The Town of Oyster Bay Parks and Recreation Department is planning to put the freeze on a major construction project taking place in Syosset-Woodbury Community Park...and that's good.
In order to ensure operation efficiency and cost, as well as be environmentally sound, the Town has been overseeing the complete renovation of the park's ice skating rink system, a task that, local skating fans should be pleased to hear, is expected to be finished earlier than expected.
The major improvements, approved last year and physically underway as of late last summer, are not cosmetic, so repeat visitors may not even be able to recognize the changes. But Super of Parks Richie Betz explained these invisible alterations will make the new rink state of the art. "There's a lot of stuff you'll never see. [When] you build a house, you put in 2-by-4s, insulation in the walls and wiring behind the walls. When you hang a picture on the wall, gee, that looks great, but there are a lot of important internal things that you don't see."
According to Betz, under the rink's original system, freon gas would be pumped through pipes underneath the concrete slabs upon which water would be poured and, later, freeze. Under the new system, called an ethylene-glycol system, the freon is restricted to a containment unit in an equipment room. Something called a chiller changes the freon gas to a liquid by means of decompression. Then, ethylene-glycol, a kind of antifreeze, flows through the chiller and is pumped to the slabs and back, freezing the water.
To install this new system, the rink was ripped up to create a new slab port, pour new concrete slabs and add new piping and high-tech refrigeration equipment.
Operation of the etholyne-glycol system will be more cost-effective. "It's simple mathematics," stated Betz. The consumption of freon will be less, and the refrigeration equipment, such as the pumps and compressors, will be much more efficient, requiring less energy expenditure.
Plus, because freon is contained and no longer floats under the slabs, the possibility of a hazardous leak is reduced. Everything, said Betz, is becoming "environmentally friendly now, so you don't want to take chances of having any kind of a problem with freon leaking into the air. That's actually one of the things that's affecting the ozone."
Among the minor changes are new entrances to give better ice access to both patrons and zamboni machines.
The entire project was estimated to cost $1,395,000. Currently, the expense is up to $699,558.09.
Betz bets that the rink will be open long before a thaw melts away one's hopes of strapping on some blades for a fun winter's skate. As of now, community skaters must use the rinks in either Marjorie Post Park in Massapequa or Bethpage Community Park. Though the project was scheduled for completion in February, Betz said that the contractor is optimistic about a possible December 15 opening.
"He's fairly confident that he's six weeks ahead of schedule, which is very encouraging and makes us very happy," said Betz.
"It's a very good job we're doing. I'm very excited about it," he said.
