Bob Quigley is a recognized facility management professional, with over 40 years of progressive experience specifically in the management of multipurpose athletic facilities. This includes 18 years as General Manager of a very busy 125,000sq ft. facility with upwards of 1,000,000 entrances per year. Bob graduated from university with a Degree in Sport Science and Administration and is considered among his colleagues, a specialist in revenue generation and facility cost recovery. He has presented at numerous conferences, including the Athletic Business Conference and Tradeshow in Orlando and San Antonio, many regional conferences and even the Bingo World Conference and Tradeshow in Las Vegas. COVERMASTER® has asked Bob to provide our readers with some valuable tools and personal examples of unique situations relating to his management experience and consulting on multipurpose facilities.

SIGNIFICANT EFFECT OF POWER OUTAGES ON MULTI-PURPOSE FACILITIES

My name is Bob Quigley and I appreciate you taking the time to read my sixth blog here at COVERMASTER® Tips from the Pros. My topics center around the operation of multi-purpose facilities. In this, my sixth installment, I would like to discuss a topic that unfortunately will become more common as global warming becomes more prevalent and that is power outages.

Power outages have a significant effect on multi-purpose facilities. These effects can lead to electrical damage, pools flooding and loss of refrigeration capacity resulting in loss of arena ice. It is the loss of arena ice that I would like to discuss in this installment.

Other than a catastrophic situation, the loss of arena ice can be one of the most expensive operational situations encountered by a facility manager. Extended power outages, resulting from extreme weather events like a hurricane, a snowstorm, a flood, or a combination of these weather events, can cause the loss of the arena’s ice. A multi-purpose facility is almost totally dependent on electrical power. It is rare to find a facility that has a generator that can put out enough electricity to sustain an operating facility and refrigeration plant.

When there is a power outage at the facility, most often the facility closes as there is rarely enough power to sustain even emergency lighting beyond their battery packs. Most systems such as lighting, HVAC, pool circulation, and yes, arena ice refrigeration, are shutdown. Lighting and HVAC can simply be turned back on, pools reheated, all at low cost. However, an arena full of melting ice is nothing short of a big 85ft x 200ft x2in thick expensive problem. Solution… keep it from melting, but there is no power to drive the compressors and the ice immediately begins to melt.

Melting arena ice is very expensive to replace. Arena ice has to be replaced when the bond between the ice and the concrete floor lifts and the ice separates forming air pockets. This can occur within hours. The ice is then traditionally referred to as shale. The shale is then removed mechanically by a machine, often a small front-end loader. So, a sheet of ice can cost around $15,000 to put in, plus the removal cost $2,000, plus $15,000 for the new sheet of ice. You could be looking at a total replacement cost of $32,000, plus lost revenue over a two-to-three-week period at minimum.

So, what would happen if there was a procedure that could prevent the arena ice from melting, long enough for power to be restored before the bond was broken? A facility I used to manage could do just that for up to 82 hours or 3.5 days, which was often long enough to maintain the ice bond until power was restored.

Placing a cover over the ice may protect it during short power outages. During Hurricane Fiona the Zatzman Sportsplex ice cover protected their ice for 82 hours.

Here is the procedure:

1.  About 12 hours before the weather event, begin to take your freezing medium (usually brine) temperature in your arena refrigeration system down to as low as it can go without freezing… usually 2-3 degrees above freezing. If you do not have experienced staff to do this, use your refrigeration service company.

2.  At the same time, lay your TERRACOVER ICE® Conversion Cover (that you use for events) over the ice surface. The TERRACOVER ICE® Ice Arena Cover has a R-value of 4.1. It can significantly extend the bonding time of the ice and could very well save your ice and thousands of dollars. It is important to note that refrigeration systems differ in efficiency and may produce different results.

In conclusion, there is a way to prolong the ice from losing its bond with the concrete floor and thus preventing the complete loss of the sheet. Many of you may already have the TERRACOVER ICE® as a temporary event flooring and may not know the benefits it also brings to preventing the loss of your arena ice. This can be an additional reason to choose the TERRACOVER ICE® product when purchasing an ice conversion cover.

Posted January 12, 2023