Self-described “nerd” John Head started Prevco Subsea Housings in his garage on Mustang Drive in 1999.

For 14 years the company has been well under the radar; few people in Fountain Hills even knew it existed until just recently.

Prevco makes leak- proof underwater housings for equipment used mostly for deep sea uses.

The company has continued to grow, and Head leases a 5,000-square-foot facility on Technology Drive. He is now seeking permission from the town to expand the business further with an office renovation and new building on Desert Vista (see separate story).

This is just the type of business the town has been touting in its economic development plan -- high tech, clean, with well-paying jobs.

It is a small business, with just nine employees, but it makes quite a splash with clients who do undersea applications and research.

Head told the Planning and Zoning Commission last week that his clients are global; one of his employees is based in London, England to serve European customers, in industries that range from defense to aerospace, oceanographic research and offshore oil and gas operations.

In fact, according to Head, Prevco was asked to provide housing for a camera that could be used to X-ray parts that failed in the BP Deep Water Horizon oil disaster in 2010.

“We often don’t even know what our customers do with our product,” Head said.

He does not even know for certain that the housing for the X-ray camera in the oil platform disaster was ever used.

They build an enclosure or container that can take sensitive electronic equipment or cameras to depths of 20,000 feet. The containers are made of a range of materials including stainless steel, aluminum, titanium, ceramic and plastic.

Head also explained how they are sometimes asked to make vessels with connectors that robots can use to connect or disconnect equipment.

Prevco has built the housings for sensitive equipment and batteries that sit at the bottom of the ocean to detect tsunamis.

The equipment sends a message to a surface buoy that blasts an alarm warning. This work was done for NOAA.

Some containers are used by the Navy for testing various underwater applications. The Navy has a test facility at Lake Pond Oreille in Idaho for conducting experiments that uses Prevco housings for a variety of tests.

One such item is a virtual periscope that works like a conventional periscope without the disadvantage of being visible above the surface.

“We get a lot of requests for housings for undersea cameras,” Head said.

One enclosure is to house a high speed video camera to the deck of a submarine to obtain super slow motion on missile launches. The Navy wants to see how debris is scattered and its potential for being hazardous to the ship.

Prevco is also asked to build ruggedized housings for applications in extreme environments. One such item is a camera enclosure used in Antarctica.

“We have a global market and it is growing,” Head told Planning and Zoning commissioners last week. “We are using local talent; it is amazing being in Fountain Hills and we want to stay here.

“There are a lot of possibilities.”