Progress continues to be made with the ice issues at the 100 Mile Curling Club.
On December 6th curling was canceled due to the bad conditions on the three sheets.
President of the 100 Mile Curling Club Eugene Gerwing said in the summer they bought a reverse osmosis water purification system which was late getting installed.
He said they were in a hurry to get the ice in because it takes time to make that much water and when they had enough, started flooding thinking they were using the purified water.
“About a month and a half after we started the ice didn’t improve, it got worse. Our ice technician sampled the water and realized that the water we were using to make the ice was actually the water that should have been going down the drain and that was the biggest problem”.
Gerwing noted that they approached Curl BC for some help from their ice technician who suggested they melt the top half inch of the ice and then re-install, flood and scrape to see if that would seal the bad mineral water down below the ice surface.
“It did improve somewhat,” Gerwing said, “but then after a few days it would go back to being really slow ice. So the technician suggested we take it out, replace it, and then start again. So we shut the league down and started taking the ice out, washed it all out to get all the salt and mineral water out of there, and start rebuilding which we are in the middle of the process of doing.”
He added that the people who installed the system came back immediately, and re-plumbed it so that it was working properly, and the club had that water tested and it’s been fine.
“We’re sure quite sure that as long as we get everything washed down and get all the mineral water out of there hat we’re quite sure that the water we’re putting down there is good water and we should have good ice come January second when play resumes,” Gerwing said.
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