There’s probably a lot of old hockey players out there reading this blog who know how an indoor ice arena works. I suppose if you grow up on the ice you probably get to know a bit about what actually makes the ice. I grew up in Iowa, so the whole indoor ice scene was new to me when I moved to Minnesota in 1996.
Our Community Center has two indoor ice rinks. The Community Center was opened to the public in 1982. Rink #1 is of the same vintage. So is Rink #1’s freezing system. The freezing system consists of a large web of stainless steel pipes that are buried in the concrete floor of the ice rink. The pipes are filled with Freon gas. The Freon gas cools the concrete which freezes the water that is sprayed on the concrete. This is how ice is made.
Our Community Center staff has been observing an increase in the consumption of Freon, which means that is might be leaking. Leaking Freon into the atmosphere is not good. Earlier this month the City employed a professional leak detecting consultant to analyze our system. We got the consultant’s report last week. The piping system in Rink #1 is leaking – terribly. The photo below shows a picture of what an actual piece of this stainless steel pipe looks like. This piece was removed from the Rink #1 floor:
The corrosion of the pipe is significant, as is the pitting that has created the holes. This is not good.
We cannot operate an ice arena that loses 15-20 pounds of Freon gas everyday. It’s not cost-effective and almost certainly unacceptable to the EPA. Now that we have diagnosed the problem, we must take action to fix it.
At our May 18th City Council meeting, City staff sought and received authorization from the City Council to design a project to install a new freezing system into Rink #1. We want to start this project immediately so that we are able to complete the project as early in the fall of 2004 as possible.
We are going to displace summer ice arena users because of this project. That is regrettable, but there’s no other way to do this project except to demolish and remove the entire concrete floor and install a new freezing system.
Cost at this point is not known with a high degree of certainty, but it is likely to be in the neighborhood of $400,000 – $500,000.
Making ice is not cheap.
