Registered: Nov 2014
Location: Canada
Posts: 5

Hi, we have a new curling club at the arena. No one has experience on curling ice making and the playing conditions varies from extremely poor to average. Mainly because we fail to get a level ice.

We know we can't make miracles on an arena ice, plus since we're beginning we are not very well equiped. However we're looking to get quick fixes to improve the playability.

We are playing once a week on monday nights. We have three sheets all next to each others and centered, therefore the outer sheets are far from the boards. We doing 2 draws and only using the 2 sheets per draw (the outer ones).

Since mondays are dedicated to curling, we have from sunday night to prepare the ice for curling.

Here is what I would suggest the arena ice technician to do, and I would like your opinion on that:

Sunday:
Big flood with warm water
Monday morning:
Zamboni scrape and flood (regular zamboni pattern)
Zamboni dry scrape (whole ice with regular zamboni pattern)
Hack installation and prepare the rocks.
Monday evening:
Mop
Pebble
Rock passes
Draw #1
Mop
Pebble
Rock passes
Draw #2

We are equipped with a backpack pebbler with medium, fine and xfine pebbling head.

What would you suggest as a routine before the first draw (how many passes for base pebble, how many passes for play pebble, which pebble size, do we have to pebble with a pattern or only from the center???) and in between draws?

Also, looking forward into investing in the club, what should be our next purchase:
-Water treatment
-nippler
-powered cutter

Lots of questions ........ I know. But any help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

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Registered: Oct 2013
Location:
Posts: 559

Can you please explain the quality of ice you have now? Do you have issue with just the rocks traveling like an S down the ice? Will the rock only curl one direction? Does the rock curl one direction or the other more than 8 feet? Some more detail will be helpful in getting you the help that you need.

In general, here is the officially recommended USA method for arena ice prep, if you have the time.

For best results, the proper way to Zamboni prepare arena curling ice is

Normal Resurface/Flood

Followed by a dry cut going lengthwise down the sheets

Followed by a dry cut in a figure eight pattern around the ice. With this pattern, the blade height should be set so that it is barely touching the ice, and therefore only takes off any undesired peaks.

This three pass technique will probably lead to a 30 minute Zamboni prep.

While not really explained in great detail, the side to side Zamboni cut technique was not recommended.

Level ice appears to start with a good edger at the arena.



Related to the Zamboni, it is best to make sure that the drivers adjust the rate of water flood while they sow down the machine and turn, so as to prevent too much water from getting put down on these sections.


You may want to watch this video
http://www.willmarmn.gov/wrac/show-...on?show_id=1432

And lastly, make sure that the zamboni drivers dont start their turns until they have completely gone through the house, otherwise you will create weird runs in the house.

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Registered: Jan 2012
Location:
Posts: 136

Also what happens on Monday at the rink during the day after the Sunday night flood? Is there more skating/hockey or is the ice just empty waiting for you to start curling at night?

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Registered: Oct 2013
Location:
Posts: 559

quote:

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Originally posted by VAcurler
Also what happens on Monday at the rink during the day after the Sunday night flood? Is there more skating/hockey or is the ice just empty waiting for you to start curling at night?

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Registered: Nov 2014
Location: Canada
Posts: 5

Thanks for your replies. First, there is nothing at the arena between sunday night flood and monday night curling. We are a small town of 2000 people having the luxury of having an arena. So most activity happens in the evenings and the week-end.

We've experience some S patterns and some curl in one direction, it varies from week to week. But most of the time it curls more in one direction, more specifically towards the boards.

I have two hypothesis. The bubble like effect when the ice freezes (higher center than edges) or the zamboni cutter is bending towards one side (and the zamboni guy always uses the same pattern)

I' m not sure which one is the cause. We will have to eliminate some variables in the process...

For instance, i wanted to see how well the scraper works. So i've put good thick pebble than asked the zamboni guy to lightly scrape to see if we could emulate a power cutter or a nipper. The results were not as wished but interresting. On the first zamboni pass, i saw a mix of runs of pebbles being untouched and runs of scraped ice, but It was about 50/50 and well distributed (therefore going against the bent cutter theory). Seeing that i've asked the zamboni guy to scrape again to make sure to eliminate all pebbles and so i can pebble from scratch. So he made multiple passes always in the same direction (clockwise). Before that scrape and applying pebbles, i,ve thrown a few rocks and the ice seemed levelled, however without pebbles i don't quite know how a rock should react. While playing we had hugevswings towards the boards, thus going for the bent cutter theory.

So next monday, I'll ask my zamboni guy to do only a full dry scrape goung counter-clockwise. If it curls more towards center i will have a confirmation that the zmboni cutter is bent.

Also i think doing only one scrape might help as i'm thinking the more passes we do, the worst the ice gets.

If nothing improves, then i would consider the 8 pattern.

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Registered: Nov 2014
Location: Canada
Posts: 5

Oh! And btw thanks for the video. Very helpful!

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Registered: Oct 2013
Location:
Posts: 559

Those recommendations came from the guy that made the video, and those were his recommendations.

Not sure if your rink has a sand base or is concrete. Sand based will tend to be higher at the boards, so shots will slope to the center. Concrete will be higher in the center, and will slope towards the boards.

One thing that you need to remembers about the zamboni cut is this. You have overlap when you cut, and therefore, being totally flat is unrealistic. TO make that make better sense, think this way. Lets assume that the zamboni blade scrapes off 1/16" of an inch as it goes. the actual amount is not important, just that the part it scrapes will be lower than the ice around it as it has been scraped off. So next time, when the zamboni makes its adjacent pass, most of the blade will sit on the part of the ice that is 1/16" lower. But the overlap part will be higher than the rest, so therefore the blade will never produce a truly flat cut. This is why the figure 8 cut comes into play, as it helps put those differences not in line with the direction that rocks actually travel.

Moving onto your plan, there are many things that I don't like about it. Here are my comments mixed in with your sections.

Sunday:
Big flood with warm water
{Agreed, only goal for Sunday is to fill in holes into the ice to take out skate gouges.}

Monday morning:
Zamboni scrape and flood (regular zamboni pattern)
Zamboni dry scrape (whole ice with regular zamboni pattern)
Hack installation and prepare the rocks.
{I dont understand why you install the hack at this point. It only takes 10 minutes to set the hacks, so why not do it last. And I'll explain why later. I would say the only goal for the AM would be to get the rocks onto the ice so they get cold. You may need to put a sheet of plastic underneath so any melted water doesnt hurt the rocks.}

Monday evening:
Mop
Pebble
Rock passes
Draw #1
Mop
Pebble
Rock passes
Draw #2
{When you say mop, is this just pushing a dry dust mop along the ice? Or is this some sort of wet mop}


In the United States, here is what the normal goal is, and then accomodations are made based upon how much time that you have.

60 minutes before you curl, have the zamboni do the 3 pass cut, ending with the figure 8 cut. You do not want the last pass to be lengthwise, as it can easily cause runs in the ice. The other purpose of this is to remove any frost from the top of the ice, that a dry mop will not get off.

As soon as the zamboni leaves the ice, the next step is to set the hacks. This should only take about 10 minutes. The goal is to set the metal plate into hot water for about 10 seconds. Take the hack out, and sit it into the ice. Put a rock or 2 on top to weigh it down and help it freeze. Try not to get the rubber hack wet and hot when you do it, or at least minimize, as it will slow the freeze down. But a hack will freeze in within 10 minutes if you don't get the rubber too wet.

Hopefully while you are setting the hacks, you can get some volunteers to move the rocks onto their respective sheets.

Dry mop after the zamboni, and then put down your pebble. Typically 1 pass up and 1 pass back is what you are happy to get in arena curling here.

After the pebble, drag the rock boxes, and if time permits, one more dry mop to get the pebble debris off, but that is a luxury that rarely we have time for.

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Registered: Oct 2013
Location:
Posts: 559

A few things I forgot to comment on

Do you think that your club will remain an arena club forever, or do you think that there is a goal to move into a dedicated facility at some point?

I ask this question, because a wise man gave me some very good advise. If you hope that your club will transition from arena ice to dedicated ice, then don't make the arena experience too comfortable for people. Make them too comfortable, then they are less likely to be motivated to move to bigger and better things.

And that advise determines how much money you spend on your arena experience.

As for the water for pebble, if you have crappy untreated rink water making the rink ice, then great pebble water probably wont help all that much. If you are in that situation, a few low cost water options are to either get a brita filter, and just use it to filter your pebble water. Or, and I'm not sure if you have this option where you live, go to a Walmart, and you can buy gallons of distilled water for about $0.88 per gallon, and you can get by with about 3 gallons of water for a couple pebble passes.

I have heard that a nipper makes a big improvement in your ice, but we don't have on, so I cant comment on first hand knowledge.

For the powered cutter, I am assuming that you are referring to something like an Ice King. I'm sure that it would be helpful, but if you start with crappy zamboni cut ice, then an hour or 2 of ice king time probably wont make a huge improvement

We have found that one bad pass of a zamboni operator will ruin your decent ice. I have seen the ice go from 3 feet of curl in both directions to 15 feet of negative curl in one pass of the zamboni. For a curling rock, flat is measured in partial millimeters.

And the last piece of info that I will share for now is this. I know that for the last USA Arena National Championships, it took 2 professional curling ice makers who were national level people 4 or 5 days to get the ice to championship level quality, so dont think that you can work magic in 18 hours.

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Registered: Nov 2014
Location: Canada
Posts: 5

Being a very small town i'm not sure building a dedicated curling rink is doable.

Plus I've played for the first time on a dedicated curling rink and saw what was a true curling ice. I'm not looking for miracles but to be able to get a 3-4 ft curl in both directions just like in the video would be amazing.

When i say mop, it is dry mop. Will give a try to the figure 8 pass and distilled water if i can find it somewhere.

I'll give some feedback next tuesday.

Thanks again

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Registered: Oct 2013
Location:
Posts: 559

And one last thing that could be helpful to you is this. I really didn't understand how a zamboni really worked, so I needed to educate myself so I could talk intelligently with the zamboni driver. Here is what the guy in the video I linked told me. (And you may want to share the video with your zamboni operators)

Let's talk about the ice re-surfacer (zamboni) first.
There are three basic components to a zamboni.
1. The chassis, including the engine or batteries, and the drive train.
2. The snow tank and wash water and flood water tanks.
3. The conditioner, the component that is pulled over the ice surface.

During the re-surface process, the conditioner blade shaves a thin layer of ice. The blade is adjustable, and it should be set to gather about 3/4 of a tank of snow per hockey rink. The shavings and the snow from skating flows over the blade and is captured by the horizontal auger. This auger pattern travels the snow to the center of the conditioner where the vertical auger pulls the snow up the shaft to the blower fan where it blows the snow into the snow tank. As this blower operates, realize that it has air pressure relief by the way of a vent on the side of the tank. There will be a fine snow dust emitted from the vent. That is why you should run a mop over the ice before pebbling. If the snow tank is full, snow will pour out of the vent. Perhaps that is what occurred to produce excess snow on the rink. The next process happening at the conditioner, is the wash process. Cold water from ports on each side of the conditioner flood a small pool of water. It is held under the conditioner by a squeegee which is dragged. A flexible rubber suction hose centered over the pool vacuums the water and recycles it back into the wash tank. This function removes floating debris like lint and dirt. Finally, the hot flood water exits at the very back of the machine by way of the flood bar, ( this is visible to observers as the zamboni drives by) and the towel spreads the flood water layer out to be frozen.

So if you don't have time to do a fully flooded re-surface, because you can't wait for the water to freeze, you could have your driver cut the water flow, (let's say in half) but be sure you do the wash cycle.
You will be shaving the snow and cleaning the ice, and little water is left behind. The surface freezes in a couple minutes. You should still dry-shave after this process, and make it known that only the curling area needs to be shaved. This will save time. A lot drivers think that the whole rink needs to be shaved, and I don't know why they don't get it. You will however, suffer from more skate marks and divots. This is a trade-off for having little time. Very old machines don't have wash units. I hope that is not the case for you. I would never curl on a flooded only and not shaved ice surface, unless you have perfectly clean water I suppose. All contaminates rise to the top of the ice surface as it freezes, (the hydraulics of freezing push them up) and you will find slow, sluggish ice conditions as the "gunk" is broomed and moved all over the sheet.

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Registered: Nov 2014
Location: Canada
Posts: 5

Hey, here are some feedback. So two weeks ago, we flooded tge ice the eve of curling and only did a light scrape lenghtwise. The ice was still swinging towards the boards. We have played on the outer sheets.

This week, we have flooded the ice the eve but didn,t scrape. We mopped, pebbled and rock passed directly. We have played on one outside sheet and the center one. This was definitely the best ice we've had. No swings, levelled, good speed. People really enjoyed.

I thought we would loose some speed because we haven't scraped but not at all. We have applied lots of pebble to minimize friction and keep keen ice.

One thing however, the ice didn't curl very much and the top of the trailing foot and pants were covered of white residues. It curled 1 to 2 feet at most on draws.

So next steps would be to improve pebbling and curl for which i guess we need to use pure water and good water temp.

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Registered: Oct 2013
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Posts: 559

Do you store your rocks on ice, or off the ice on racks? It takes rocks a minimum of a few horus to get to ice temp, so if you can, put them on the ice Sunday night or Monday morning. If the rocks are warm when they go onto the ice, place a plastic tarp between them and the ice to keep water from freezing onto the rocks. Hot rocks equal slow rocks.

I would assume that the white substance on your knees is frost, most likley from not scraping. If you do not scrape, then mopping will not get rid of most of the frost. The frost that settled onto the ice between yoru Sunday night flood and Monday night curl would not just be ice dust sitting on top, but rather frost that has frozen to the top of the ice. I would suspect that the frost hurt the curl of the rocks.

Did the rocks have no curl in either direction, or would it go 1 foot to the right, but 3 feet to the left for example?

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Registered: Nov 2015
Location:
Posts: 1

Hello,

We are a small town in Ontario looking to convert our arena for curling one day a week. How has your ice making been going and would you be available to discuss it with me at some point?

Regards,

Brad

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Registered: Dec 2003
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Posts: 33

One of the better things we did in the early days was to build a 'chiller cabinet' to store the rocks in. It was set with a timer to turn the freezer on the day before curling, so when it comes time to take the rocks on the ice, they're already at ice temperature and playable. Made a big difference to playability. Yes very tough to get the curl playable in a short period of prep time - 19 years on we're still experimenting!

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nice post....

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Registered: Mar 2014
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quote:

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Originally posted by rolud55

One thing however, the ice didn't curl very much and the top of the trailing foot and pants were covered of white residues. It curled 1 to 2 feet at most on draws.

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Registered: Feb 2017
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Posts: 2

interesting on how people do arena ice differently, we do our curling club on arena ice mondays and tuesdays, takes us about 6 hours to get it ready, starting sunday and finishing up monday morning. would love to discuss our method, perhaps we could all learn from each other, fell free to call norm at 902-522-2102

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Registered: Feb 2017
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Posts: 2

our process.
Sunday
freeze in continuous looped ropes (1/2") around 4 curling sheets
put rocks out on the ice against the boards
With a pump and 2" hose, using water out of well, fill in the sheets with water, raising the curling sheets about 3/8 to 1/2 inches above the hockey surface. Water is fairly self leveling so we end up with level sheets. Allow to freeze over nite, ideally having ice plant running to allow water to freeze bottom up

Monday
removing ropes that acted as dam for the water on the curling sheets
using wide sweepers remove any ice chips and snow that comes off of ropes as you pull them up
light spray with garden hose over all sheets to fill in any spots created by freezing or due to shelly ice.
Get out the Ice King and do at least 6 passes over each sheet
Sweep again with wide brooms
3 pebbles
NIP the ice
put in hacks
put rock on the sheets
unroll carpets
curl with your buddies who made the ice, having a little competition throwing 3 rocks each on each sheet to test.
Club curling monday nite
Fun curling drop in Tuesday

Wednesday
get out the zamboni to remove raised curling sheets, this is a dry scrap, no water, removing ice from raised curling sheets, takes about 4 or 5 passes to get it level for hockey again

Flood ice and now ready for hockey wednesday night.

Takes us about 2 hours sunday and 3-4 on monday morning, but that includes comprehensive clean of arena. Usually our ice is excellent, humidity and temperature in the arena impacts our ice performance, Important to have your Ice King cutting evenly, not more on one side than the other (this is our current issue, getting shims right on the blade)

Hope this helps someone, feel free to call norm at 902-522-2102 in Nova Scotia. we are thinking of doing a video or taking pictures but we are older and technologically challenged

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Registered: Oct 2013
Location:
Posts: 559

norm22602, what you have is very atypical for arena curling in the US. In the US market, we dont have 2 days to get ice ready, we have 15-30 minutes. Most US arena clubs rent ice for $200-ish per hour, and you are paying for zamboni time, setup time, tear down time and play time.

A typical US arena curling night. You have rented the ice from 8pm to 10pm to play. Hockey is on the ice before you until 8, sometimes they run late and it is 8:10. Then the zambonie gets on the ice. Zambonie takes 10-20 minutes. Then you get hacks set, rocks on ice, scoreboards, adn you hope that you are left with 1:40 to play. regardless of score and situation, at 9:55 you stop playing, and have to get hacks, rocks, etc off the ice because hockey comes back at 10:00, and if you are not done, you are paying for overtime.

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commands

Sled dogs are used for a variety of activities, such as racing, touring, weight pulling, and skijoring. To train and control a sled dog team effectively and efficiently, it is important to understand the basic sled dog commands and their meanings.
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You will be left alone in a sizable toy factory in the brand-new horror game poppy playtime while being followed by a scary beast. Are you ready to go on this journey? Have fun and start today!

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Another concern is the potential for media to perpetuate stereotypes rankdle and influence public opinion. Media has the power to shape narratives and control the information we receive, which can result in biased perspectives and limited representation.

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@geometry dash unblocked This activity I really like so always support it

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@mapquest driving directions Similar to the base pebble, apply the play pebble in a circular pattern, starting from the center and moving outward. Overlapping circles ensure uniform coverage.

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I highly appreciate your valuable posts, and I’ll definitely revisit them Terraria

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