Sports Arenas Speed Up the ‘Quick Change’ for Events with Heat Pumps

Some sports arenas are used for multiple events. While most of the time there is rarely a conflict, sometimes arenas need to make a ‘quick change’ from one type of sports event to another. The hardest quick change is from hockey to basketball.

“It would normally take at least a day or two to switch up the arena”, explained Greg Tree, director for a local professional sports arena. “This made scheduling hard because we were constantly switching from one to another and it took days to do that. We had to find a better way.”

And find a better way they did. The sports arena discovered that by using the heat from heat pumps the process could be sped up. The arena would bring in multiple heat pumps, apply the heat from those pumps directly to the surface, and work to change the arena out. It takes approximately 15 to 30 heat pumps to successfully clear an arena of ice. The amount depends on current temperature and time frame between events.

“It was amazing”, said Tree. “The process that normally took several days, now takes just a few hours. It really saved us valuable time. I was so surprised the first time I saw my workers using the heat pumps. It just seemed like a dream come true, because we no longer had to worry about this situation anymore.”

The new discovery that there can be a quick change between sports allows arenas to schedule events back to back. Scheduling was tight with the several day change and many fans were left missing games.

“We wanted to improve the experience for our fans, but we wanted to do it for our staff members”, explained Tree. “We were always stressed that we would not be able to successfully melt the ice. The ice would melt, but it was the timeframe that we had. The heat pumps work wonders and eliminate the stress our workers felt.”

The heat pumps have proven so successful that several sports arenas are working with Tree to incorporate it into their daily operations. They are trying to successfully integrate heat pumps into their arena’s quick change program.

“It was really crazy to see how many sports arenas faced the same problems as we did”, explained Tree. “We have had at least a dozen arenas – college and professional – as us for advice. They are shocked to see that something as simple as heat pumps was the answer.”