Please join us this skating season. We have made our ice and are preparing to facilitate your Fun and Fitness! Whether to celebrate a birthday, take a group or private lesson, or just drop in for an open session; take your skating and personal fitness to the next level at the Bill Collier Community Ice Arena.

The skating schedules are now available.
Please refer to our online calendar for changes, updates, closures and special events.

• General Schedule
• Winter Break Schedule

Ice Making

This Friday and Saturday night, the arena lights were burning the midnight oil. Since we are a seasonal ice arena, we build the sheet of ice about a week before opening our doors. This process is costly and an achievement of endurance for us and our amazing volunteers. It begins with a thorough cleaning of the cement slab that holds the ice. We prepare days in advance, washing, sweeping, clearing as much material off of the slab as we can. Before starting this Friday night, we take a final sweep of the slab, some bugs just like to fly in and get stuck on the frosty surface that has been created since turning on the cooling system a day before starting to build ice.

Once the slab was cleared, we took a dinner break to prepare for the long night ahead. Dinner was kindly provided by Mickey Collier on the first night. Once warm and full of good food, we started on the ice. The first layer of water poured onto the slab is cold. This first cold layer provides the proper bonding for the layers to come. After the first layer, all water that is poured onto the slab is hot. We continue using hot water the entire season.

Since the water we lay down is about 160 degrees Fahrenheit, the hose that dispenses the water needs to be kept from sitting on the ice for too long. So on any given coat of water, workers and volunteers need to hold the length of the hose and keep the hose moving in order to prevent it from melting through the thin layers of ice that are so important to maintain. In case you are wondering why we use such hot water, hot water has less oxygen which prevents having little bubbles in the ice. A strong bond is formed by the hot water melting the top layer of the existing ice and forming a solid bond. It’s kind of like saudering.

After about 30 – 45 minutes, the layer of water we poured onto the ice should be frozen and ready for another layer. The process continues, layer after layer throughout the night. The view has it’s costs, because the facility is exposed to weather, the ice making process mostly happens in the middle of the night. So for both days, our crews started making ice at 7pm and worked until about 4am.
Once enough ice has been made, we can begin using our Olympia machine to lay down the final layers of ice and maintain an average height of 1 3/4″ of ice throughout the season.

That’s Pretty Neat!

We know! We make ice for people of all ages to enjoy skating. Come skate with us!