Effects on hard water
Hard water? You're in luck.
Most municipalities have hard water, and most rinks treat it as a problem to soften or fight. With REALice it isn't. The same vortex that removes the micro air bubbles also changes how the hardness minerals behave: they stop forming the hard scale that builds up in nozzles, lines, tanks and water heaters. No softener, no salt, no chemicals.
What happens to the minerals
Hard water carries dissolved calcium. When that water is heated, or its pressure changes, or it's forced through a nozzle, some of the calcium comes out of solution as a solid: calcium carbonate, the same stuff as limescale. It can form two kinds of crystal. Calcite is the kind that sticks: it bonds to metal and keeps building on itself. Aragonite is a different shape and doesn't stick.
Inside the REALice vortex the pressure drops sharply and the water is spun and full of micro air bubbles. Under those conditions the calcium comes out of solution right there, while the water is still moving, and it forms aragonite. Those loose crystals don't cling to each other or to your equipment. They go onto the ice with the flood, or wash through.
Not a softener, and why that matters
A salt-based softener swaps calcium and magnesium for sodium or potassium by ion exchange. REALice does nothing of the kind: the calcium stays in the water. That's why there's no salt to buy, no resin to regenerate and nothing to service, and it's also why hard-water problems outside the fill line, in showers, domestic hot water or the concession, are untouched. REALice conditions the floodwater, not the building.
You can feel the difference on the ice: rub a palm across a REALice sheet and it often feels smoother, more conditioned. That isn't lower chemical hardness. It's a different surface, made from physically conditioned water.
"In Williams Lake we have very hard and mineralized water and we have found that the ice is as good as before the REALice installation, if not better. We have also noticed our ice stays much clearer than before. We flood with 57–60°F water and have not had any problems at all since the system was installed."
Garry Breck, Facility Maintenance Manager, Cariboo Memorial Recreation Complex, Williams Lake, BCHard water is one of the reasons rinks resist cold flooding: cold hard water makes cloudy ice. REALice removes both the micro air bubbles and the free-floating scale, which is why the ice stays clear on mineral-heavy supplies.
Old scale: the Castleton lesson
Treated water stops new scale from sticking, and it also disturbs scale that's already there. That has a practical consequence worth knowing before you install.
Castleton University ran REALice for several seasons on an older second-hand Olympia with a floodwater tank that couldn't be inspected. Eventually the floodwater started hitting the ice milky, and the surface came out rough. The water wasn't the problem. When the tank was opened, the walls were coated in legacy scale, and the treated water had been loosening it into the floodwater. An acid wash cleaned the tank, the cloudiness stopped, and the rink no longer needed the occasional hot-water flood it had been using to work around it.
REALice conditions the water, and it also tells the truth about the equipment. If an old tank, line or fitting is carrying scale, treated water will move it. The fix is to clean that equipment, not to blame the water; once it's clean, the scale doesn't come back.
The same vortex that handles the minerals is what removes the micro air bubbles and cuts the energy bill. How the technology works →
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