How REALice works

What hot water was doing

Tap water carries undissolved air as micro bubbles. Freeze it as it comes and the bubbles stay in the ice: it turns cloudy and brittle, chips under skates and needs more floods to repair. Heating the water drives that air out, which is why hot floods freeze clear and hard. The heat is not what makes good ice; the air removal is. A rink pays twice: once to heat the water, once to pull that heat back out of the slab.

What REALice does instead

REALice removes the same micro bubbles with water pressure instead of heat, in a unit on the fill line to the resurfacer; the three stages are described below. The water that reaches the ice is de-aerated, slightly less viscous, and no warmer than it needs to be: cold tap water, tempered if the rink prefers, but never above 68°F.

What REALice is not

• Not a water softener or reverse-osmosis system. It does not remove minerals; it removes trapped micro air bubbles. Hard source water still needs its own treatment, though REALice changes how the hardness behaves. Effects on hard water →
• Not a chemical additive. Nothing is added to the water, and nothing is taken out except the trapped air.
• Not a filter. There is no medium to clog or replace.
• Not a reason to run the plant colder. The electricity saving comes from running the brine warmer, not colder.

REALice uses water pressure to remove the micro air bubbles from the floodwater before it reaches the resurfacer. It does this in three stages:

1. The preformer guides incoming water into a tornado-like rotation and splits it into channels, each shaped to form its own vortex.
2. The vortex chamber winds those vortices into one strong, stable vortex, the way a rope is spun from threads. Along its axis the pressure drops sharply.
3. Deaeration. The undissolved micro-bubbles are drawn into the low-pressure core, where they expand and merge into larger bubbles that separate from the water downstream. A sight glass after the system shows them collected into a visible central stream.

Where the air goes →

What changes in the water

The Polymer Technology Group at Eindhoven University of Technology tested REALice-treated water against untreated water from the same supply, in three batches:

• Viscosity: 3–17% lower, depending on the batch, with the strongest result in freshly treated water.
• Heat capacity: about 5% higher.
• Electrical conductivity: about 3% higher, consistent with the air being removed.
• Surface tension: unchanged.

Lower viscosity is why treated cold water spreads and levels the way hot water does. Fewer undissolved bubbles is why it freezes with fewer tiny air pockets. Together they replace the two things hot water was being used for.

What changes in the ice

Crystal structure. Treated and untreated municipal water from the same supply were frozen side by side and thin slices examined under cross-polarized light, with the imaging done at Luleå University of Technology. The untreated sample was fragmented and irregular; the REALice sample showed larger, more uniform, more consolidated crystals. The report was written by the manufacturer, Watreco.

Hardness. Southern California Edison tested two rinks with a Schmidt hammer before and after REALice. Readings were as good or better after, and far more uniform across the sheet. The hammer measures rebound hardness, not density; the result is consistent with denser ice but doesn't measure it. The evidence in full →

Further independent measurement of REALice-treated water and ice is under way at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Results will be published here when released.

The biggest electricity saving comes from the set point: warmer brine, fewer compressor hours. Years of hot-water flooding have taught technicians that 22–24°F is the ceiling for hockey ice, and with hot water it is. De-aerated water changes that. The ice is harder and more consolidated to start with, so it can run warmer and be better for it; O.R.F.A. puts the best blade-to-ice glide at 28°F. A warmer set point isn't weaker ice. Once the rink is dialled in, it's the correct temperature for a stronger sheet.

The crew finds the sweet spot by raising the set point in small steps over several days and watching the ice; once found, it's the baseline for the following season. That change in habit is the real work of the first weeks, and it is the one that has to happen: leave the set point where it was and the ice is too hard and chips, and most of the electricity saving never appears. Operator training and certification comes with every system, for the whole crew and for the people who replace them.

Signs the ice is still too cold

The rink tells you. If the set point is still too low for conditioned water, you'll see:

• Heavy snow from normal skating
• Easy scarring and surface scratching
• Ridges between resurfacer pass lanes, because the first pass freezes before the next overlaps it
• A cold puck that slows too quickly and won't run cleanly to the far end
• Dry shavings like artificial snow that won't form a snowball

Each of these is a reason to go up a step, not down. Conditioned water freezes readily, and kept too cold it flash-freezes; the symptoms above are what that looks like.

Why less snow matters

Snow isn't just an ice-quality issue. Every shovel of snow the resurfacer removes is surface that has to be replaced with new floodwater, which has to be frozen again, which is plant load, water, operator time and blade wear. Harder ice at the right temperature sheds less, so the resurfacer takes less off and puts less back. Better water makes better ice, better ice makes less snow, less snow needs less replacement water, and less replacement water is less refrigeration. The energy saving is the end of that loop, not the start of it.

Ice cleans with cold water

One adjustment: conditioned cold water doesn't melt snow and debris out of scars the way hot water does. Use the resurfacer's wash-water function on every ice clean so the scars are flushed before the new flood goes down. If the machine has no wash water, cut slightly more ice during the clean to remove that material mechanically. It's a small change in practice, and it's the one that matters most in the first weeks.

Installation and operating requirements

• Installed inline on the resurfacer fill line, on both the cold and hot water lines with a mixing valve or ball valves, so warmer water stays available for other tasks around the bay. A plumber does it in a day.
• Powered by water pressure only; no electrical connection at the system. Minimum static pressure at the fill station: 45 psi for the R10X, 55 psi for the R12X; a booster pump covers rinks that fall short. The pipe after the REALice must be the same size as the pipe going in.
• No filtration needed with potable water. If a sediment pre-filter is already in place, keep it, installed upstream of the REALice.
• One system can serve a twin pad on a shared feed.

Best practice

• Use treated water for all floodwater, and don't trickle-fill the resurfacer.
• Raise the ice temperature gradually after installation and watch snow, scarring, pass-lane ridging, puck glide and shavings.
• Use wash water on every ice clean.
• Keep ice thickness in the target range; thick ice insulates the surface from the plant and feels soft regardless of the water.
• All of the above is covered in the REALice Ice Meister course, included with every system.
• If cloudy or milky water appears on older equipment, inspect the tank for legacy scale before blaming the water. Why that happens →

Go deeper

• Technical specifications (PDF)Dimensions, connections, flow and pressure.
• Plumbing schematics (PDF)Where it goes in the fill line.
• Vortex Process Technology brief (PDF)The physics, from the manufacturer.
• How to installStep by step, with the fittings you'll need.
• Training and certificationThe Ice Meister course for operators, included with every system.
• Measured resultsEvery utility and municipal measurement, with method, period and source.

Watch

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The PTG Eindhoven tests

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The vortex process, in a clear tube

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Where the air goes