Borner makes sure PW Ice Center is up and going

Behind the welcome desk at the Prince William Ice Center sits a television, constantly cycling through a list of the day’s events at the facility. On a recent Monday, the screen flipped between the early events, like open skating on the Olympic rink, and the afternoon and evening events, like hockey games on the NHL rink.
Each event was between 20 and 90 minutes, and the line to get in formed just after the open session began at 11 a.m. Normally quiet periods, like the open session, are busy because children don’t have school and parents using vacation time.
Maintaining the ice would seem to be a challenge, given the constant state of use. But at this time of year, it’s not so difficult. There is rest for the weary, it turns out, though facilities manager Chris Borner doesn’t look weary, despite returning from a hockey tournament in Minnesota a day earlier.
The cold temperatures outside reduce wear on the system. On Monday, when the high temperature was several degrees below freezing, Borner considered throwing open the doors and letting nature handle the cooling.
That’s usually done by the massive, interconnected machines hidden from view. Sixteen-degree brine, water saturated by salt, circulates through and extensive array of pipes underneath the ice to keep it frozen. When the brine returns, it has warmed up slightly, two degrees or so. A second system of ammonia takes the heat from the brine to a cooling tower; once back to its original temperature, the ammonia returns to begin the process again. A third system, a dehumidifier, keeps the air dry and prevents fog from forming on the ice.
Each of the systems has a permanent backup. There are three brine and ammonia compressors for the two rinks, with one standing by in case one of the primary units fails.
Despite the heavy ice use in the winter, it’s the summer that works the system hardest.
“[In the winter], your weekends are packed and it’s really packed after school time,” Borner said. “During the summer, we are more busy during the day and less at night – we close early at night, because we do hockey camp, fun camp.”
But in the summer, temperatures in the 90s are common; so is the high humidity that makes certain days unbearable to be outside. Borner said that if all the machinery were to shut down, the building would warm one degree every hour. That usually means there’s no more than a six-hour window when the equipment can be down, though he has pushed it as long as eight hours.
When the equipment is running in the summer, the brine pump and ammonia system work hard; the dehumidifier rarely shuts off.
Comparatively, keeping the ice surface in shape is simple. The facility has two ice resurfacing machines – Zambonis, as they’re commonly called, though Prince William ice has Olympia brand resurfacers – which cut the ice and use hot water to fill in the cracks and gashes. Hot water is used because it bonds better with ice; cool water would freeze, but be more susceptible to breaking.
All the cut ice, called snow, is dumped from the resurfacer into a holding tank; the cold water is then used to cool down the engines that help keep the ice frozen.
In the same bay as the resurfacers is a hand-pushed machine that looks like a lawnmower without the chute and bag. That machine resurfaces the edge of the rink where the larger, driveable resurfacers can’t get, keeping the ice as level as possible.
The resurfacers that Prince William Ice uses were bought and are maintained by LSK Enterprises in Virginia Beach, one of two dealers in the U.S. Because ice rinks are such a specialized industry, the supply chain is small and suppliers can demand premium prices. The nearest Zamboni brand dealer is in northern New Jersey; Borner also deals with companies in Vancouver and Newmarket, Ontario. A basic resurfacer can cost $100,000; a newer, alternative-energy model cost $700,000, Borner said.
It’s all been a learning process for Borner, who coached hockey and had some knowledge of ice maintenance before he began at the Prince William Ice Center in 2001. Just after he came on board, the center had a scheduled maintenance session for its compressors, which meant a technician would be visiting from out of town.
“When I took over the facility manager position, that company was just coming in town a couple weeks later. They rebuilt an entire compressor,” Borner said. “So I stuck to this guy’s side. I was basically stuck to him like Velcro for like three weeks. And I kept on asking him questions and putting notes down.”
He also enrolled in a maintenance program hosted by USA Hockey, the governing body for the sport. He’s got people he trusts, and he doesn’t hesitate to call and ask questions. And when he’s on the road, he makes it a point to check out other people’s facilities and see if anything is applicable back in Woodbridge.
Borner admits the process has been gradual. Pat Hutzler, who owns Prince William Ice Center along with her husband, Bill, is on the same track but a few years behind. Like Borner, she had some knowledge about how things worked after using the facility for several years. But getting into the minutiae of how everything works has been a little tougher.
“You know as a user, but getting the behind-the-scenes aspect is always just so amazing,” Pat Hutzler said. “You see the machinery and it’s pretty stunning ... I was so surprised by the size of everything. When you look at the compressors and the chilling systems, it’s just so large – the pipes are big, it’s noisy, and I was just really stunned. I felt like I was in the heart of the building.”