Histo­ry

ELYSATOR – a Swiss pio­neer in water technology

ELYSATOR – a Swiss pio­neer in water tech­no­lo­gy Hein­rich Ricken­bach, born in Zurich in 1931, com­ple­ted an app­ren­ti­ce­ship as a metal worker and mecha­nic. In 1950, straight after the trai­ning, he foun­ded his first com­pa­ny for the con­s­truc­tion and main­ten­an­ce of faci­li­ties rela­ting to water tech­no­lo­gy. He found tech­ni­cal sup­port with his brot­her, who had com­ple­ted his stu­dies as an elec­tro­nics engi­neer at Win­ter­thur Col­lege. It was reco­g­nis­ed ear­ly on that elec­tro­che­mis­try would play a lea­ding role in the future of “water engi­nee­ring”. It pro­mi­sed, in many cases, to be more eco­no­mic­al and eco­lo­gi­cal than tra­di­tio­nal water che­mis­try. But the begin­nings were dif­fi­cult; eco­lo­gy had not yet been queried and years of rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment pas­sed befo­re the imple­men­ta­ti­on on of the in some cases visio­na­ry ide­as of the two brot­hers. In 1971, with the ELYSATOR® for hea­ting sys­tems, came the first gre­at breakth­rough. Oxy­gen dif­fu­si­on through pla­s­tic tubing beca­me the tech­ni­cal scour­ge of the first gene­ra­ti­on of under­flo­or hea­ting. Che­mi­cal inhi­bi­tors fai­led and the elec­tro­che­mi­cal pro­ce­du­re tri­um­phed. And so the pro­duct gave the com­pa­ny its name: ELYSATOR.