Permanent ice rinks engineered for decades of operation

A permanent ice rink is a building-scale thermal system, not simply a refrigerated floor. The ice slab, refrigeration plant, hydraulics, building envelope, ventilation, dehumidification, heating, lighting, boards, resurfacing and controls continuously influence one another. Decisions made during concept design therefore determine much of the future energy use, ice quality, maintenance workload and operating cost.

SPORTWAVE develops permanent rink concepts for practice arenas, competition venues, shopping and leisure centres, public facilities and multifunctional buildings in Lithuania and Latvia, combining AST technology with local engineering, installation, commissioning and lifecycle service.

First define what kind of arena you are building

Permanent-rink design should begin with the operating model and user groups. A compact practice facility does not need the same spectator infrastructure, redundancy or event systems as a competition arena, while a multifunctional building has to perform both with and without ice.

The 2024 IIHF Ice Arena Guide groups facilities into practical planning categories: small practice arenas with 0–300 spectator places, small competition arenas with 300–1,500, large competition arenas with 1,500–5,000, and modern multi-purpose arenas with more than 5,000 fixed seats. Shopping-mall skating rinks are treated as a separate category.

This classification is useful because spectator capacity changes far more than seating. It affects circulation, ventilation loads, changing rooms, sanitary facilities, exits, media and event requirements, plant redundancy and the building’s peak thermal loads.

Engineering note
IIHF states that approximately 80–90% of project implementation costs are determined during the planning phase. The same early decisions also have the greatest influence on lifecycle cost.

Source: IIHF Official Ice Arena Guide 2024.

Rink size follows the sporting and business model

A permanent arena should not automatically be designed around the largest possible ice sheet. The rink dimensions must match the sport programme, available building area, expected utilisation and future competition level.

The IIHF Arena Guide uses 28 × 58 m as a planning example for a small practice arena and 30 × 60 m for a small competition arena. Official IIHF competition rules allow a 60 m rink length and 26–30 m width. The correct format should therefore be chosen from the planned activity and competition requirements rather than from convention alone.

Reducing or enlarging the rink influences not only construction area but also refrigeration load, board length, resurfacing time, seating geometry and the economics of each operating hour.

The building envelope is part of the refrigeration system

Indoor ice arenas operate with unusual thermal conditions: very cold ice at floor level, warmer spectator and service areas, moisture entering from people and outside air, and a roof structure that can radiate heat toward the ice.

ASHRAE research shows that, with lighting included, radiant sources can represent around 40% of the total heat load on an indoor ice sheet. This is why ceiling temperature and emissivity, roof insulation, lighting design and air stratification directly affect the refrigeration plant.

A low-emissivity ceiling can reduce radiant load and condensation risk while also reflecting light more effectively. Dehumidification is equally important: uncontrolled moisture can create fog, ceiling dripping, corrosion and structural deterioration while increasing the load on the ice.

Engineering note
A more efficient chiller cannot compensate for a poorly controlled building. Envelope, ceiling radiation, humidity, ventilation and refrigeration must be designed as one thermal system.

Source: ASHRAE Handbook — Refrigeration, Chapter 44: Ice Rinks.

Choose the permanent ice-floor technology around lifecycle requirements

SPORTWAVE and AST can develop several permanent or semi-permanent floor concepts. The choice is based on construction method, required flexibility, summer use, structural conditions and lifecycle priorities.

Concrete ice slab

A conventional permanent solution with refrigeration pipework integrated into the slab. It is well suited to dedicated arenas where dimensional stability, long service life and continuous ice operation are priorities. Structural design, insulation, frost protection and pipe installation must be coordinated before the concrete works begin.

AST IcePhalt®

AST IcePhalt® is designed for permanent indoor and outdoor applications. Refrigeration pipework is embedded within an asphalt-based construction whose elastic properties are intended to tolerate temperature variations and reduce cracking risk. The concept can also support multifunctional surfaces where the area has another use outside the ice season.

EPDM-based permanent or semi-permanent systems

Flexible AST EPDM mat systems can be integrated where retrofit conditions, seasonal conversion or future flexibility make a mat-based solution more suitable than a conventional embedded slab. The decisive question is not which technology is universally best, but which construction best matches the building and its operating model.

Source for AST system characteristics: AST permanent and multifunctional ice-rink technical documentation.

Refrigeration should be sized from heat loads, not only from square metres

The refrigeration plant must satisfy both ice-making load and the most demanding coincident operating conditions. Relevant loads include the building and ceiling, air temperature and humidity, resurfacing, pumps, lighting, skaters, spectators and the required ice temperature.

For a permanent arena, hydraulic design is just as important as nominal compressor capacity. Pumping energy, supply and return temperatures, pressure loss, flow balance, header design and control strategy determine how efficiently cooling reaches the entire ice surface.

Oversizing creates unnecessary capital cost and can reduce part-load efficiency. Undersizing leaves insufficient capacity during high-load periods. The plant should therefore be selected after the thermal and hydraulic model has been established.

Design the arena to heat and cool at the same time

An ice arena is unusual because it requires substantial cooling at the ice while simultaneously requiring heat for spectators, ventilation air, changing rooms, domestic hot water, resurfacing water and sometimes snow melting or underfloor frost protection.

The IIHF describes refrigeration heat recovery as a key element of an energy-efficient arena. Depending on system type and the building’s heat demand, recovered condenser heat can cover a large share of useful heating loads. ASHRAE notes that recovered heat can provide approximately 75–100% of facility space- and water-heating requirements in suitable designs.

This is why heat recovery should be planned before the plant is purchased. Useful temperature levels, storage, heating circuits and seasonal demand must be coordinated with the refrigeration concept rather than added later as an accessory.

Engineering note
The refrigeration plant is also a potential heat source. Every kilowatt-hour removed from the ice, together with compressor input, eventually appears as heat that must either be rejected or used elsewhere.

Sources: IIHF Official Ice Arena Guide 2024; ASHRAE Handbook — Refrigeration, Chapter 44.

Energy efficiency is measured across the whole arena

IIHF illustrates the scale of system integration with an example comparing typical Swedish arenas: a conventional facility using inefficient energy technologies is shown at about 1,000 MWh/year of purchased energy, while an efficient configuration with strong heat recovery and modern systems is shown at about 460 MWh/year. These are illustrative benchmark cases, not a guaranteed saving for every project.

The commercial lesson is more important than the exact number: major savings come from coordinating refrigeration, heating, ventilation, dehumidification, lighting, heat recovery and controls rather than optimising one machine in isolation.

Ice temperature and ice quality must match the users

Different user groups prefer different ice conditions. Hockey generally requires harder, colder ice; figure skating prefers somewhat warmer, softer ice; recreational skating can operate warmer still. Running colder than required increases refrigeration demand without automatically improving the customer experience.

ASHRAE gives indicative ice temperatures of approximately −6.7 to −5.6°C for hockey, −4.4 to −3.3°C for figure skating and −3.3 to −2.2°C for recreational skating under representative indoor conditions. Final setpoints depend on the facility, ice thickness, water quality and event requirements.

This makes operating strategy part of engineering: controls must allow the arena to maintain the ice quality actually required for each programme rather than one unnecessarily cold fixed setpoint.

Daily operation must be designed before opening day

The rink layout should already account for resurfacer access, snow disposal, resurfacing-water filling, board gates, team circulation, skate traffic, storage, workshop space and safe maintenance access. These details determine whether a technically good arena is easy or difficult to operate.

SPORTWAVE can coordinate the board system, resurfacing equipment, skates and sharpening, maintenance tools, monitoring and operator training as part of the same permanent-rink concept.

Control, monitoring and lifecycle service

Operators need clear visibility of ice temperature, coolant temperatures, refrigeration status, pumps, humidity, alarms and energy use. Trends are often more valuable than isolated measurements because they reveal increasing ice thickness, hydraulic imbalance, changing humidity or equipment efficiency before they develop into operational problems.

SPORTWAVE remains the regional technical contact after commissioning for diagnostics, maintenance, spare parts, optimisation and lifecycle support.

Regional permanent-rink references

• Vilnius Akropolis — permanent indoor ice arena commissioned in 2002, approximately 1,200 m², with computer-based monitoring and documented refrigeration heat recovery in historical project material.
• Klaipėda Akropolis — permanent indoor arena commissioned in 2005, approximately 1,500 m², using a flexible refrigeration-mat concept with documented heat recovery.
• Šiauliai Akropolis — permanent indoor arena commissioned in 2009, 56 × 26 m / 1,456 m², with a concrete-integrated ice system and year-round public and sport use.

These historical references demonstrate different permanent-ice approaches and long-term operating models. They are presented as regional experience and are not used to overstate historical SPORTWAVE attribution.

What we need to develop a permanent-rink concept

• site and building drawings;
• planned ice dimensions and intended competition level;
• primary use: hockey, figure skating, public skating, curling or mixed;
• expected spectator capacity and event profile;
• planned operating hours and annual season;
• building HVAC, humidity and indoor design conditions;
• available electrical capacity and electrical redundancy requirements;
• structural floor and foundation concept;
• required board, resurfacing and operational equipment;
• potential heat-recovery loads and temperature levels;
• maintenance, staffing and service model.

From these inputs, SPORTWAVE can define the ice-floor technology, refrigeration and hydraulic concept, building interfaces, controls, operating equipment and implementation scope required for the next design stage.