OUT OF THE HACK: Baldur made big changes
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/04/2017 (3334 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Five years ago, some of the pipes under the ice surface at the Baldur Curling Club started to leak. They were installed in the late 1960s, so it wasn’t a major surprise.
That’s no longer the case.
“Over the past five years we had about half a dozen start to leak so we had to make repairs all the time because of that and over those five years we pondered the decision about which way to go with this and we ended up taking the big step of replacing the whole floor,” ice maker Mike Johnson said.
The cost of renovating a 6,000 square-foot surface wasn’t going to be cheap either.
Fortunately, the club had about $20,000 saved up. Add four more grants totalling $81,600 — $30,000 from Manitoba Community Places, $25,000 from Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries, $20,000 from the Richardson Foundation and $6,600 from the rural municipality of Argyle — and the cost of completing the approximately $125,000 project didn’t end up being too steep.
A $25,000 loan was taken out to cover the remaining balance and Johnson expects that to be paid off in three or four years.
Two engineers were brought in to analyze the club’s existing concrete, which was constantly shifting, and they both suggested laying a new foundation on top.
Work began on July 1, with volunteer labour used to complete the work prior to the curling season beginning in November.
A layer of pipes, which have warm fluids running through them, was installed so the existing concrete wouldn’t move. Laid on top of the pipes, in order, was four inches of sand, three inches of insulation, five inches of gravel, more than 20,000 feet worth of cooling pipes and five inches of concrete.
It was a total height increase of 18 inches, but the building was able to allow it.
“The ice conditions were much improved,” said Johnson, who is also the club treasurer. “For instance, to get it level the foundation before would continuously move, so you were continuously flooding. Last year we did 33 floods in total so to try to get it level we might have as much as five inches in some areas but this year we flooded it about 10 times.”
Only about an inch of water was needed for flooding this season.
Equally important, the project saw the club bump up from a two-sheet surface to one with three.
Baldur has two local leagues — ladies on Tuesdays and men’s on Wednesdays — and also a junior curling program.
The club hosts three annual bonspiels: A funspiel around Christmas, a men’s open in February and ladies open in early March.
Nathan Liewicki is the Brandon Sun’s curling reporter.
» The Brandon Sun