The Shawville Curling Club has decided to keep the ice plant off until the club can get a replacement part, with an estimated waiting time of eight weeks, the board announced at an emergency meeting held on Nov. 24.
Members have been unable to use the ice since the previous week, when the club decided to shut down the ice plant entirely. After approximately two weeks of curling at the start of the season, the rink’s brine pump – which circulates chilled brine to keep the ice cold – stopped working.
“[The system] was just not able to keep [the ice] cool,” said club president Roger Younge at the meeting, which was held to advise members of the updates.
Ice technician Wade Ellison said the ice plant malfunctioned at the start of the season when he was first building the ice, but the club hired Nepean company AC Mechanical Refrigeration to fix it in time for the season’s start. A few weeks ago, he noticed the same malfunction again.
“It worked for three weeks no problem, and then all of a sudden it failed again,” Ellison said, adding that AC Mechanical Refrigeration came to investigate the issue and concluded that a new part was needed.
AC Mechanical went to look for a replacement part in Brockville, Ont., but the part turned out to be too small. The club has ordered a new part, with an estimated waiting time of approximately eight weeks.
Younge said the club did not initially buy a new part because this particular part – called an impeller – is hard to find for the three-sheet rink that Shawville has.
“These are not readily available. We couldn’t just get one off the shelf and bring it back and replace it, or we would have done that,” he said.
In the meantime, Ellison is trying to keep as much heat out of the ice surface as possible, in order to avoid having to create the ice from scratch again. He said if the ice remains sub-zero, play could resume as soon as two days after the part is installed. If the ice melts, however, he said it could take a few weeks to establish an ice surface again.
“I’ve insulated the glass so that there’s no heat lost through the glass, because it’s not very warm in the [bar area], but it’s warmer than [the ice]. We have an exhaust fan and I’ve opened the vents at each end of the building, which I open and close every day,” he said, adding that it will be at least until January until play resumes.
This ice plant malfunction is the latest in a line of unexpected major expenses the club has encountered in the past few years. In 2021, an ice chiller cost the club $40,000; in 2024, a compressor cost $29,000; and this season a new cash register for the bar cost $5,000.
Younge said this season the club has already spent $10,000 on AC Mechanical and will owe an additional $24,000 in parts and labour upon installation of the part. He said with this expense, the club is now expecting to have somewhere in the neighbourhood of a $21,000 deficit at the end of this season.
“We’ve exhausted all of our cushion,” he said.
The club has been able to shoulder larger expenses from the past few seasons, in large part due to the revenue from the golf simulator it acquired in 2021. In 2024, the simulator brought in over $21,500 for the club.
At the end of the meeting, members chimed in with ideas to keep the club active while the ice is down. In addition to the golf simulator, which continues to be available for rent, members suggested using dedicated curling nights to host cards and other games in the curling club.
Going forward, the club will host game nights on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, and noon to 4 pm on Thursday. Members are encouraged to bring their own games, and are reminded that the bar will still be open.
“You’re doing your duty to help out the club when you buy beer,” said treasurer Andrew Rowat.
There will be a chili cook-off hosted on Thursday afternoons throughout December, and there will be a Warhammer 40K tournament on Jan.4. Anyone with other ideas for other events to support the Shawville Curling Club may get in touch via the club’s Facebook page or by contacting a board member.
