21 Oct Why Man Beat Out Machine at Idaho IceWorld to Mitigate Cupping
October 23, 2019 – Can REALice make positive improvements to the way you operate your arena?
The operations team at Idaho IceWorld thinks so. In fact, they say it’s taken them to a whole new level.
“Our Ice Game Has Stepped Up 100%!”
Municipally-owned and operated by Boise Parks & Recreation, the Idaho IceWorld in Boise, ID installed REALice this past summer on their year-round twin pad. Making the switch to REALice’s cold water resurfacing system prompted the ice makers to take a good hard look at how their operations were running. One of the biggest procedural changes was swapping the ice resurfacing machine for the REALice handheld for on-ice maintenance.
Commenting on the changes, Daniel Falconer, the Facilities Crew Chief at Idaho IceWorld, says, “Our ice game has stepped up 100%!”
Falconer explains they started using the REALice handheld nozzle instead of their ice resurfacing machine to see if it was better at mitigating cupping — the bowl effect that often happens at an ice arena over time where the ice is high along the boards, and low down the middle. It was! According to Falconer, they’re able to build more ice, faster, with the REALice handheld than they could with their ice resurfacing machine.
“Instead of getting the Zamboni out there and filling it,” Falconer explains, “we started using the hose with the REALice handheld and the blue adaptor that comes with it.”
The REALice system includes a wall unit used for filling the floodwater tank as well as a handheld with two different adaptors for different spray patterns for building the ice from scratch and maintenance. The blue adaptor provides a wide mist; the black adaptor provides more condensed misting.
Building More Ice, Faster!
“What we found is building by hand lets us focus on trouble spots,” Falconer says. “And by flooding the rink with the handheld, by the time we get to the other end, we only have to wait a minute or two, and we can get back on the ice and start again.”
Falconer says they can build up ice much faster than they could using their ice resurfacing machine.
“In 2 hours, we can get six coats of water on the rink, or a quarter of an inch. With the resurfacer, we could only get 2 or 3 passes down — with an ice build that is nothing near using the handheld.”
Running at Higher Temps, Too!
Falconer says their ice is running warmer now, too – with brine settings up 3.5°F warmer than what they used to have it set at.
“When we put the Rink Savings Estimate together for Idaho IceWorld, we estimated they would save over 130,000 kWh of electricity, and over 6,000 Therms of Natural Gas,” says Tom Smolarek, Managing Director of Cypress, Ltd., the US-importer of REALice. “They will also receive incentives through their local utility, Idaho Power, which brings the return of investment (ROI) at this particular facility to under half a year.”
Saying Goodbye to Hot Water
Idaho IceWorld is one of over 100 North American ice arenas that have already let-go of the centuries-old practice of using extremely hot floodwater and have switched to REALice. Click on realice.us/estimate/ and we’ll show you what your savings will be, and give you a conservative estimate of incentives available in your State that will help to reduce your ROI.
About Cypress, Ltd.
Established in 1990, Cypress Ltd. delivers efficiency, demand response, technical and business technology assessments and 24/7 customer support services.
We support:
- Investor and municipal owned utilities, associations, and special utility districts
- The commercial, industrial, institutional/government, education customer markets
- Energy value chain participants such as technology manufacturers, distributors, contractors and the engineering design community
For more information, please contact:
Tom Smolarek, President
Cypress Ltd.
7 Rue Delacroix
Coto de Caza, CA 92679
Email: support@realice.us
Toll free: (844) 464-8408