The curling rink at the Humboldt Uniplex is nearly installed with leagues set to begin on Monday, October 29th.

Its a tedious process of literally watching paint dry and water freeze. Done with pristine attention to detail, layer by layer the ice, paint, and decals are installed to create the just over an inch thick, 150ft long, perfectly leveled sheet of ice. 

"Curling is getting to be such a high expectation sport that the ice has to be neat and clean and so precise. When you watch a game on tv you see that and that's what everybody expects here at the curling club, it puts a little pressure on us icemakers here, but we do that, and everybody appreciates it," said Kevin Kalthoff who is the Head Ice Maker and has been installing the ice at the Humboldt Curling club for the last 17 years.

The process starts with lowering the cement temperature to 20 degrees Fahrenheit (roughly -7 degrees Celsius), cold enough for the floods of water to freeze. The first series of floods consist of 600-gallon runs, continuously layered and frozen until there is a 5000 gallon surface of ice. From water freezing, to paint drying, coloring the ice surface white is the next step. This is done using a 12ft wide spray boom ran up and down the ice. "It freezes, it actually doesn't dry, it freezes. You put on about 6 or 7 coats of that and it's nice and white," said Kalthoff. Once the paint is frozen and sealed with more water, it's time to start making the large sheet of white ice look like a curling rink by laying down all the houses and lines seen on curling sheets. Following the details that are the houses and lines, comes the decals. "We have about 140 decals, with provincials coming this year they sent us a big box of decals, it was a lot to put in this year." Once again, the boom comes out to seal the decals in with another half a dozen lighter layers of water. Finally, the remaining floods of water go down. "The first one we'll put 400 gallons, then 500, then 600, until we're done and have a little over an inch thick surface.," Kalthoff explained.

Kalthoff has some helping hands throughout the two-week process, sometimes those who have never installed a curling surface before. "I know when people come and volunteer to help, everybody is always surprised with what it takes to put the ice surface in, but everybody is always happy to help because they've never done anything like this before. People are really fascinated by how we install the ice."

Kalthoff, along with his partner in the ice creation, Brian Wempe, are also in charge of the maintenance throughout the year, to keep the surface at the previously mentioned high standards of the sport. 

They expect to wrap up on Saturday, October 27, just in time for leagues to start on the 29th.

curling rink