Registered: Sep 2008
Location:
Posts: 7

On the average, how many times per season are your clubs resufacing the ice? Either after a burn or shaving or whatever.
Just curious.

Thanks

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Registered: Mar 2006
Location:
Posts: 38

Depends...are you an Ice Technician or a Board Member?

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Registered: Oct 2009
Location: Vancouver | BC/C.-B. | Canada
Posts: 12

I guess it depends on how long you are using the ice per season~

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Registered: Sep 2008
Location:
Posts: 7

I am a volunteer ice guy at a fairly busy rural club .We have curling every day at some point and I try to scrape every 4 draws or so. Our ice starts to get high on the sides because of our pebbling. I have talked to some of the best ice makers in the world and they figure we are just cutting groves in the 4 fts and the ice starts to M or W. I was wondering if we should resurface when this starts to happen or can we scrape the high sides back to level. It seems to happen every year at about the 4 or 5 weeks mark, is this normal for other club. Sorry no Board members, just folks that want to curl on OK ice.

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Registered: Mar 2008
Location:
Posts: 65

Sounds pretty normal to me, we had much the same problem when I first started. If the M or W is not too bad, it can be improved with flooding, but if it's not that bad it can be cured with pebble/cutting, so why flood. The worse it is, the less likely that a single flood will cure it because of the expansion of water when it freezes -- the deeper the troughs, the more expansion, so the lows become highs and the highs lows.

This is a tricky problem and has to be addressed. First learn to pebble evenly, then use safer cutting patterns. You can find some useful info on pebbling and cutting here:

www.scottishcurlingicegroup.org

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Registered: Mar 2006
Location:
Posts: 38

Hi there,
Its funny you mentioned the 4 to 5 week mark.
A few years ago (when I had less experience under my belt) I had my "maintenance day" scheduled every 5-6 weeks. It was right around the 4-5week mark that my ice started getting a bit wonky. This was completely due to improper cutting techniques. There were many times when I was just praying for the next maintenance day to get here already. Over time, and talking to a lot of Ice Technicians, I learned how to properly scrape. Instead of resurfacing my ice 6 or 7 times a season, I now could maintain a level sheet of ice for the entire season...unfortunately the amount of dirt tracked onto my ice with rentals and school leagues it becomes to dirty to be able to go the whole season. I now have 3 "maintenance days" per season.
With volunteers handle the scraping and pebbling it definitely can be difficult to maintain level, especially with more than one Quarterback in the Huddle per say.
When the ice starts getting "wonky" it is definitely easiest to start over from scratch. As John stated, if the ice is extremely wonky it will not come out level after one flood or resurfacing.
So depending on all of your conditions it might be best to schedule them closer together to produce a more consistant playing surface. But if you have the time to work on your ice when it starts to get unlevel it is definitely more rewarding to figure out the highs and lows and use your pebbling can and scraper blade to fix it.
Best of Luck!

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Registered: Nov 2005
Location:
Posts: 231

I flood about once every 5 weeks which works out to 5 times per year. I like to flood before the ice starts to get funky so the flood turns out pretty good. We don't own a burner so the flood helps clean things up. Don't tell any board members but we flood overnight so there is no down time for the ice.

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Registered: Sep 2008
Location:
Posts: 7

Thanks for the info! I just received the CIE manual so this should help us out. Would 2 floods of 120 gallons bring a slight trough back to level or should I put down more ? How should the pebble look,when it is coming out of the head? From what I see it seems to look even and uniform!

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Registered: Jan 2004
Location: Milton, Ontario
Posts: 1102

I have always used 6 weeks as a good benchmark for resurfacing your ice. I always do a controlled melt to resurface.

I prefer the melt as it leaves the surface cleaner, and it will keep your ice thickness fairly consistant through the course of the season. Downside is it takes a lot more work than a flood! I believe it gives the best end results though if you have time to do a melt.

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