To The Membership of SCMHA - Ridley Ice.

To The Membership of SCMHA

On Friday June 18^th and Monday June 21^st our members that showed up to Ridley Arena for the morning development programs were met with the ice not being available for 2 reasons.  Ridley's graduation ceremonies were being hosted in the field house on Saturday evening.  Up until Thursday there was to be no impact on the ice but then things changed at close to 10 pm Thursday evening when Ridley was informed that the windows at the end of the rink were to be installed Friday morning.  It was then necessary to install insulated panels over the ice in order to hold the cold in during the window installation.  

It was also determined on Thursday night that the power was going to have to be diverted from the arena to the field house air conditioning unit in order to maintain the temperature for the graduation ceremonies.   This meant that the rink would not have sufficient power to maintain the ice temperature, making it unsafe for use.  

The entire building is 'Green' which means that the energy from the compressors that run the rink is stored in batteries and can then be used to either heat or cool the rest of the building.  More power was needed in order to cool the field house for the 600 plus people attending the graduation ceremonies.   This meant that all of the stored power was diverted to the fieldhouse and this left the rink with minimum power and unable to maintain the ice.   With the added issue of the window installation on Friday,  which required opening up the wall, making the ice conditions even more vulnerable to melting, there was no other choice but to cover the ice making it unusable all of Friday and Saturday.

On Sunday, the panels were stacked and were supposed to be removed with enough time to groom the ice before we arrived on Monday morning.  However, the panels were on skids but there was no employee available on either Sunday evening or early Monday morning  to operate the tow motor and remove the skids from the ice surface.

Luck would have it that decisions were made long after our contact person had left work on Thursday between 8pm - 11pm and the Sunday issue was also out of her control as it was expected the ice would be ready.