Discussions

Have any of the outdoor rinks and/or city of brandon skating under lights or whatever it's called by river started the flooding process or any known opening dates for any?

It all depends on the weather, and as if right now It’s still to early to start flooding the ice. Forecast looks like the nice weather is here to stay, at least for a bit yet so I wouldn’t imagine there will be any outdoor rinks open for quite some time yet.

a couple rinks have tried to start, but the mild weather is not helping. Until the weather stays a constant cold, rinks won't be opening anytime soon.

Seems like every year there is this discussion about rinks or the skating oval.  
The common sense part is really something that can be debated. For any of us who live outside the city we likely all know that the sloughs and dugouts are frozen over, and if you were late cleaning feed lots, as we were, you know that there is a lot of frost in the ground, so our common sense says that you should have been able to have ice.  
I don’t know exactly how they flood to make an outdoor ice surface, and assume that on different surfaces things might be done differently, I do know that water costs money and you don’t want to be wasting it.  
Making an ice surface out here in the country, in the back yard, likely is easier than in the city, if I lay a piece of silage plastic out on the ground, white side up of course, and partially flood it, it doesn’t take long to get an ice surface.  
Back to the temperature thing, ice is sort of like a swimming pool, if you have on +30 degree day and yet your mean temperature is not warm the pool stays cool, same as with making ice, especially on a white surface, you have to look at the 24 hour average temperature.

But I used to be part of a team making curling ice. Curling ice is made up by a series of thin floods to create the smooth level sheet. Our rink is a sand base so it took over 30 floods from start to finish. It is easier to do on cement. We had temperature cables in our ice and it was always amazing how much the ice temperature rose with even a thin flood and it does take a while to freeze a flood even with an ice plant. For two years our ice plant was down so we turned off the heat, opened all the doors and used fans to suck cold air from outside and we had a devil of a job to get each flood to freeze properly and was even worse when we painted the ice. During that time we had a couple of bonspiels and we were struggling to keep the ice temperature low enough without a working plant even though it was freezing outside. Ice gets very soft surprisingly quickly. I can’t imagine it being any easier outside. Anyone who helps at a community rink deserves a medal . And no one should ever be afraid to ask a question.

Outdoor rink is definitely harder than it looks. For the smaller backyard size rink if you get a liner it is way easier. I don’t think any of the big outdoor rinks would have one. Cost would be crazy. In my experience it is pretty tough to have a rink done before mid December. Thumbs up to the volunteer rink builders!

temperatures are in the single minus digits for high and lows, water doesn't freeze quickly.  
 
And in the city when you also pay for water, your going to make sure it's going to freeze and not melt away so your not wasting it. Many community centres can't afford to waste water. If your in a place that uses well water, cost isn't an issue.  
 
The weather in the last few years for Nov and Dec have been pretty mild. And this year is the same trend.

There are things that I have learned by experimenting, that’s just another way of saying i didn’t get it right the first time.  
It seems if you clean all the snow of a surface and put a plastic sheet down it was harder to make a rink, pretty sure it had to do with the heat actually coming up if air temperature rose. Laying the sheet of plastic on a undisturbed snow surface did help. Second problem was trying to put too much water on at one time, actually resulted in frost boils.  
Money is always an issue when doing anything, and it leaves anyone that makes natural ice only one choice and that is time.

Any new updates to any rinks/city outdoor skating park(oval)?  
 
Everyone jumped down my throat last time I asked this but Winnipeg's forks just opened theirs so I'd say it's a justified question now!

Great thanks for info! Is there still a rink by Linden lanes school? I remember one from a few years ago but cant remember that community centers name.