A Zamboni (TM) for the great outdoors

>> Cleaning the city's outdoor hockey rinks

by PHILIP PREVILLE

The city of Montreal's parks department has 167 outdoor rinks in operation this winter. And to clear the snow off them, they have 20 "ice resurfacers"--more commonly known by the name of the company that makes them, Zamboni(TM) (much the same way paper tissues are known as Kleenex(TM)).

 (A) This here is yer standard-issue farm tractor manufactured by John Deere. During the summer, the parks department uses these tractors for various heavy-duty tasks, such as hauling felled wood off Mount Royal; they can also attach grass-cutting contraptions to the rear and use them as lawnmowers. Come winter, the mower mechanisms are removed and the tractors are pressed into service for the rinks.

 (B) This here is your bottom-of-the-line ice resurfacer, designed to fit on the back of standard-issue tractors. The city owns ice resurfacers manufactured by both Zamboni and its competitor, Champion. These resurfacers, which cost $9,000 apiece, use no water whatsoever. But the horizontal screw is designed to touch down and scrape a thin layer of ice off the top, thus levelling the surface.

 (C) The horizontal screw gathers the snow and ice into a vertical metal tube; inside the tube, a conveyor belt of shovels lifts the snow off the ground and dumps it into these bins. The bins are small and fill up quickly, often needing to be emptied two or three times for a single rink.

 Final factoid: Alas, the outdoor ice resurfacers are useless after a large snowfall; when that happens, a plow truck has to clear the rink and water tankers are required to actually make the ice. And the city can't make ice unless they get at least five consecutive days of minus 8*C weather. Thanks to the cold snap, the rinks are in great shape. So get your skates out fast; the city stops maintaining the ice at the end of February. :