, so it's this foamed rubber that um will prevent a lot of heat transfer from happening to the environment, and it fits nicely over the bottle so that any external convection or losses are are not produced as much as possible. So in testing, um basically taking a frozen bottle, putting it out in the sun, um in about Four hours, there was about 40% melting of the the bottle. And this is sitting in direct sunlight, and this is with the cozy on. With the cozy off, it was um within two hours, it was 100% liquid. um So it had completely melted. So there's a lot of energy stored in the ice. um You don't want to lose more of it than you have to. um But there's there's a nice balance you can reach as well with how quickly you can ah drink the or ah melt the the ice in the bottle.
00:39:26
Speaker
Um, so there's a lot of variables you can play with, but the cozy really helps limit that. So if you're racing at Kona, um, you would be able to take it out of the freezer before the race, put it on transition at, you know, 4am, 5am, uh, your 6am start, it's still going to be frozen. Um, and the cozy just helps extend that window so that by the time you get on the bike, you're still mostly frozen, uh, which is exactly what you want. You want to retain that energy as ice and.
00:39:53
Speaker
retain that energy for cooling your body rather than cooling the air. For sure. And this is most obviously most race starts are early in the morning, so you're not going to get full noon day sun on the bottle until you're well on the bike. So it's you know I think your your test conditions when it was in in full daytime sunlight were probably more ah you know more conducive to melting than than the average early morning transition area will be.
00:40:19
Speaker
For sure. Yeah, it was a worst case scenario, just trying to understand the cooling. um And obviously you can throw it in a bag of ice if you want or a lunch cooler. So there's a number of different options if you want to extend that that
Design Evolution and Challenges
00:40:32
Speaker
cooling range. And yeah as I was hinting at as well, you can change the amount of ice or the the amount of liquid that you actually freeze in the bottle um to kind of tailor to your race length. So if you're doing a short race, if you're doing like a sprint triathlon, you can have less than half the bottle frozen because you'll still get, you you basically won't be able to extract the energy fast enough to melt the ice. So you don't need to carry more ice than you have to. Where if you're doing an Ironman in hot conditions, so cause them hell, we're IDNF'd. That would be
00:41:03
Speaker
that would be the optimal place to have it as fully frozen when you start so that you can get the most cooling effect into your body rather than losing it to the environment. Yeah. And as were as as we have folks who are currently testing it in the field and playing around with it and really thinking about various use cases and optimal use cases, ah we're going to be you know publishing content on on best ideas for how to use it, depending on Uh, as Andrew mentioned, the the duration of the race, that's the obvious variable. Also the temperature and the humidity perhaps would be a variable. Um, so for example, if, you know, as Andrew explained for, um, for something like Cozumel or Kona, where you want maximal cooling, you may need, you may want to have an alternate drinking option for the first one to two hours on the bike, uh, so that you're getting maximal cooling from, from the cool bottle.
00:41:59
Speaker
and allowing all of that ice to melt. And then um when you are when that ice is melted, that you're left, as as we've talked about already, you're left with with you know perfectly cool water or a sport drink, which, by the way, also works. We've frozen all sorts of sport drinks in there, and it freezes up quite nicely. um The other thing I think we we we forgot to mention is that it has ah the the the fill port for that you would obviously use to to fill it in the first place.
00:42:26
Speaker
is it's got a ah nice little um silicone cap that fits in snugly so it doesn't leak but also it's easy to pop off um and allows you to dump um whatever aid station fluids are available and then seal it back up so you can use it like a traditional between the arrow or between the arms bottle um and you're drinking through a straw. That's another i think design element that I i don't think we we pointed to, but that's that's how you actually you know get the liquid out of the bottle and into your face. and Some of these design elements actually came through our testing. so We had ah we'd settled on actually another design that that we haven't mentioned so far. um and Then kind of a last minute thing, we we changed this design because we were told it was too cold.
00:43:16
Speaker
um so we We didn't want to cause frostbite on and ah on anyone's skin. um And we didn't want to cause discomfort because cooling is nice, but too cold is a problem. for sure um And we were initially looking at having aluminum or stainless steel plates against your forearm. So instead of having a plastic um interface between the ice and the forearm, um it would have been stainless steel.
00:43:42
Speaker
um which as far as metal goes, it's not a particularly high thermal conductivity, but it was cold enough that that we were told. Way better than plastic though. Yeah, it's way better thermal conductivity than plastic. So it's it's about two orders of magnitude higher. So without getting into too many of the details, we were told it was way too cold. Yes. So we we pivoted. We went to actually what it ended up being a simpler and more robust design. ah We were also told that filling and the way we were mounting the bottle was not um not conducive to
00:44:16
Speaker
ah good performance during racing. So we adapted that. Um, so yeah, I guess, uh, I guess it doesn't hurt to mention the names that, uh, that Cody Beals and Lauren Brandon both provided a lot of really excellent feedback for us. Um, and they were early testers.
00:44:33
Speaker
So taking that into account, we did adopt our design. We went through many different design iterations. We have a whole heap of 3D printed parts that we tested out. yep and So we have Phil's got the graveyard or the museum. yeah It's the museum, mind you. It's not the graveyard. Well, it's it's becoming a a bit of a dumping ground. There's a lot of different parts that have ended up there. But through all of these different iterations, we've learned a ton.
00:44:58
Speaker
We have. All right, so we've talked about the design of the bottle. um we've We've beaten that to death, I think. um Really, the best thing to do is just go and take a look at our website. yeahp um And really the best thing to do is go and order one. But the next best thing is to take a look at our website and see what we're talking about. ah But yeah, we've we've gone through a lot of testing. We're very confident in the design. and um We think it's very slick. It's got a lot of advantages over other competitors. And we hope that everyone thinks but like we do. um And we we certainly hope that it helps solve heat problems.
00:45:34
Speaker
So that's one side of things. you can You can make a great design. You can figure out how to build it. um But then starting a business is not necessarily an easy thing. And getting getting something complicated made is also not ah not an easy thing to do. Exactly, yeah. So we as I said, we we went through this 3D printing process. ah We tried out a few design iterations, but then we finally decided to pull the trigger on final tooling.
00:46:04
Speaker
So tooling for injection molding um is not cheap. So it's a tremendous investment. um This is something that we thought long and hard about and decided to finally pull the trigger. yeah And we needed a lot of custom parts because we were using a mount that wasn't really off the shelf. Well, completely wasn't off the shelf. um It's a little bit different. So if you go to the website and check it out, there's a little pin that you pull to lock it in place. ah There's a rail that it slides in. Nothing else really uses that kind of mounting system.
00:46:33
Speaker
So these are all custom-built parts. So sourcing these parts, um it was a lot of time and patience from Phil. I think he lost some hair, or he would have if he wasn't already fully evolved. If he had any need to start with, yeah.
00:46:49
Speaker
yeah Phil, we're sorry for dunking on you, buddy, but you know we're not we're not far behind you in that front, I don't think. so All I can think of is the optimal baldness episode. That's still my favorite of my favorite episode title of all time. there is ah It also had to do with cooling, of of all things. It did, yes.
00:47:08
Speaker
um so Anyway, Phil, he put a lot of effort into this going back and forth trying to source all our parts. um But you know things happen. It's it's funny. you can You can plan things out, and then sometimes you just end up with a thousand soldering iron tips instead of... instead of bolts. So we had a bit of a shipping snapper. And you think he's joking. So if anyone anyone wants soldering iron tips, we do have an abundance of them right now. Please take them off our hands. Yeah, this is just some of the random stuff that happens. So you you try and plan for everything. um But there's always hiccups. um we We had another little hiccup that, you know, could have been solved with more foresight. But we had neglected to put in a logo on the bottle for our first first run of the tooling. So that was something that we decided we wanted after we got our first tooling parts. And
00:48:06
Speaker
It was an extra time, and so you know an extra couple weeks, and we're actually waiting on those parts right now. um So just to to add the the physical logo on there so that when you run it without the cozy, you can still and see the branding. Yeah, and that's what happens when you have three engineers build something with no input from from design or marketing folks. It's kind of like the the price of the cost of doing business in that context. Very well engineered, very poorly branded.
00:48:34
Speaker
Yeah. It's, it's called the cool model too, which is, you know, a little bit heavy on the nose. And the the story behind that title is that, uh, we were all, we were all brainstorming, uh, ideas for what to call this thing and trying to keep it pretty straightforward. Um, and, uh, I, I offered my seven and nine year olds Lego, if they could come up with a title that would actually stick. And that was, you know, and they, you know,
00:49:01
Speaker
I forget which one of them I was. I'm like, well, what does it do? is like It keeps you cool. I'm like, well, and it's a bottle. Yeah, it's a bottle. Call it the cool bottle. Okay. That makes sense. so So here we are now. So they ah they keep asking me every couple of weeks, like, hey, dad, have you sold any yet? I'm like, no, because the deal was that I'm going to pay them in Lego, but only once we actually start making some sales. so ah they're there I was going to ask if you were the Lego. No, not yet. They're also invested in the ah the financial success of this enterprise. It's a true family business. It is it is now.
00:49:37
Speaker
Yeah, so there's i mean all of these little hiccups that add to the the time. We were hoping to get them out for Kona. We were really pushing hard to do that. um We have a couple going there, but not as many as we were hoping. So our our goal was really to have the have the the bottle on the Kona bike count. um We won't be managing that this year.
Feedback and Future Plans
00:50:01
Speaker
Next year, we'd like to have a strong presence there. um So any any women who are going to Kona and are listening to this, please reach out to us. yes We would love to have
00:50:13
Speaker
the opportunity to work with you on the the bottle next year if you're going there. Yeah, absolutely. If you've already punched your ticket or or you know as you as you go through the year and you're getting there, ah please let us know. Niece is obviously ah you know the other world championship race, but it's different conditions and different different environments, so maybe less of a ah factor. But anyone anyone doing any hot races, come talk you know send us a note, talk to us, especially as we're very much in the early stages of this.
00:50:42
Speaker
of this adventure in terms of wealth. We've been making it for a couple of years now. But in terms of marketing and selling it, um talk to us. Tell us your story. we'll We'll see what we can do for you. Yeah, absolutely. That's the advantage of reaching out to a company that's just trying to gain a footing. So we're we're willing to work with you. um It would be very interesting to hear the the story of different people and and just have additional people in the market to work with. Because we want to understand, like we tested on our bikes, but we want to understand what other people's bikes look like and what kind of challenges do the you have. and what kind of feedback do you have about the product? like All of this is very, very important stuff. um And market research is crucial, and we've worked with pros, but ah we haven't had the opportunity to work with a lot of age groupers yet. yeah So pro or age grouper, reach out to us, we'd love to talk to you. For sure. And I think that's a great place to to leave this conversation, Andrew, as like a call to action for anyone listening. um Because we've you know we've kind of told you the genesis of the of the bottle, kind of the
00:51:39
Speaker
ah that The development cycle are are hiccups and and growing pains, and now if you want to if you want to help us make it even better, um we'd we'd love to hear from you. Absolutely. um And this is something that we've both tested out now. I'm looking forward, I haven't raced with it yet, but I'm really looking forward to going out and actually being able to race with it. I've done a couple of outdoor rides.
00:52:05
Speaker
um Alberta is not the warmest place, so it hasn't really been crucial. Ontario, Michael, you might be better suited to to really pushing the limits of this yeah ah with your hot, humid summers. I had a very early prototype in the summer, though, so it was like you know i could it was one of the ones where ... Okay, last story, folks. It was one of the ones where it was I was told it wasn't safe to drink from, and so I didn't i wasn't planning on drinking from it. but then i was I was getting, it was getting hot and ah the bottle was doing its thing. I actually had some really interesting heart rate data from that ride. um It was starting to get hot and I was starting to get thirsty and I still had you know water in my other bottles, but I was like, oh, I wonder what what this, you know, there's a straw in my face. I i kind of wanted to give it a give it a sip and it was it was gross ah just because
00:52:52
Speaker
It was it was ah some 3D printed nylon and it wasn't coated. It was one of those things that you do once and never do again.
00:53:03
Speaker
Well, we did warn you. well You did warn me. It's true. that that That one is entirely on me. Yeah. So the the final product, as we've mentioned, is polycarbonate. So it's basically very similar material to what you see in the Nalgene bottles. ye um and So very cleanable, very smooth surface. um It's actually clear, so you get to see the ice melting too if you don't have the cozy on, which is kind of neat. um But it will be very easy to get rid of any taste. We've tested it with ah specifically Gatorade mixture on my end. um which is you know one of the cheapest things you can you can use. And it's bright orange, so it sticks to everything. And there is no residue left over. So we're hoping long-term it doesn't take on any flavors or or smells or...
00:53:45
Speaker
new forms of life. yeah and this is ah just Just to be perfectly clear, this is food grade, actually like surgical grade polycarbonate, so it's BPA free and certified for yes for use as ah as a food container for humans. Just putting that out there because polycarbonate had a little bit of ah a little bit of a history in the past, and some grades definitely aren't food safe. Yes, this is a non-BPA, very safe version.
00:54:10
Speaker
so All right, well, we've we've explained the bottle. Hopefully we've gotten people interested. um Hopefully we've told some interesting anecdotes that weren't just ah or just limited to us reminiscing and were actually useful or interesting for people. But is there anything else that you wanted to say before wrapping this up? No, I think it's a good place to to kick it off. And as far as the future of the podcast, folks, i I'm not committing to anything because it takes a long time to record, but even longer to produce these things.
00:54:40
Speaker
But there's definitely a few folks that I want to be talking to. I definitely have some have an itch to scratch in the aerodynamic world because that's something that we haven't talked about in a really long time. um So this is kind of a.
00:54:55
Speaker
putting myself on the spot here more than anything else. But I hope to have some episodes coming up even after this little mini series that we put out with that we're all about cooling. um But I'm not going to commit to our schedule like we did before, like though the one episode a week that was that was not sustainable.
00:55:15
Speaker
So I think with that, we can we can leave it here. And again, thank you folks for listening. It's truly a pleasure to be talking to you again. And we'll speak to you soon. Thanks for listening, everyone.