Vilnius Akropolis Ice Arena

The Vilnius Akropolis ice arena is part of the long-term regional ice-rink experience behind SPORTWAVE. Commissioned in 2002, the permanent indoor rink has an ice area of approximately 1,200 m² and was developed for year-round public and sport use inside a major shopping and entertainment centre.

Its relevance today is not only historical. The project demonstrates several principles that still define good permanent-arena engineering: integrate the ice floor with the building, monitor the refrigeration system, recover useful heat where possible and design for long-term operation rather than only first-day performance.

Project at a glance

Project context: permanent ice inside a commercial building

An indoor ice arena inside a shopping and entertainment centre is not an isolated refrigeration installation. The rink becomes part of the building’s energy, humidity, circulation and maintenance environment.

For this type of facility, the key engineering question is not simply whether the refrigeration plant can freeze the slab. The system has to support reliable year-round operation while coordinating with:

• building ventilation and humidity control;
• electrical infrastructure;
• public access and visitor circulation;
• resurfacing and snow handling;
• technical-water demand;
• service access;
• heat rejection and useful heat recovery;
• operating schedules that may differ from the surrounding commercial building.

This is why permanent ice should be treated as part of the building-services concept from the planning stage.

Concrete ice slab: why a permanent floor can be the right choice

The current project classification identifies the Vilnius arena as a Concrete Ice Slab installation. For a permanent rink, a concrete-integrated refrigeration floor can provide a robust, stable base for repeated year-round ice operation.

For a similar project today, the decision to use a permanent slab would normally be tested against:

• whether the area will remain dedicated to ice;
• expected annual operating months;
• required sport programme;
• floor loading and structural requirements;
• insulation and ground-heat control;
• pipe layout and hydraulic zoning;
• repair accessibility and lifecycle expectations;
• how the slab interacts with the rest of the building when the ice is off.

A concrete slab is not automatically the best option for every permanent-looking project. If the same space must regularly return to another use, removable or multifunctional technologies may deserve comparison.

Refrigeration control was part of the original concept

The documented project included computer-based monitoring and control of the refrigeration and artificial-ice system.

This matters because a permanent arena should not rely on a single fixed operating condition. Ice demand changes with sport, visitor load, resurfacing, indoor climate and operating schedule.

For a comparable arena today, useful monitored parameters would typically include:

• secondary-fluid supply and return temperatures;
• refrigeration operating state;
• pump operation;
• ice or slab temperature;
• alarms;
• operating schedule;
• energy or runtime trends;
• selected building-condition data where system integration requires it.

The purpose of monitoring is not only to detect failure. It also helps identify gradual performance drift before it becomes poor ice quality or unnecessary energy consumption.

Heat recovery: refrigeration can also be a useful heat source

The project used recovered heat from the refrigeration system for technical loads, including melting snow removed during resurfacing and heating technical water.

This is an important permanent-arena principle. A refrigeration plant removes heat continuously from the rink and rejects it somewhere else. If there is a simultaneous useful heat demand, part of that rejected heat may be recovered instead of discarded.

For modern rink projects, possible heat-recovery uses can include:

• resurfacing-snow melting;
• technical or domestic hot-water preheating;
• underfloor or frost-protection loads;
• space heating;
• ventilation-air heating;
• other low- or medium-temperature building loads.

The correct concept depends on temperature level, simultaneous demand and the operating schedule of the building. Heat recovery should therefore be coordinated with the full building-energy concept rather than added as an isolated component.

What this project teaches about permanent arena efficiency

Energy efficiency is not determined by the chiller coefficient of performance alone. In an indoor arena, refrigeration interacts with radiation, air temperature, humidity, resurfacing, pump power and the building envelope.

For a new project today, SPORTWAVE would therefore evaluate the complete operating chain:

1. Define the ice programme — hockey, figure skating, public skating or mixed use.
2. Calculate the real heat load — instead of selecting refrigeration from ice area alone.
3. Coordinate the floor and hydraulics — to achieve uniform ice temperature.
4. Integrate building HVAC and humidity control — because moisture and radiant load affect both ice quality and energy.
5. Define the control strategy — operating schedules, setpoints, alarms and monitoring.
6. Identify useful heat sinks — before the refrigeration plant and building heating concept are frozen.
7. Plan service access — because lifecycle performance depends on maintainability.

Why the 1,200 m² figure is not enough to size a new system

A common mistake is to use the area of an existing reference project as a direct refrigeration-sizing template. Two indoor rinks with approximately 1,200 m² of ice can still require different technical systems.

The final load changes with:

• building temperature and humidity;
• ceiling and envelope radiation;
• ice temperature;
• number of operating hours;
• number of skaters;
• resurfacing frequency and water conditions;
• floor construction;
• pump and hydraulic design;
• heat-recovery requirements;
• required redundancy.

ASHRAE therefore treats simple m²/kW values as preliminary checks of a full heat-load calculation, not a substitute for one.

Read: How to Size an Ice Rink Refrigeration System

Permanent rink or multifunctional space?

The Vilnius project represents a permanent dedicated ice concept. For a client planning a new facility today, one of the first decisions should be whether the area genuinely needs to remain an ice rink throughout its operating life.

The correct choice comes from the annual activity calendar, not from copying a previous arena.

Why this project remains relevant

Vilnius Akropolis is a useful regional reference because it connects three ideas that are still central to permanent-rink design:

• the ice floor is part of the building;
• refrigeration should be monitored and controlled as an operating system;
• rejected refrigeration heat can become useful energy when the project is planned for it.

These principles are more transferable to a new project than copying one historic equipment specification.

SPORTWAVE perspective

This project belongs to the regional experience base behind SPORTWAVE. For new permanent arenas, SPORTWAVE applies the same system-level logic with current engineering methods and current equipment: floor construction, refrigeration, hydraulics, controls, heat recovery, building HVAC, operator needs and service access are evaluated together.

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