How Ice is Made Even in the Summer Heat

Have you ever wondered how ice rink ice is made?

How about how thick the ice actually is?

And how all those lines are added?

Don’t worry that is why I am here to answer all these questions. An ice rinks ice is called a sheet and is very similarly constructed to a “sheet cake,” as it layered from the ground up.  So let me start the discussion by looking at the ground and working our way up.

Some ice rinks have a cement floor which house cooling pipes that help to keep the layers of ice cold even in this brutally hot summer we have had in New England. Other ice rinks, like the International Skating Center of Connecticut have a sand floor to which the ice is then layered on top of. Sand floors are usually the better option to be working with incase one or any of your cooling pipes have an issue. As for the cement floors, major construction is necessary when a problem arises with a cooling pipe and could cost tens of thousands of dollars to fix and replace the cement floor. In fact this had to be done in New Jersey, when the Prudential Center in Newark was built. After final construction it was found that the cooling pipes were not functioning properly and the whole cement floor was subsequently removed, pipes fixed and the cement floor replaced.

Now that we have the floor situated its time to add some ice to this equation. Well not very much, a typical ice crew will lay down 1/30 of an inch of ice and let that freeze, next a second layer is added. These layers are the first of what in total will add up to between 12,000 and 15,000 gallons of water used to fill an ice rink per HowStuffWorks.com.

Now the fun begins! Painting now can start first with the layer of white on top of the now 1/16 of an inch thick sheet of ice. Once the white layer of paint is dried and there are no places where the sand can be seen the ice crew then will add a second 1/16 of an inch of ice over the white paint. Once completely frozen, which does not take long due to the cooling pipes still just below, the ice crew then can paint all the lines, circles and dots that are found on our typical ice hockey rink.

The final stage of the ice making process consists of adding the remaining roughly 10,000 gallons of water to the ice rink. This is done in 500-600 gallon increments and can take 15-20 hours of continuous work until the ice is built up enough for figure skaters, hockey games or speed skating. This process is done with the Zamboni or ice machine, which both adds and removes ice with a simple flip of a switch. At the end of the process an average ice rink will be 3/4 of an inch thick. From melting a sheet of ice to replacing it to its original 3/4  of an inch think, the full process can take as much as one week to complete, depending on the number of hours put in daily.

The cooling pipes are constantly working to keep the ice roughly twenty-eight degrees at the International Skating Center of Connecticut, due to our large figure skating population. In addition, we allow the building to remain around 45 degrees throughout the year. This is an increasing challenge with the recent heat wave, which is why our building has dehumidifiers. Dehumidifiers must work constantly as well to make the indoor humidity level around thirty percent. The last time this process was done at the International Skating Center of Connecticut was during the summer of 2012 for the Olympic rink and the summer of 2011 for the NHL rink.

Sources: http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/ice-rink6.htm

                Chuck Fultcher – I.S.C.C. Rink Manager