Public Commons

• Jim Hart responds to Jutta Mason

Part of Thread: 2012 rink openings

On 23/11/2012 9:45 AM, Jim Hart wrote:
Ms. Mason:

Thank you for your email of Nov. 21.

Harbourfront has made ice and people are skating. They are running one location, we are running a city program with a mix of older and newer physical plants. Harbourfront's compressors and chillers are quite new.

In years past, as you know, rink facilities were started in mid November. We had ammonia plants at one time too. They've all but one been replaced with brine or other less efficient cooling solutions - but safer and less toxic. Depending on the weather, we had unsuccessful skate days in those years too with early start up results not much better than our attempts last year when the weather was warm.

We run our shifts at night when its colder, as well as during the day. We've been doing that for several years because it makes sense especially during start up.

I have directed staff to focus their attention on getting our rinks open as the cooler nights approach. A big cold front from the north is supposed to come in tonight and that may be just enough for us to get enough ice on our pads for the weekend so we can concentrate on the next wave for next weekend.

Subject to weather conditions, we all look forward to all of our rinks opening over the course of the next 9 days

Thank you for your continued interest and advice.

Jim Hart.