BROOKINGS – Larson Ice Center has been closed for months due to construction, but the facility will host a grand reopening with a ribbon-cutting at 12:30 p.m. Friday and an open skate to follow from 1-3 p.m.

Everyone is welcome; there’s no admission fee. Snow cones will be served to all. The first 100 attendees will receive a free towel, said Jacob Meshke, assistant to the city manager.

Although there’s been a lot of work done to the facility, not all of it will be apparent at first sight, said Matt Bartley, Street Department superintendent and project manager.

“The Red Rink looks like it always had in the past,” he said.

It’s what lies under the ice that makes all the difference.

“The ice and the quality of what’s been completed underneath it is exactly what the facility needed to maintain proper ice and playing surfaces,” Bartley said.

“And significant operational efficiencies with this new system, as well,” Meshke added.

Background

City officials knew repairs were necessary at Larson Ice Center. 

“The ice plant was hitting its useful age life, essentially,” Bartley said. 

“Just kind of over time, the system was wearing out, but the piping underneath is really what caused the problems with the floors and ultimately caused the system to run harder for years than it really had to,” Bartley said.

In early April, the Brookings City Council awarded the project to McKinstry Firm from Roseville, Minnesota, for almost $3.7 million, in a split vote of 5-2. One of the reasons McKinstry was chosen was its capacity to meet the “tight time frame schedule” so the facility was back up and running for the fall hockey season. 

Problems adding up

Problems both natural and mechanical were causing complications with the rinks that added time and cost to maintenance, Bartley said.

Over the years, the ground water table has “risen significantly in that area,” Bartley said, which means the soil is more saturated with moisture.

When the facility was built, soil samples found water at 16 feet.

“Now you could dig down two feet and there’s water,” Bartley said, adding that means the galvanized pipe “was sitting in water.”

That moisture wasn’t good on another level, too.

“There’s a subfloor heating system that’s below the cooling system for the ice to prevent frost. That system had sprung many leaks,” Bartley said, resulting in additional costs in materials and labor. 

The cooling system was an R22 refrigerant system, “which is actually obsolete. … They are not manufacturing R22 anymore,” Bartley said, adding the maintenance staff needed to put in more work monitoring the system to keep it running properly.

The floor was cracking and heaving because the underground system wasn’t operating as it should.

“You want a couple of inches of ice (in the rink). We had areas that were an inch of ice or less. So at that point, you run into not being able to drive the Zamboni on it to maintain it,” Bartley said.

He added the crews were having to shave ice in some spots and add it in others to keep it evened out and safer for skaters. 

“To the credit of our staff, they’re able to do that, but it took a little more work to make that happen,” Bartley said, adding Bill DeBlonk is in charge of the maintenance at Larson Ice Center. “Bill does a great job over there.”

Repairs help

The repairs that have been made will help out a lot.

“We’ve mitigated a lot of that moisture issue. We added drain tile throughout underneath both rinks, new sump pump pits that will take that water, to extrude that water and try to dry out that subgrade underneath,” Bartley said. “The duct draining system that we installed will take the moisture out of the soils that does come up underneath it and mitigate it before it has a chance to just sit there.”

The galvanized piping was replaced with plastic piping “that won’t be subject to corrosion and water infiltration like it was,” he added.

Future costs were taken into consideration.

“It was gonna start to cost an astronomical amount of money to find the R22 cooling liquid … so we switched over to an ammonia-based system and it will actually be more efficient and better on utility bills and energy usage,” Bartley said.

“It actually cools the floor down, creates the ice quicker than the old system does.”

A new chiller was added outside to help make “summer ice,” when the temperature tops 50 degrees, Bartley said. 

“That chiller will run the glycol through that system and send it back as a gas that is chilled down, converts it back into the piping system, so that adds another layer of efficiency,” he said.

It was a tight timeline, but they made it. 

The Red Rink was finished first, and people have been skating on it for about three weeks or so. 

“I have had a couple of individuals say that it feels like it’s good quality ice being made out there. The thickness is right. Ice can either be soft or firm and now it’s dialed right in,” Bartley said.

He’s also had some out-of-town visitors, from Watertown and other places, come get a look at the new set-up.

Construction went well

For a construction project that has taken months, there were few glitches, Bartley said.

When the plant itself arrived, it was four inches taller than originally planned, “so they just had to remove a little more block wall,” Bartley said.

When an electric panel was delayed, they installed a temporary outside chiller for a while, but “otherwise, the system is running the way it should,” Bartley said.

The new system will result in a lot less work for the maintenance crew to keep it up and running, he said.

“By doing this plant conversion and subfloor (and) floor redo, this is gonna add a couple decades of useful life to this facility,” Bartley said.

There’s not much else to do but some painting and clean-up. Crews have gone over the system – along with the manuals, sensors, detectors and other equipment now in place – with the company that installed the plant itself so they’ll know what to look for and how best to maintain it. The Brookings Fire Department has even been out and gone through the safety protocols, “so that if there was ever a hazard kind of a situation, they would be well aware of what they need to do,” Bartley said.

Meshke said how well the project has gone is a credit to Bartley.

“I think that’s a testament to how well Matt has managed this project in step with the contractor, keeping them on point, everything is on budget, everything was on time. It was just a very well-managed project,” Meshke said.

Contact Jodelle Greiner at jgreiner@brookingsregister.com.