07 Jun “Only Cold Water to Flood!?? It Made Me Very Nervous…”
John O’Neill, Facilities Director, Edge Sports Center in Bedford, MA
Say the words “cold water flood” and you don’t want to hear any more.
We hear you. We know you know how bad cold water floods are for your ice. All that trapped air. All that resulting snow from fragile ice. What a headache! You’ve been there, done that, and you don’t want that bad ice ever again.
With REALice, it’s about how the water is treated, not about temperature. It doesn’t use temperature but pressure-treats the water resulting in dense, clear durable ice.
The resulting low pressure zone, created inside the REALice valve, pulls the air from the water and gathers it into one long string of air. That air is lighter than water and easily escapes from it as soon as it hits the floodwater tank. The resulting water is different from heated water, where individual air bubbles become apparent, one at a time, as the water gets warmer. Instead of individual pinpricks of air, REALice gathers them together. That’s why the resulting floodwater is denser, has better heat-transfer properties, and is runnier (lower viscosity) compared to heated water.
Very Nervous
When John O’Neill started working at the Edge Sports Center in Bedford, MA last summer, one of the first things he learned is they don’t use hot water in the floodwater tank anymore. The facilities director says that made him “very nervous”.
But what he discovered is REALice works. And it’s eliminated ice challenges that hot water floods would create. Like paint migration. He doesn’t get that with the treated cold water floods when someone takes off too much ice like would often happen with hot water floods. And summer ice that’s slow to set up? Not an issue anymore with REALice. The Edge has consistently better ice, all year round.
Flat-Out “NO”!
John admits that if he’d been asked to consider using the treated cold floodwater system before he’d ever used it, he would have said “a flat-out ‘NO’!”. But not anymore. With REALice, he’s providing better ice for his user groups, at a much lower cost than hot water floods. Plus, he’s got water that sets up quicker for better summer ice, and no paint migration issues anymore.
Watch John in this YouTube video here.