The youth hockey program in the Paynesville-New London-Spicer area has seen over 30 years of steady growth in participants, activities, fund raisers, and facilities. Five year ago the hockey association and the Paynesville Township merged their needs in building the civic arena. The township has a meeting hall with offices and the ice skating program moved inside!
Because natural ice is reliable from only mid-December through mid-February, many of the ice activities are not available on a regular basis. With the help of $250,000 in grants, construction of a 225' by 30' addition was completed. The addition includes a community room and concession area, public rest rooms, four team rooms, and an equipment/mechanical room. Also added was a refrigeration system to maintain artificial ice.
Volunteers, shown above, dug out the dirt from the arena floor in preparation for the installing tubing for the new refrigeration unit. The first layer of tubing will have 7,000 feet to prevent perma frost from forming. The second layer will consist of 20,000 feet. This will be a buffer zone for thermal storage. The final and third layer is about 35,000 feet of tubing, which will be installed in concrete for chilling the pipes to form ice.