As hockey season approaches, the Enerplex cools with production going full freeze ahead on the new ice.

With the North Peace Alumni Hockey School looming on Monday, supervisor George Kantz and his team are busy preparing the field of play and keeping the building’s temperature down.

“The heat in the building is a constant issue for us,” said Kantz Thursday, pointing to pools of water outside the rink from melted ice.

“With the warm outside temperature we’re having, we’re also dealing with that in here, and in order to make ice you have to remove the heat from the building. We’re fighting that right now. Some of the ice is melting on the sides and outside the rink just from the temperature in this room.

“Yesterday, because of construction, we had trucks coming in and had our doors open. That worked against us. Today we’ve got our equipment inside so we can close the doors behind it. We also have most of our lights off because that creates heat.”

Kantz planned to have the ice painted Wednesday, but the heat delayed plans by a day.

“We should be getting our second coat of white on there, and i wanted to do that first thing this morning, but our temperature was just too high.”

He’s currently working on the west rink but is taking extra precautions across the whole facility to make sure the building stays cool.

“We fired up another compressor and started cooling the east rink, although we don’t need that surface yet.”

The playing surfaces are cooled by absorbing heat, not injecting cold.

“We’re pumping brine, which is a calcium solution, from the refrigeration system, and then it is able to absorb the heat. With refrigeration a lot of people mistake that they think you’re adding cold, but you’re not. You’re removing heat, so what we have to do is remove heat from within this building.”

He showed the simple but complex system of pipes that direct brine underneath the playing surface, then back to the plant room where the absorbed heat in the brine transfers to ammonia, which then goes outside where the heat is let off.

“It’s just a transfer of heat,” Kantz said, “from the brine, to the ammonia, to outside.”

The ice was just under half an inch thick on Thursday, with the target final thickness being an inch and a quarter. If all goes well, the rink should be in full commission for Monday.