ECO-FRIENDLY CURLING RINK LINERS
These new liners are a game changer, and will allow the club to save money and reduce the burden on volunteers.
​
November 22, 2022 - CAMPBELLTON, NB - On November 14, 2022 the Campbellton Curling Club showed off their new eco-friendly curling rink liners installed at their facility. These new liners are a game changer, and will allow the club to save money and reduce the burden on volunteers.
​
The "old way" of making a curling sheet was to carefully paint the ice surface, apply lines, ads and circles and flood with at least 6 layers of water to seal it all in. There's a whole list of issues with this method.
​
First, those thin layers of ice add up to about 1 1/2 or 2 1/4 inches of ice in total, resulting in a lot of energy to keep the thick ice frozen all season long.
​​
Second, the "old way" is a time-consuming process, with five sheets of ice taking as much as 500-man hours. A lot of work to ask for scarce volunteers.
​
Finally, the paint used contains chemicals, in particular titanium dioxide. According to the Material Data Safety Sheet (MSDS), titanium dioxide needs to be disposed of properly, but typically at the end of the season, the ice simply thaws with the water (along with the paint) sinking into our sand base.
​
A More Efficient and Safer Way
​
The club executive looked for a more efficient and safer way. Enter "Hack-to-Hack Solution" - an Alberta-based company owned by Kevin Grumetza which prints the liners in Edmonton and installs all over the world. Just flood to about 3/4 inch thick over the sand base and roll out the 150-foot liners complete with circles and lines. Another 6-7 floods are applied to seal the liners and ice ads. Five sheets of ice done in 1/3 of the time! No more paint into the environment. No disaster in the event of power/plant failure. So much less volunteer work. While the upfront cost is higher, the cost recovery for the liners is about 3 years and last 25-30+years.
​
Kevin arrived November 2 to help install the curling sheets at the club with our available members. Lloyd Chedore, Paul Schriver, Dan Leger, Art Power, Andre Leblanc and Luke Caissy all helped with flooding, installing the liners (it took 1 minute to roll each one out) and ads.
The Curling Club used to spend $1,200 per season on ice paint alone, not to mention an untold number of volunteer hours to install. The cost of this project was $26,000. The Club was awarded funds from ACOA, RDC and ELG government agencies covering 80%, with the club covering the remaining 20% from our Take Out the Ace of Hearts fundraiser.
The Club is open Monday through Thursday evenings. The public are always welcome to stop in and see our new ice and watch members play the game we love. Curling. More news is on our Facebook page!