In a city in the North of Italy where the tradition of ice skating is very much felt to express national-level HOCKEY teams, there is a large ice arena owned and managed by the Municipality.
The complex consists of an ice rink with its facilities and machinery for the formation of the slopes and of course also for bathrooms and showers.
Where there is water, and hot water, there are problems with limescale and bacteria; in this case another particular one is added: the opacity of the ice.
It all comes from the fact that below the ice are placed advertising panels that, however, as the use of the track increases and up to the ” polishing ” of maintenance, become less and less readable; hence the search for a more resilient ice in such a way that maintenance times are dilated and advertising remains longer visible. Another very important aspect is the ” speed ” that ice allows and here there are considerable professionalism and sensitivity on the part of the operators, we do not allow ourselves to make judgments and let them decide if the results are acceptable.
The plant operators are very sensitive to all these problems and have already carried out interventions with unsatisfactory results, in particular they have installed a technology that is based on the environmental effects of water treated in a particular way and placed in receptacles placed on the water to be treated.
Difficult and embarrassing to explain why there is no scientific explanation of the operation but it means believing in the magnetic flow of this water: the supporters of these treatments say that this works somewhere, others say that it is’ placebo effects ”, sensations are not well measurable, the fact is that in this case the dissatisfaction is well above the satisfaction for which this second attempt at sanitation and, in any case, it is an intervention limited to limestone only.
The objectives are different:
– improve the quality of the ice
– prevent limescale formation
– control the proliferation of legionella
The plant is then examined and decided to treat it with two different types of appliances, intervening for the moment on only one of the two showers departments, postponing the second operation to a later date.
The intervention is decided immediately because once the summer break is over the track must be formed for the following winter season and is an immediate test field.
From a control of the line we realize that the various metal pipes touching at several points, cause signal loops for which it is necessary to install dielectric joints to interrupt the electrical conductivity of the pipes, which is realized on the basis of our indications, from a company chosen by the managers.
So we install:
– AQUARING CA 90 to treat limescale
– AQUARING VCA 90 to treat bacteria
PHOTO AQUARING VCA 90
PHOTO AQUARING CA
The effect is immediate:
– More transparent ice and more visible publicity
– Ice more resistant to skates
– Limestone concretions in sharp decrease
– Carpet of the sanding machine without limestone concretions
– Filters on pipes often clogged due to the large material that comes off the pipes.
This last aspect turns out to be the most striking since it is a physically well-visible event so much so that the technician who deals with the quality of the water, that nobody expected so much material and so much clogging of the filters and that, imagining this effect, it would have been better to intervene a few months earlier and not close to the start of the season.
On the other hand, this is what we would like to do in all our interventions: cleaning the pipes well to reduce and eventually cancel the environment in which the bacteria proliferate; without this cleaning it will always be a succession of ups and downs of the bactericidal charge and therefore of thermal or chemical shocks with further worsening of the quality of the pipes, which facilitates the proliferation of the bacteria.
After the experience of a complete season, it is now necessary to consider whether to extend the treatment against legionella to the second sector that was excluded from the first intervention; the decision will be taken shortly after verification of the laboratory tests already prepared.