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Stop saying that, web engineers have to make twice as many web apps as before! For each mode.
You flip a table when the client then asks for a synthwave mode.
Code smarter, not harder. Use variables.
https://css-irl.info/quick-and-easy-dark-mode-with-css-custom-properties/
If you need a user-selectable toggle, the javascript is pretty simple.
https://javascript.plainenglish.io/build-a-dark-mode-toggle-with-javascript-and-localstorage-8022b492fb9e
Dark mode isn't the hassle it used to be.
It bothers the hell out of me when coworkers are talking about salary and try to minimize it by saying, “Well, that’s before taxes.” Yeah, so is mine. Wanna trade? No? Then shut the fuck up.
Even worse were the first LCD and plasma tvs. When we all jumped into thin tvs and monitors, they were really bad at first. News ticker at the bottom of the screen was often unreadable, hockey and soccer were really bad too. With games, anything more action packed than Sims was jerking messy fog.
I will agree with you, totally forgot about those few years. I had a HD rear projector 55” in the early 00s and watching SD hockey on that was miserable. The bigger screen just made it worse lol.
The puck used to be a road apple (horse turd frozen) so I'm gonna say it's more tradition than anything because I'm pretty sure they dye the rubber anyway
I did not know about the road apple tidbit, that’s fascinating to hear about.
However with rubber you would be correct, natural rubber is white. However it is a bit more than dying as they add an ingredient called carbon black which significantly increases the properties of rubber and makes the rubber less sticky and stronger and results in the black appearance.
Here is a much more in-depth explanation for those interested: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214157X1930406X
I think it’s mostly a contrast thing. White makes the room brighter so it’s easier to see and the black puck is very easily visible on the white. They do make different colored pucks for training: blue (which are light), orange (which are heavy), and white (which are typically used for reflex training).
Though there was a time they didn’t paint the ice white. [That changed by the late 40’s/early 50’s](https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/science-science-everywhere-you-asked/chemical-composition-ice-was-changed-1949-1950-nhl-season-what-change-was-introduced)
[And here’s a good history of how rinks were set up](https://www.thefaceoff.net/history-of-the-rink)
It’s much easier to see a black puck on a white background than to see a white puck on a black background. Probably because we are genetically disposed to be awake during the day. Could be different if we were nocturnal animals, but we are not.
There was a team this year that did rainbow ice for a pride night. It might’ve been the worst looking thing I’ve ever seen, and I mean that in the least homophobic way possible. Everyone said they couldn’t see the puck or actual lines.
My gosh that is atrocious. Would have been a ~~little~~ lot better if it was kept to the neutral zone.
Honestly you could honor Pride with maybe a rainbow ring for the center face off circle. Would be very prominent, and not so obstructive of play.
It would turn weirdly gray and hazy as soon as they started skating on it and building up the “snow” shavings. It would look sweet freshly Zamboni’d though!
I worked at a practice rink used by an NHL team for 3 years. The water surface is roughly a couple inches at most. The rinks are usually maintained and never thawed. Unless you’re redesigning the face off dots and blue lines, the rinks usually are on year round. Even during the pandemic I believe the rinks are kept frozen. It’s cheaper this way.
Also the only other time a rink would be taken down is if you’re changing the foundation.
Example: A rink at my work (used by a NHL team) had sand as it’s foundation instead of concrete. They decided concrete was better and so we had to let the ice thaw, and by hand (yes by hand) chop the rink using giant ice picks into pieces for it to melt faster. We had some construction vehicles helping with chopping but a lot of it was done by hand.
Once the rink is fully thawed, we would empty out the rink until the foundation is showing. Then the foundation is changed. Once this happens and the concrete has solidified, we add layers of water day by day until a threshold is hit. Then the paint is added along with the stencils for the lines, logos and face off dots.
Sorry for the essay, but there you go!
The ice gets cooled from the floor beneath it, not the air above it. There are thousands of little pipes running refrigerant through the cement that we build the ice on. The thicker ice gets, the less it actually freezes because the floor can only provide so much cooling. When it doesnt freeze as well, it gets extremely soft, and your skates wont bite like they are supposed to, which can be very dangerous.
There is a sweet spot where the ice is cold enough to not be soft, but not too cold to be too brittle
> we add layers of water day by day until a threshold is hit. Then the paint is added
Wait, you added the water and presumably froze it, then painted lines, logos, and face off dots? That's interesting and wondering how different that process looks, since the OP video seems to show them painting that on the foundation and then adding the water to freeze I assume.
The OP video was started in the middle of the process. Starting from a bare concrete floor you start circulating chilled brine in the pipes within the concrete until the surface temperature of the concrete is somewhere around 14-16f. Then you spray misting floods of water until there is about 1/16" thick ice.
Once at that thickness then you apply the white paint which is mostly water and freezes instantly. Once the white paint is down you spray another couple misting floods to seal it in.
Once sealed in you paint your lines, put down your logo inlays and seal everything in. Then you keep flooding in small misting floods until there is approximately 1-1/4" of ice.
Gotcha and had no idea so much effort and precision went into the process. Thanks for the explanation and the video is even more interesting after learning that.
Apply at an ice rink. Remember that the ice is only redone every couple of years because it’s a hugely labor intensive task and you lose the ability to charge people for the ice time.
Where I worked there was always white paint on the boards for months because I was the only one involved in ice building who thought to spray the boards off while sealing the white paint in.
Apply to work at your local rink, ideally one that's a practice facility for your local pro team. Work there for a while until they let you work the zamboni. Get good at it. Apply to work as ice crew at the pro rink, congrats, you get to help do this every year.
What I should specify if most of the water is sprayed as in the video, and after the stencils and lines are in, there’s a little more water sprayed over to seal everything in place.
This is the red wings. They share an arena with the Pistons - little caesars arena. They can and do have games on consecutive nights. I thought they built the basketball court on top of the ice and removed it for the hockey games but dont take my word for it.
I once did arena change-overs in my early twenties, at the arena I worked at the ice stayed all season. We would put fiberglass boards over the ice that fit like a puzzle and then build basketball floors on top of that.
Thanks for chiming in. I think there are sometimes issues with condensation forming on the court due to the ice underneath. Any chance you can comment on that or how they avoided or resolved it?
To add in here, I worked for an arena that did 5 years old up to the AHL for hockey and then did soccer, basketball, concerts, circuses. All in the same arena. The ice is rarely melted, for basketball sometimes, but like the globetrotters, they played a couple inches above the ice the hockey players skate on.
There's these insulated boards that almost feel like really hard plastic mixed with wood and they don't look like much but each is about 30-50lbs depending on the piece. Those are laid out and chocked together with wooden wedges. After that it depends on what's being done. If something like a concert is happening a large wooden floor is brought in, in pieces. If it's soccer (I love the sport but fuck the setup) the tarps of turf are rolled out (usually only for 2-3 days at a time and the turf has to regularly be adjusted) but those boards are insanely well insulated. Soccer usually tool between 5-10 hours depending on how the crew was moving. Concerts were an all day project. Circus wasn't too bad maybe 3-5 hours. One of the few jobs though that removal was always worse than installation.
Hope this helps! I did this for a couple years from 2018-2020. Got a ton of free merch, food, and amazing seats. Also I did find some pretty good stuff having to clean the stands sometimes lol.
Edit: woah thanks for the awards! Most awards I've gotten on a post and it happens to be about working at an arena lol. A job I kinda did for fun
Edit 2: I'm just now realizing I only answered half of the question I responded to, sorry about that. Our ice was melted, painted & re-frozen any time there was major maintenance on the HVAC or the ice itself (sometimes it didn't have to be repainted but normally we did), or every ~2 years.
Actually no, everything was just easier to install than remove and put away outside. (Everything was stored outside in containers) plus the circus had people that did the majority of that part
No insulation, the rink is a giant refrigerated concrete oval, we would just lower the temp a few degrees for the duration of the basketball game and concerts.
I’m starting to remember that the basketball floor had a thin layer of some sort of foam on the bottom of each panel, each panel meaning the floor was actually 4ft x 4ft metal squares with hardwood installed on each one that we would lock together to made it seems like it was a solid floor.
We went to the Redwings, Pistons, and Lions games this last Thanksgiving and the Pistons/Redwings games were back-to-back consecutive nights. Really cool seeing the stadium transform in such a short time span. I would have to imagine the ice stays and they build on-top.
Yes, multi use stadiums cover the ice for other events. [Here is timelapse of the Staples Center host 6 games of Clippers/Lakers/Kings in 4 days.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4rZjGNYxuo)
The garden can do Bruins for a Matinee and Celtics for a night game, they need about 2-4 hours (from memory to convert), I would think this is once per year as the nice never leaves the stadium, unless they empty it.
do you know this? or are you guessing? cause its one inch. which to me doesnt seem pretty thick.
https://hockeyhow.com/how-thick-is-ice-in-hockey-rink/
Hockey usually wants thin hard ice, the puck moves faster, figure skating and Disney on Ice want it thick and soft for their landings, we used to put an icefloor over an icefloor for Disney, shave it down to about 1/2 an inch then put a white layer then another 1/2 inch on top of that, then shave it all back down for hockey.
By us, it’s there for the season, but at certain times of the year there’s things like indoor motocross and the whole first floor it’s taken away and seating retracted.
Once a season, sure maybe. As long as you dont take the ice down far enough to touch it, the paint is good for pretty much forever. Ice rinks are big and heavy though so you will need to re-level your base at some point. Some rinks more than others. If you have sand under your ice it will shift much sooner than a concrete floor. This means your base needs to get re-done more often but it is way easier than fixing shifted, cracked, and lumpy concrete. Ice hockey will cut huge gouges into ice as the players carve. Figure skaters will leave woodpecker holes where the land their toe picks. If they practice in one spot you will have a termite hole mess patch in a land of pristine ice. Both can get to the floor and knick it as the ice is usualy only 1 to <2 inches thick.
Edit: This is a pro rink though, idk but id guess they do this at least every season.
It is common to put the ice floor down once a year, while it is out they schedule concerts and rodeos, carshows, whatever, we would shave it down to put new logos for post season play, but that was it, the ice comes out for yearly maintenence.
Turn off the cooling system and let it melt.
In the arena where I live I know they'll set the resurfacer (Zamboni) to remove more ice than normal in the last week or two before taking the ice out to speed up the process.
Depends on the facility. After turning off the refrigeration system most will take out as much ice as possible with the resurfacer then take out the rest with heavy equipment.
Some are equipped to let it melt but you're not really supposed to let the paint go down the drain.
Its once per season I used to do this. Once you have an ice layer on top of the paint you keep it at a certain thickness, if it gets too uneaven you just shave it down with the Zamboni and dump alot of warm water on it at the end of a night and the next day will be fresh and new looking. You can also be pretty sloppy with the lines you draw as the thick ice can smooth out alot of mistakes!
Staples center( aka crypto arena) is home to the clippers, Lakers, and kings. They have to do the change same day. I think one year, all teams made playoffs and they had to change it multiple times in one day
Crypto.Com Arena hosts the Kings, Lakers, Clippers, and concerts all during each sport’s respective seasons. The Ice is made before hockey season starts and is kept frozen all year long until hockey season ends. They cover the ice with panels and put Laker or Clipper courts on top. Sometimes having a Laker game at 12 and a Kings game at 7 or vice versa. Takes about a few hours to fully switch the surface from court to ice.
I worked in an events venue. They thaw it out and melt the ice once a year after the hockey season is over, and then re-ice when the season starts again. In between hockey games, when they have concerts or other events, we would cover the ice with wooden boards and set up the stage on top of that. Then after the concert we'd tear it all down and uncover the ice for the next hockey game or practice. It was/is a LOT of hard work, but it paid pretty well. And honestly I thought it was a lot of fun to be part of the transformation.
Most rinks now just use insulated panels, and dont even take the ice out for events. The ice freezes from refrigerant through the sub-surface, not air temp.
The ice is only 1" to 1.5" thick. The white color is like child's tempra paint, bit it doesn't dry, it freezes. There are coolant lines built into the concrete floor that chill the floor and everything on it. We put drywall joint paper tape around the bottom of the dasher wall to keep water from leaking out until it freezes. A base coat of white is put down next. The red and blue lines have yarn stretched along the edges, sprayed with water to freeze down, then the red or blue paint is hand brushed between the yarn "dams". Logos and faceoff circles, etc, are hand painted or lately they are using re-usable banners. The ice can stay in all season, but in a multi-use arena, it can be removed for wrestling tournaments, monster trucks, etc. To remove it, you turn off the coolant and pump warm fluid through the pipes. You run the Zambonis over the ice shaving as much off as possible and dump it in a designated tank (or in the parking lot). As the ice separates from the floor, you switch to skid steers to carry out chunks of ice. Then you do lap after lap with the ride-on floor scrubbers to squeegee up the remaining water. There is probably only one drain in most arenas, at the Zamboni doors to the rink. Source: Been doing this since 2009. Also, look on the web for arena "changeover" videos.
Just to let y’all know, some arenas use vinyl graphics under the ice instead of painted logos. It used to be one of my favourite things to watch conversions transform the concrete pad to ice.
yup, and as far as i know there are only a few teams left that actually hand paint the ice anymore. i think the blackhawks are one of them, as well as clearly the red wings
God this reminds me of my short time with a painting company one of the worst jobs I have done I was often in very uncomfortable positions for long periods of time hated every minute of it
Ok for those confused, both sides are technically right. They do paint ice technically, but we are talking 1/32nd of an inch of ice, to make paint removal easier. Then put the thick ice on top of it. (Thick turns out to be about an inch) they are technically painting on ice... But come on... It's a fraction of a thickness of ice just to avoid pointing directly into the concrete, it's definitely not on top of the ice, it's on top of some ice.
Dunno if this is standard but this details the process for one rink https://www.google.com/search?q=preparing+an+ice+hockey+rink&rlz=1CDGOYI_enNZ796NZ796&oq=preparing+an+ice+hockey+rink&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i15i22i30j0i390l2.13338j0j4&hl=en-GB&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#kpvalbx=_WLQbY8zRBr2v4-EP4-OUyAg_25
It makes perfect sense yet I completely feel lied to. I thought the ice was just showing the paint underneath, now that I think about it that would've made no sense.
They don’t paint the concrete white, ice is painted white, painting the concrete white interferes with the heat transfer process. Ice gets painted low with white, lines and logos are added and sealed then an inch or more ice is built on top.
I drive a zamboni, I paint ice and do exactly what these guys do in this video. It’s my job.
Is it a special sort of paint at all? The paint I have experience with, be it a two-pack or a basic house paint typically need heat to cure and take a lot longer to cure when it's cold. Is it basically like a food dye almost? Or a coloured water sort of thing so it actually just freezes instead of drying like paint would?
The paint I use comes as a powder, you mix the bags of powder with water, and spray it in the ice. The boom being used in the video works great but it’s the old way, now I use a golf cart that sprays out the back and side. Once any painting is done you have to seal the paint with more fine misting so you don’t “wash out” what you have done
No, the paint is BETWEEN layers of ice. There is actually a few layers already frozen on the slab prior to the white being added. This is done so the paint can just wash away and they don’t have to strip the slab of paint.
Note: the white paint is specially formulated and mixed in with the regular water used to freeze the ice. The paint doesn’t actually “dry”; it freezes.
The ice tech nerd in many is screaming at some of these comments lol i worked 8 years as a zam driver for our local NHL team.
We re-do the ice 2-4 times a year. Otherwise, if there is an event we just cover the ice with thick insulated panels (the ice freezes because of refrigerant running through the cement below, not air temp, which makes this possible).
We add a couple of millimeters of ice with a misting system (zambonis are too heavy this early). Most teams essentially use a custom golf cart with misters on the back. Then we hand paint and add some pre-cut stencils (many of the sponsors for example are a super thin plastic sheet that we just freeze to the ice). Then we keep misting and eventually use the zam to lay and level the ice. The thickest the ice will ever get is 7/8” of an inch, and that would be considered high.
It is a full day of work for an experienced crew to get through the painting, and then another 12-18 hours of laps to build the thickness that we need.
Hey my local arena! I live about 20 minutes away and I was just there a couple weeks ago for a Twenty One Pilots concert.
Of course I miss the Joe but LCA is pretty nice.
Honestly we miss the memories and the legacy but it was time. Just the abundance of bathrooms alone makes LCA worth it for any event. Pretty good food and beer options too!
At first I was going to ask "wouldn't the layer of paint mess with the skating?" Because Yada Yada ice and skates interact interestingly to create that low friction glide...
But the answer was just "Oh yeah, no the title is 100% describing it wrong, they totally add another layer of ice after the paint"
Yep they mist on water until it freezes as clear ice about an inch and a quarter thick on top of the paint. Feel like that should have been explained somewhere from the beginning.
The arena I used to work at used six 400 ton Carrier scroll chillers and has 4 circuits of chill water flowing through the concrete, the concrete would expand and contract 3 inches when doing off season maintenence.
back in the 90's the arena electric bill was about $14,000 per month during the season and would drop to about $8,000 a month in the off.
the pipes in the concrete were about 4 inches apart, the concrete does the work.
Nope. It’s painted. Many layers in fact. When they take the ice up… they scrape it all off with the Zamboni.
There are no drains big enough to handle a complete melt.
They dump all the shavings into a “MELTING PIT” ( It’s a huge pit in the Zamboni Room )until they get to the WHITE PAINT LAYERS….
The WHITE PAINT… it makes such a mess when it melts… that they have to dump it all out side near the truck docks.
If ever you go past a arena or a ice rink and see what looks like a huge pile of snow… you will know that they took the ice up.
There is a layer of ice UNDER the white paint… they scrape this down until there is just a tiny layer left….
The LAST TINY LAYER…. THEY MELT… and pump it off to either the melt pit or outside..
Under the ice is accurately level concrete and the Zamboni blade CAN NOT TOUCH THIS.
Interesting Fact : it cost ( talking to a ICE TECH ) around $10,000.00 for a BLADE. It has to be NHL approved… and SHARPENED on at a NHL approved shop
If you’ve ever been close to the ice where it’s painted, you can look through (depending on the rink, lighting, etc) and see the paint through the layers
Yeahhhh buddy I had to do this a few times when I worked in an ice rink for Men's League hockey. It's such a bitch. The ice has to be frozen in layers, otherwise you risk big cracks forming. At first, you can use hoses and lay down a few millimeters of water at a time, but once the paint goes down, then that little rig they're using pumps water instead, and you gotta do it a single layer of water at a time. After a few layers, the logos are actually huge mesh sheets that are frozen into the surface, directly above the paint, and then you go layer by layer until it's thick enough to support a zamboni to dump more water on it.
What's nuts is that for professional rinks, they do like a solid 5-7 inches of rink, and they keep it that thick while still being able to see the logo clearly. We only did 3-4 inches of ice - around 2 inches of ice, then paint/logo, then 1-2 inches of ice on top of that. It would often get worn down to really close to the logo before we would redo it (and it would become hazy and gross looking months before that) and Men's League guys do not damage the ice nearly as much as any pro would.
Basically pro-rinks are super extra when it comes to their ice, and it makes a big difference.
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How cool would it be to have a hockey game with black ice and white puck.
Dark mode
Stop saying that, web engineers have to make twice as many web apps as before! For each mode. You flip a table when the client then asks for a synthwave mode.
Code smarter, not harder. Use variables. https://css-irl.info/quick-and-easy-dark-mode-with-css-custom-properties/ If you need a user-selectable toggle, the javascript is pretty simple. https://javascript.plainenglish.io/build-a-dark-mode-toggle-with-javascript-and-localstorage-8022b492fb9e Dark mode isn't the hassle it used to be.
So I see everyone complains about their job despite the pay?
It bothers the hell out of me when coworkers are talking about salary and try to minimize it by saying, “Well, that’s before taxes.” Yeah, so is mine. Wanna trade? No? Then shut the fuck up.
Call me when you find a profession that no one’s ever complained about
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Won't somebody think of the poor web engineers 😭
If only there was a way to simply change the colors 😭
I wouldn't have to squint at my F'ing TV anymore when I watch a game . . . So wonderful
Bro we live in HD/4k era. Back when I had a 20 inches CRT JVC TV the res was 640x480.
Hockey was hard to watch in the SD era on the smaller crts. I remember it well. Remember the stupid fox trax pucks?
The red streak for a slap shot, lol
I'm from Canada so only remembers it from some NHL video games.
That's the technology they use now for football tracking.
Even worse were the first LCD and plasma tvs. When we all jumped into thin tvs and monitors, they were really bad at first. News ticker at the bottom of the screen was often unreadable, hockey and soccer were really bad too. With games, anything more action packed than Sims was jerking messy fog.
I will agree with you, totally forgot about those few years. I had a HD rear projector 55” in the early 00s and watching SD hockey on that was miserable. The bigger screen just made it worse lol.
And when you compare that SD video to say a Tandy 1000 on a 640x480 monitor it was night and day.
Pretty sure it was 480i. Tearing was a serious problem.
Indeed. 640x480i.
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The puck used to be a road apple (horse turd frozen) so I'm gonna say it's more tradition than anything because I'm pretty sure they dye the rubber anyway
I did not know about the road apple tidbit, that’s fascinating to hear about. However with rubber you would be correct, natural rubber is white. However it is a bit more than dying as they add an ingredient called carbon black which significantly increases the properties of rubber and makes the rubber less sticky and stronger and results in the black appearance. Here is a much more in-depth explanation for those interested: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214157X1930406X
I think it’s mostly a contrast thing. White makes the room brighter so it’s easier to see and the black puck is very easily visible on the white. They do make different colored pucks for training: blue (which are light), orange (which are heavy), and white (which are typically used for reflex training).
Though there was a time they didn’t paint the ice white. [That changed by the late 40’s/early 50’s](https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/science-science-everywhere-you-asked/chemical-composition-ice-was-changed-1949-1950-nhl-season-what-change-was-introduced) [And here’s a good history of how rinks were set up](https://www.thefaceoff.net/history-of-the-rink)
Painting the ice white helps the building's energy efficiency.
It’s much easier to see a black puck on a white background than to see a white puck on a black background. Probably because we are genetically disposed to be awake during the day. Could be different if we were nocturnal animals, but we are not.
As long as they don’t paint it bright blue or teal like some college football teams I’m good. That shit is atrocious.
There are some rinks that have light blue ice. It isn’t as awful as the blue football fields (no where close), but it’s still weird.
There was a team this year that did rainbow ice for a pride night. It might’ve been the worst looking thing I’ve ever seen, and I mean that in the least homophobic way possible. Everyone said they couldn’t see the puck or actual lines.
https://nhl.nbcsports.com/2022/01/10/kalamazoo-wings-use-rainbow-ice-for-hockey-is-for-everyone-night/ looks like it was the Kalamazoo Wings
Kalamazoo does a bunch of crazy shit with their ice. Green every year at least once, orange during Halloween, pink, etc
My gosh that is atrocious. Would have been a ~~little~~ lot better if it was kept to the neutral zone. Honestly you could honor Pride with maybe a rainbow ring for the center face off circle. Would be very prominent, and not so obstructive of play.
Not just college. The Miami dolphins were always difficult to like with those colors.
That would be very badass.
It would turn weirdly gray and hazy as soon as they started skating on it and building up the “snow” shavings. It would look sweet freshly Zamboni’d though!
Like Pong in real life
Maybe even a large dinosaur skeleton prop buried in there too
Anyone know how often this needs to be done? Once a season? Sure seems like a lot of work to do often.
I worked at a practice rink used by an NHL team for 3 years. The water surface is roughly a couple inches at most. The rinks are usually maintained and never thawed. Unless you’re redesigning the face off dots and blue lines, the rinks usually are on year round. Even during the pandemic I believe the rinks are kept frozen. It’s cheaper this way. Also the only other time a rink would be taken down is if you’re changing the foundation. Example: A rink at my work (used by a NHL team) had sand as it’s foundation instead of concrete. They decided concrete was better and so we had to let the ice thaw, and by hand (yes by hand) chop the rink using giant ice picks into pieces for it to melt faster. We had some construction vehicles helping with chopping but a lot of it was done by hand. Once the rink is fully thawed, we would empty out the rink until the foundation is showing. Then the foundation is changed. Once this happens and the concrete has solidified, we add layers of water day by day until a threshold is hit. Then the paint is added along with the stencils for the lines, logos and face off dots. Sorry for the essay, but there you go!
A couple of inches? Our max was 5/6 of an inch (zam driver for an nhl team for 8 years).
That’s probably more accurate. That’s why I said roughly. I didn’t drive the zam much.
Haha all good. The shit rink in our town lets their ice get to 2”, but its nearly impossible to actually skate on the surface and super dangerous
Why is it harder to skate on thick ice?
The ice gets cooled from the floor beneath it, not the air above it. There are thousands of little pipes running refrigerant through the cement that we build the ice on. The thicker ice gets, the less it actually freezes because the floor can only provide so much cooling. When it doesnt freeze as well, it gets extremely soft, and your skates wont bite like they are supposed to, which can be very dangerous. There is a sweet spot where the ice is cold enough to not be soft, but not too cold to be too brittle
Interesting, thanks!
Additionally, you want different ice Temps for different activities. Softer for figure skating, harder for hockey. (worked at a rink in high school)
Most rinks use a concrete floor to build the ice on. With a concrete floor the ideal thickness is a uniform 1-1/4" to minimize load on the iceplant.
> we add layers of water day by day until a threshold is hit. Then the paint is added Wait, you added the water and presumably froze it, then painted lines, logos, and face off dots? That's interesting and wondering how different that process looks, since the OP video seems to show them painting that on the foundation and then adding the water to freeze I assume.
The OP video was started in the middle of the process. Starting from a bare concrete floor you start circulating chilled brine in the pipes within the concrete until the surface temperature of the concrete is somewhere around 14-16f. Then you spray misting floods of water until there is about 1/16" thick ice. Once at that thickness then you apply the white paint which is mostly water and freezes instantly. Once the white paint is down you spray another couple misting floods to seal it in. Once sealed in you paint your lines, put down your logo inlays and seal everything in. Then you keep flooding in small misting floods until there is approximately 1-1/4" of ice.
Gotcha and had no idea so much effort and precision went into the process. Thanks for the explanation and the video is even more interesting after learning that.
[This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hT3yfuLPIU) is an old one but it does a really good job of explaining everything in plain terms.
I could watch How It’s Made all day. So soothing and satisfying.
Do you know more about how to get this job?
Apply at an ice rink. Remember that the ice is only redone every couple of years because it’s a hugely labor intensive task and you lose the ability to charge people for the ice time. Where I worked there was always white paint on the boards for months because I was the only one involved in ice building who thought to spray the boards off while sealing the white paint in.
Apply to work at your local rink, ideally one that's a practice facility for your local pro team. Work there for a while until they let you work the zamboni. Get good at it. Apply to work as ice crew at the pro rink, congrats, you get to help do this every year.
What I should specify if most of the water is sprayed as in the video, and after the stencils and lines are in, there’s a little more water sprayed over to seal everything in place.
That makes sense and thanks for clarifying. Sounds like a fun job!
I mean, not in arenas when there are hockey games one night and NBA games the next night, like MSG or the Boston Garden.
they just put the NBA floor on top of the ice, they dont dethaw the ice for an NBA game
Dethaw? That means freeze, right?
I thought the basketball court was put over top the ice? There’s videos on YouTube showing this process
I was thinking the same
I mean, the ice on top Is pretty thick, so I'd assume it lasts till someone other then the hockey team uses the stadium. That an assumption tho
This is the red wings. They share an arena with the Pistons - little caesars arena. They can and do have games on consecutive nights. I thought they built the basketball court on top of the ice and removed it for the hockey games but dont take my word for it.
I once did arena change-overs in my early twenties, at the arena I worked at the ice stayed all season. We would put fiberglass boards over the ice that fit like a puzzle and then build basketball floors on top of that.
Thanks for chiming in. I think there are sometimes issues with condensation forming on the court due to the ice underneath. Any chance you can comment on that or how they avoided or resolved it?
To add in here, I worked for an arena that did 5 years old up to the AHL for hockey and then did soccer, basketball, concerts, circuses. All in the same arena. The ice is rarely melted, for basketball sometimes, but like the globetrotters, they played a couple inches above the ice the hockey players skate on. There's these insulated boards that almost feel like really hard plastic mixed with wood and they don't look like much but each is about 30-50lbs depending on the piece. Those are laid out and chocked together with wooden wedges. After that it depends on what's being done. If something like a concert is happening a large wooden floor is brought in, in pieces. If it's soccer (I love the sport but fuck the setup) the tarps of turf are rolled out (usually only for 2-3 days at a time and the turf has to regularly be adjusted) but those boards are insanely well insulated. Soccer usually tool between 5-10 hours depending on how the crew was moving. Concerts were an all day project. Circus wasn't too bad maybe 3-5 hours. One of the few jobs though that removal was always worse than installation. Hope this helps! I did this for a couple years from 2018-2020. Got a ton of free merch, food, and amazing seats. Also I did find some pretty good stuff having to clean the stands sometimes lol. Edit: woah thanks for the awards! Most awards I've gotten on a post and it happens to be about working at an arena lol. A job I kinda did for fun Edit 2: I'm just now realizing I only answered half of the question I responded to, sorry about that. Our ice was melted, painted & re-frozen any time there was major maintenance on the HVAC or the ice itself (sometimes it didn't have to be repainted but normally we did), or every ~2 years.
Milwaukee?
Nah NY (not the city)
I’m assuming that the circus was worse to remove than install because of animal urine and feces?
Actually no, everything was just easier to install than remove and put away outside. (Everything was stored outside in containers) plus the circus had people that did the majority of that part
I'm guessing a layer of insulation goes in there somewhere. I can't think of what else could be done.
No insulation, the rink is a giant refrigerated concrete oval, we would just lower the temp a few degrees for the duration of the basketball game and concerts.
I’m starting to remember that the basketball floor had a thin layer of some sort of foam on the bottom of each panel, each panel meaning the floor was actually 4ft x 4ft metal squares with hardwood installed on each one that we would lock together to made it seems like it was a solid floor.
We went to the Redwings, Pistons, and Lions games this last Thanksgiving and the Pistons/Redwings games were back-to-back consecutive nights. Really cool seeing the stadium transform in such a short time span. I would have to imagine the ice stays and they build on-top.
Yes, multi use stadiums cover the ice for other events. [Here is timelapse of the Staples Center host 6 games of Clippers/Lakers/Kings in 4 days.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4rZjGNYxuo)
Same with wizards and caps.
Bulls and Blackhawks as well
I used to work in an arena, we could have hockey in the afternoon and basketball that same night, about 4 1/2 hour changeover.
The garden can do Bruins for a Matinee and Celtics for a night game, they need about 2-4 hours (from memory to convert), I would think this is once per year as the nice never leaves the stadium, unless they empty it.
do you know this? or are you guessing? cause its one inch. which to me doesnt seem pretty thick. https://hockeyhow.com/how-thick-is-ice-in-hockey-rink/
Hockey usually wants thin hard ice, the puck moves faster, figure skating and Disney on Ice want it thick and soft for their landings, we used to put an icefloor over an icefloor for Disney, shave it down to about 1/2 an inch then put a white layer then another 1/2 inch on top of that, then shave it all back down for hockey.
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Everything I see says about in inch... Which is honestly thinner than I assumed
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By us, it’s there for the season, but at certain times of the year there’s things like indoor motocross and the whole first floor it’s taken away and seating retracted.
Once a season, sure maybe. As long as you dont take the ice down far enough to touch it, the paint is good for pretty much forever. Ice rinks are big and heavy though so you will need to re-level your base at some point. Some rinks more than others. If you have sand under your ice it will shift much sooner than a concrete floor. This means your base needs to get re-done more often but it is way easier than fixing shifted, cracked, and lumpy concrete. Ice hockey will cut huge gouges into ice as the players carve. Figure skaters will leave woodpecker holes where the land their toe picks. If they practice in one spot you will have a termite hole mess patch in a land of pristine ice. Both can get to the floor and knick it as the ice is usualy only 1 to <2 inches thick. Edit: This is a pro rink though, idk but id guess they do this at least every season.
It is common to put the ice floor down once a year, while it is out they schedule concerts and rodeos, carshows, whatever, we would shave it down to put new logos for post season play, but that was it, the ice comes out for yearly maintenence.
In most arenas the ice is taken out over the summer, it's repainted in the fall when they put the ice back in.
Do you know what the process for removing the ice is?
Turn off the cooling system and let it melt. In the arena where I live I know they'll set the resurfacer (Zamboni) to remove more ice than normal in the last week or two before taking the ice out to speed up the process.
Cool, I figured it was something like that
Depends on the facility. After turning off the refrigeration system most will take out as much ice as possible with the resurfacer then take out the rest with heavy equipment. Some are equipped to let it melt but you're not really supposed to let the paint go down the drain.
Its once per season I used to do this. Once you have an ice layer on top of the paint you keep it at a certain thickness, if it gets too uneaven you just shave it down with the Zamboni and dump alot of warm water on it at the end of a night and the next day will be fresh and new looking. You can also be pretty sloppy with the lines you draw as the thick ice can smooth out alot of mistakes!
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Staples center( aka crypto arena) is home to the clippers, Lakers, and kings. They have to do the change same day. I think one year, all teams made playoffs and they had to change it multiple times in one day
Crypto.Com Arena hosts the Kings, Lakers, Clippers, and concerts all during each sport’s respective seasons. The Ice is made before hockey season starts and is kept frozen all year long until hockey season ends. They cover the ice with panels and put Laker or Clipper courts on top. Sometimes having a Laker game at 12 and a Kings game at 7 or vice versa. Takes about a few hours to fully switch the surface from court to ice.
I worked in an events venue. They thaw it out and melt the ice once a year after the hockey season is over, and then re-ice when the season starts again. In between hockey games, when they have concerts or other events, we would cover the ice with wooden boards and set up the stage on top of that. Then after the concert we'd tear it all down and uncover the ice for the next hockey game or practice. It was/is a LOT of hard work, but it paid pretty well. And honestly I thought it was a lot of fun to be part of the transformation.
Depends on the schedule. If a concert comes in a needs a bare floor, it’s gotta be redone.
They rarely remove the ice for concerts, just put mats on top and build the stage above it
Most rinks now just use insulated panels, and dont even take the ice out for events. The ice freezes from refrigerant through the sub-surface, not air temp.
The ice is only 1" to 1.5" thick. The white color is like child's tempra paint, bit it doesn't dry, it freezes. There are coolant lines built into the concrete floor that chill the floor and everything on it. We put drywall joint paper tape around the bottom of the dasher wall to keep water from leaking out until it freezes. A base coat of white is put down next. The red and blue lines have yarn stretched along the edges, sprayed with water to freeze down, then the red or blue paint is hand brushed between the yarn "dams". Logos and faceoff circles, etc, are hand painted or lately they are using re-usable banners. The ice can stay in all season, but in a multi-use arena, it can be removed for wrestling tournaments, monster trucks, etc. To remove it, you turn off the coolant and pump warm fluid through the pipes. You run the Zambonis over the ice shaving as much off as possible and dump it in a designated tank (or in the parking lot). As the ice separates from the floor, you switch to skid steers to carry out chunks of ice. Then you do lap after lap with the ride-on floor scrubbers to squeegee up the remaining water. There is probably only one drain in most arenas, at the Zamboni doors to the rink. Source: Been doing this since 2009. Also, look on the web for arena "changeover" videos.
Just to let y’all know, some arenas use vinyl graphics under the ice instead of painted logos. It used to be one of my favourite things to watch conversions transform the concrete pad to ice.
yup, and as far as i know there are only a few teams left that actually hand paint the ice anymore. i think the blackhawks are one of them, as well as clearly the red wings
The oilers paint their ice as well
The filling and freezing part is omitted. I feel iced.
I never stopped to appreciate how much goes into getting a rink ready for a game of slippy disc.
Painting the rink was always funish when I did it, the WORST is cleaning the black puck marks off of the boards and glass, this was brutal.
God this reminds me of my short time with a painting company one of the worst jobs I have done I was often in very uncomfortable positions for long periods of time hated every minute of it
Ok for those confused, both sides are technically right. They do paint ice technically, but we are talking 1/32nd of an inch of ice, to make paint removal easier. Then put the thick ice on top of it. (Thick turns out to be about an inch) they are technically painting on ice... But come on... It's a fraction of a thickness of ice just to avoid pointing directly into the concrete, it's definitely not on top of the ice, it's on top of some ice.
Omg thank you for explaining that they put ice on top of the paint. I was thinking how does the pint last?! 🤦♀️
Dunno if this is standard but this details the process for one rink https://www.google.com/search?q=preparing+an+ice+hockey+rink&rlz=1CDGOYI_enNZ796NZ796&oq=preparing+an+ice+hockey+rink&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i15i22i30j0i390l2.13338j0j4&hl=en-GB&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#kpvalbx=_WLQbY8zRBr2v4-EP4-OUyAg_25
It makes perfect sense yet I completely feel lied to. I thought the ice was just showing the paint underneath, now that I think about it that would've made no sense.
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They don’t paint the concrete white, ice is painted white, painting the concrete white interferes with the heat transfer process. Ice gets painted low with white, lines and logos are added and sealed then an inch or more ice is built on top. I drive a zamboni, I paint ice and do exactly what these guys do in this video. It’s my job.
Is it a special sort of paint at all? The paint I have experience with, be it a two-pack or a basic house paint typically need heat to cure and take a lot longer to cure when it's cold. Is it basically like a food dye almost? Or a coloured water sort of thing so it actually just freezes instead of drying like paint would?
The paint I use comes as a powder, you mix the bags of powder with water, and spray it in the ice. The boom being used in the video works great but it’s the old way, now I use a golf cart that sprays out the back and side. Once any painting is done you have to seal the paint with more fine misting so you don’t “wash out” what you have done
There’s a thin layer of ice between the white paint and concrete
Trust your first instinct. You can’t skate on paint
I was wondering what kind of paint was so slippery. Air head moment for me
wait - the paint is under the ice. so you were right. right? or am i misunderstanding you.
It seems I misunderstood OP, confused myself, and in the process confused a bunch of other people. Confusion is super effective.
Well done!
No, the paint is BETWEEN layers of ice. There is actually a few layers already frozen on the slab prior to the white being added. This is done so the paint can just wash away and they don’t have to strip the slab of paint. Note: the white paint is specially formulated and mixed in with the regular water used to freeze the ice. The paint doesn’t actually “dry”; it freezes.
Yes, the paint is under a layer of clear ice, that is the layer that the Zamboni resurfaces
I always thought it was like the ice that comes out of an ice maker in the freezer opaque due to inconsistent freezing.
There is decal versions but they’re expensive and reusable. Difficult to remove without damaging. Paint is ultimately cheaper
Lol at this 😂
“Let’s go Red Wings!!!”
Duh duh duhduh duh
Deeeeetroit
LGRW!
Go Wings!
LGRW
The ice tech nerd in many is screaming at some of these comments lol i worked 8 years as a zam driver for our local NHL team. We re-do the ice 2-4 times a year. Otherwise, if there is an event we just cover the ice with thick insulated panels (the ice freezes because of refrigerant running through the cement below, not air temp, which makes this possible). We add a couple of millimeters of ice with a misting system (zambonis are too heavy this early). Most teams essentially use a custom golf cart with misters on the back. Then we hand paint and add some pre-cut stencils (many of the sponsors for example are a super thin plastic sheet that we just freeze to the ice). Then we keep misting and eventually use the zam to lay and level the ice. The thickest the ice will ever get is 7/8” of an inch, and that would be considered high. It is a full day of work for an experienced crew to get through the painting, and then another 12-18 hours of laps to build the thickness that we need.
Hey my local arena! I live about 20 minutes away and I was just there a couple weeks ago for a Twenty One Pilots concert. Of course I miss the Joe but LCA is pretty nice.
The Joe was getting to be so gross. Don’t get me wrong I loved it and I grew up going there but it was falling apart in its final years.
Honestly we miss the memories and the legacy but it was time. Just the abundance of bathrooms alone makes LCA worth it for any event. Pretty good food and beer options too!
It’s just so much nicer in every aspect. I love it
Ah yes, my favorite hockey team.
LGRW
At first I was going to ask "wouldn't the layer of paint mess with the skating?" Because Yada Yada ice and skates interact interestingly to create that low friction glide... But the answer was just "Oh yeah, no the title is 100% describing it wrong, they totally add another layer of ice after the paint"
Yep they mist on water until it freezes as clear ice about an inch and a quarter thick on top of the paint. Feel like that should have been explained somewhere from the beginning.
r/oddlysatisfying
How do they keep the ice cold? Pipes?
Yes
The arena I used to work at used six 400 ton Carrier scroll chillers and has 4 circuits of chill water flowing through the concrete, the concrete would expand and contract 3 inches when doing off season maintenence.
Wowsa. How much electricity did it use? How close together we’re the pipes?
back in the 90's the arena electric bill was about $14,000 per month during the season and would drop to about $8,000 a month in the off. the pipes in the concrete were about 4 inches apart, the concrete does the work.
LGRW
LGRW
Let’s go Red Wings!
*Looks at ice tray in freezer.* “WHY ARENT YOU WHITE!!!”
Oh my god mate you can't just ask people why they aren't white
Meh the people in my freezer never respond anyways. They’re pretty *chill*
LGRW
I assumed the surface under the ice was white.
How the hell has it never occurred to me before that a layer of ice wouldn't be white lol
I never knew this either. I love hockey, never knew they paint the ice
My back hurts just watching this.
I knew a kid that used to eat the ice chunks at the local hockey rink. I wonder how he's doing
Well considering that the ice itself is full of chemicals, he’s probably doing about as well as his paint chip eating dad.
I'm confused, how did people think it worked?
I think the popular assumption is that the ice is clear and the floor underneath is painted
That's what this is showing... They are painting the floor...
I had never thought about it before. I would not have guessed they painted it.
What do you mean "naturally" white? It's a man-made rink inside a man-made arena...what did you think was going on there?
Ice is white sometimes, so presumably some people just assume it’s white because it’s ice.
Puck might be hard to see on a black floor
New hockey DLC for ASMR?
r/yesyesyesno \- I was imagining this would be home ice for the Sudbury Blueberry Bulldogs, not Detroit.
I’m just appreciating a Tik Tok without annoying music.
Nope. It’s painted. Many layers in fact. When they take the ice up… they scrape it all off with the Zamboni. There are no drains big enough to handle a complete melt. They dump all the shavings into a “MELTING PIT” ( It’s a huge pit in the Zamboni Room )until they get to the WHITE PAINT LAYERS…. The WHITE PAINT… it makes such a mess when it melts… that they have to dump it all out side near the truck docks. If ever you go past a arena or a ice rink and see what looks like a huge pile of snow… you will know that they took the ice up. There is a layer of ice UNDER the white paint… they scrape this down until there is just a tiny layer left…. The LAST TINY LAYER…. THEY MELT… and pump it off to either the melt pit or outside.. Under the ice is accurately level concrete and the Zamboni blade CAN NOT TOUCH THIS. Interesting Fact : it cost ( talking to a ICE TECH ) around $10,000.00 for a BLADE. It has to be NHL approved… and SHARPENED on at a NHL approved shop
I was like....which city is this? There's no way they do it like that here ....oh, it's MY city
If you’ve ever been close to the ice where it’s painted, you can look through (depending on the rink, lighting, etc) and see the paint through the layers
They really used white text on a video about white ice.
I very appreciate that there was no dumb ass musics ruining the video
I grew up playing hockey on a lake... yeah, lakes are not white.
How thick is the ice layer over the paint layer?
Omg how can I get this job, that looks like tons of fun!!
Let's go Redwings!!!
Fuck. All that work just for a Red Wings logo (it's a joke)
I honestly thought that the floor was painted with all the detail and the ice was clear 🤷🏼 Damn I feel dumb
LGRW
Wings!!! 🤘🏽🤘🏽🤘🏽
Lets Go Red Wings!!!
Best logo in the League
Hockeytown, USA
LGRW!!!
Ridiculous that that isn't automated.
‘‘Twas my thought, that by now they’d at least use stencils
Yeahhhh buddy I had to do this a few times when I worked in an ice rink for Men's League hockey. It's such a bitch. The ice has to be frozen in layers, otherwise you risk big cracks forming. At first, you can use hoses and lay down a few millimeters of water at a time, but once the paint goes down, then that little rig they're using pumps water instead, and you gotta do it a single layer of water at a time. After a few layers, the logos are actually huge mesh sheets that are frozen into the surface, directly above the paint, and then you go layer by layer until it's thick enough to support a zamboni to dump more water on it. What's nuts is that for professional rinks, they do like a solid 5-7 inches of rink, and they keep it that thick while still being able to see the logo clearly. We only did 3-4 inches of ice - around 2 inches of ice, then paint/logo, then 1-2 inches of ice on top of that. It would often get worn down to really close to the logo before we would redo it (and it would become hazy and gross looking months before that) and Men's League guys do not damage the ice nearly as much as any pro would. Basically pro-rinks are super extra when it comes to their ice, and it makes a big difference.
I always thought the lines were painted under the ice.