26 Jun Building the Ice from Scratch with REALice
Here at REALice, we always get excited when our customers are excited about their ice.
That happened last week, when Beth from Keene Ice in Keene, NH sent in the picture you see above of their ice operations team building their ice using the R1X REALice handheld device. The REALice handheld uses the same tornado motion that our wall unit does to treat the water for the ice resurfacer, removing the micro air bubbles as it spins the water. The above picture shows what it looks like when the misting adaptor is used. Because of the mist — and because the REALice-treated water is so clear, it may not seem like a lot of water is being put down, but a drill test will show you otherwise!
Keene Ice is a 2-and-a-half-year old single pad which is a public/private venture. The municipality supplied the structure, but a non-profit association raised the money to put in the arena. At the end of April, 2018 — for the first time in Keene Ice’s short history, the ice was taken out and used for non-ice activities. As they built their ice up from scratch in June, they videoed the progress, and when the ice was ready, they shared a video of their ice build on their social media channels. In doing that, they also thanked REALice for the part we played in helping them build “incredibly clear ice”!
Here’s their Tweet — which we couldn’t help but retweet…
Ice is in! Incredibly clear ice. Rink Services Group and Real Ice got it done for us. Visit us soon and check out a very cool video of our process here:https://t.co/3ATJ5WfufP @REALiceUSA @Keene_Sentinel @GreaterKeeneNH @KeeneStateOwls @KSCClubHockey @KeeneHighHockey
— Keene ICE (@KeeneICE) June 22, 2018
REALice is thrilled with the support we’ve had at Keene since Preferred Mechanical Services installed our cold water resurfacing technology at Keene Ice in December, 2015. Because the decision was made to go with REALice’s cold water resurfacing technology from the very start, and with the available waste heat from the eco-friendly Ice3 refrigeration plant, no expense was incurred to procure a backup fossil fuel water heater for the ice — another great savings for the arena.
John Meade, the Managing Director of Preferred Mechanical, says using cold water treated with the REALice system makes a big difference to the load on the ice plant.
“For those that do not know, the ice resurfacer is spreading 120-140°F hot water onto the ice each time it resurfaces the ice. This causes an instant 30-ton load for a 10-minute duration — a load that can be repeated a dozen times a day or more. The use of REALice’s cold water treatment system eliminates such,” Meade says.
Keene is a very energy-efficient building and was purpose-built to satisfy that requirement to keep future costs, and greenhouse gas emissions, down. REALice is one of many energy-efficient measures that were implemented for the build. Today the indoor ice rink costs 71 kbtu/sq ft/year to operate year round (Energy Star – 2017), which is about 50 kbtu/sq fr/year less than any other arena in the Energy Star database.
If you would like to make your building more energy efficient, check out our savings calculator or send an email to suppport@realice.us and we’ll be happy to give you an idea of pricing, energy savings and available incentives from your utilities.
Be bold, go cold with REALice.