From: Valerie M.
Subject: Hamster Balls

I was checking in to a local business that rents inflatables out to see if they would considering purchasing a set of the human hamster balls. They said that they were afraid their insurance wouldn’t cover them because of the lack of air for those inside. Is that really a concern? How much time can a person be in the ball?

Thank you for your input!

Sincerely,
Valerie M
Albion, IL

Thanks for your question Val.

I am far from a scientist, but I have two answers for this.

First for a standard sports time out use (less than 5 minutes) this is not a problem. Units are 7 feet high and have plenty of air for people. Most our uses are for 5 minutes or less, so this is never a problem.

Second, I sharpened up a pencil and took a crack at this. I welcome anyone with more insight (or math skills to correct me if this is incorrect).

I get this question enough that I did some quick research (source web link).

Looks like from this research that a running adult human would breathe about 50 liters of air per minute.

Theses balls are inflated with fresh air via blower, so the volume of air insides when inflated is about:

Volume of a sphere is: 4/3*Pi*R^3
1 foot = 0.3048 meters
7 foot sphere = 2.13m, radius = 1.065m
4/3*3.14* (radius)^3
1.33 * 3.14 * (1.065^3) = 5.04 cubic meters of volume inside

Cubic Meters:
A metric unit of volume. One cubic meter equals 1000 liters.

So there is approximately 5044 liters of air in the sphere, meaning you’d have about 100 minutes inside the sphere before the air is used up (if you were just breathing it and exhaling outside the sphere). Clearly it’s not safe to have someone inside for 100 minutes, but this shows that 5 minutes is pretty safe, since you would be using about 250 liters of air out of 5000+ liters (about 5% of the air inside).

Each sphere has two zippers. One zips on the outside that is used to load people inside and inflate. It is the primary zipper you would use (usually the only one). There is a second zipper inside that can be unzipped from the inside. It is a safety zipper for people inside in case they panic or in case the first zipper breaks.

As noted, we primarily sell to sports teams who use them in court contest, which rarely last more than 2-3 minutes. For this use, the air supply isn’t a major concern. You can get more information on our Human Hamster Balls on the Gameops.com Store.
Thanks for your question.

-Cudo