So you wanna drive the Zamboni

So you wanna drive the Zamboni
 
So many people and so few boni’s out there to be driven. Thus many of you will never have your dream come true. You won’t be able to drive the zamboni or even be able to take a ride on one. The closest you will come to the dream is the other side of the glass where you can wave to the zamboni as it passes by you. I know you are not waving to the driver but to the machine because that is really where it is at for you.

I though have lived your dream. I have driven the zamboni, ridden on the zamboni, and fixed the zamboni. So I will try to take you on a ride with me now as I reflect the laps of the zamboni for you.

In the morning the Zamboni needs to get woken up so to speak as it gets ready for a busy day ahead. You walk on over and turn on its air basically, its life, by opening up the propane tanks located on the back. They are turned to the closed position at night for safety. So you open them and hear a little noise form the tanks. Then you hop on and start her up, leaving the throttle lever a little low since she is just waking. Then you reach to your right and take the lever to raise the tank and you raise it. Taking the metal pole it was resting on out. At night the tank on the front of the zamboni is raised to let it dry. Now with the pole out of the way you drop the tank down into place. And she is all closed up. So then you grab another lever in the same place and raise the conditioner from its overnight position. Then you slide the zamboni into forward and slowly move it to its daily parking spot over the pit. The pit is the place where you dump the snow. It is grated and thus water is easily pushed through it or falls through it from the zamboni. Now you can turn of the machine. You go pick up and put away the blocks that the conditioner was resting on overnight. Then it is time to get the zam ready for its first ice make of the day. You take the grease gun and hit 12 or so points daily with it to keep the machine running smoothly. Check all fluid levels as well while you are poking around. Then log all the work that you just did so everyone else knows how many hours are on this current blade and when maintenance was last done. Next you move over and take the garden hose and insert it in the wash tank. Turn it on and let it fill with cold water. This water is recycled throughout the day. I would say about 90% of it gets returned each make of the ice. It is used to wash the ice before the water you see coming out of the back of the machine hits the ice. So basically this is picking up any dirt or pieces of debris and sucking it back up into the tank where it gets caught in a basket that you empty. Once this is full you move onto the large water tank which is filled with warm to hot water. There is an ideal temperature but it is rare rinks go to the trouble to make sure it is exactly the proper temp. Close is usually what they shoot for at most public arenas. This is a big tank and the water is not recycled but is left on the ice and is what you see coming out the back of the machine. Often you can get two makes out of one fill but why chance it? The easiest thing is to refill it between each ice make. If you do not have an ice make for hours then it is better to drain the tank and refill near the time for the next make to make sure the water is close to the proper temps. So now our machine is already to go make some ice.

Before we get out there though let’s explain what happens under the machine. The machine does a few things to the ice that you do not see but are very important to having good ice. First, you have the jets of wash water hitting the ice and loosening up and dirt or debris. This water gets sucked back up into a pipe and dropped back into the tank near the top through a basket. If it wasn’t sucked back up then there would be a bunch of debris and dirt in the ice. Plus all the extra water would end up making the zamboni get stuck as the water made slush of the ice the zamboni cuts. Yes, the zamboni cuts the ice. The blade on the zamboni is almost six feet long and varies in width due to sharpening of the blade. This blade is as sharp as a razor. It works very similar as well. When you drag a razor over your face or legs it removes the hair pretty easily if it is sharp and not so well when it is dull When dull you change it and the same is true for the blade at the back of the machine. It gets changed when dull which varies in time. Some rinks go by certain number of hours or days or ice makes or just by feel of the cut to determine when to change the blade. A blade can be changed by two people in as little as ten minutes but usually takes longer if being as careful as you should be with the blade. It could easily cut you severely. So the blade is dragged along the ice under the conditioner at the back of the machine. There is a round handle on the zamboni to the right of the driver which allows him to raise and lower the blade for thickness of the cut or shave of the ice. This varies depending on what is coming on the ice next or what the plan is for ice maintenance. It may need to be thinned in some areas or thickened in others so the driver may even adjust it while he is making the ice. So under the machine all this ice is getting scraped and has to go somewhere. Have you ever seen a snow blower throwing snow? Well the zamboni basically has two snow blower like augers on it. One it horizontal and is in the conditioner just in front of the blade. This is made to collect the snow/ice and move it to the middle as it spins. In the middle is a tube with an auger that goes up the zamboni in the middle of the machine and is often visible in the back as a round tube in front of the driver to the right. This auger throws the snow through an opening at the top into the big tank on the front of the zamboni. So under we have water being put down and sucked up. Ice being cut and sucked up. Also some of this snow and ice becomes slush and is wedged into small cracks in the ice to help smooth it. It does not work on big holes or ruts but helps with small ones. All that goes on where you can’t see it!!!

Okay so it is time to go make the ice. Most rinks give their drivers ten minutes to make the ice. Realistically it would be nice to give them 15 minutes. That does not happen though because time is money and those extra five minutes adds up to hours of rental lost. So you should as a driver take the whole ten minutes to make the ice. It can really be done in like 5 or 6 minutes but you really have not made the ice as much as just poured some water on it. Ten to twelve minutes would give you good ice and then a couple of minutes for the ice to set up and freeze, especially in those cracks would be more towards the ideal.

So we hop on the machine and start her up. We ease the throttle control up and watch the rpm’s raise. We put her in reverse and back towards the open doors to the ice. We pause to make sure there are no skaters on the ice and that any equipment including pucks are now gone. Those could become stuck in the augers and break the zamboni or possibly get thrown through the tank of snow and out the other side of it!! So be wary of those pucks. Okay, all clear. We back onto the ice now to a decent starting position.

Again make sure it is all clear. Make note of which doors are open and which are closed. Now we switch the control to forward. Once we begin we can’t take our foot off of the gas pedal or it will stop. A car would glide or cruise if you did so but the zamboni does not. It stops and that is not a good thing because it is hard to control it on the ice when that happens. So we get our foot comfortable and push. As we move forward we drop the conditioner down behind the machine so it is on the ice and the back of the machine lifts slightly. Now the blade is in contact with the ice. Now we turn on the augers to suck up the ice. As we head toward the boards we begin to turn to come into them at a nice angle. Turn on the board brush which pops out form the side of the machine and helps take and snow build up from along the boards and brush it out into the path of the conditioner. As we approach the boards we reach to our right and turn on the make water, remember the hot water is the make water you see coming out of the back of the machine. We do not turn on the wash water during out board lap. Water builds up quickly around the boards so we leave it off for this initial lap. Too much water can cause the slush to be too much for the zamboni to handle and it can get stuck or the augers can jam up and neither of those are good things. So we are going along the boards now fairly slowly but steadily. We are watching the front left corner of the machine as there is a little wheel there. You try not to have the wheel touch the boards but close. Also watch for doors to make sure you stay off of them. They may look closed but if they are not fully closed you could open them with the machine and end up ramming the door which could cause damage to the zamboni, the door, and maybe people. The board lap requires a lot of focused attention. It is the closest to the people you get and also the closest to the boards you get. Imagine trying to drive your car down the street and staying about an inch or two from the curb. Think you would be pretty focused right? I hope so for your cars sake. So we make one full lap around the boards and when we get back to where we started we pull out from the boards. Turn off and retract the board brush. We pull out the width of the conditioner so there is only a small overlap of what was done and what needs to be done on the left side of the conditioner. Too much over lap and two things are happening. One your are getting to much water under the machine as you travel the already made ice and second you are going to have to make an extra lap if you are to far over as you are not using the space wisely. So now we have just enough space and we are heading for the end of the arena. This time when we hit the red line we turn off the or at the very least turn down the make water as we go behind the red line. Why do we do this? We pass this area each time we come down the ice so it is about too much water. There will be plenty there and we really do not need to add more to it. Now we make our turn and head up the center of the ice or slightly left of center. As we cross the red line we turn the water back on. Now we also turn on the wash water but not the pump yet. We want to make sure the pump has some water to suck up before we turn it on or we could burn out the impeller which is made of rubber and needs water as a lubricant or will break. So now we are looking at a spot on the front of the zamboni and making sure it lines up with the line between made ice and unmade ice. We need to use a guide on the machine because we simply can not see well in front of us. If you stood in front of the zamboni I would not see you unless you walked quite far out in front of the machine. I also cannot see anything on the right side of the machine at all. So there are big blind spots when driving the machine. It would be terrible in a car but on the ice it is okay as it is a controlled environment. The guide is different for each person and takes you a little while to find a spot that works for you. This again is to make the most out of each pass up and down the ice. As little overlap as you can. So now we are approaching the far blue line and it is time to turn on the pump. So flick the switch and the water starts to get sucked up. All the water levers can be opened to different rates so those are often changed during each make several times. As we approach the end red line we slow and then turn off the make water again. And we turn it back on as we go back up ice. We leave the wash water on during the make though as it is being sucked up by the pump. So we repeat this till we have one lap left and then we need to get busy with other things again as we prepare to finish our make. Ofcourse we had time during those laps to look in the stands and wave or whatever. There were things to do but not nearly as much as when you are starting and ending. Only if things go wrong can the middle of the make be an issue. So have through our last roughly and we turn off the wash water but leave the pump on for now. This will suck up any extra water so we do not leave a big puddle when we lift the conditioner at the end. So now we finish the lap and are headed for the open doors. We turn the make water down to real low, now off though or it will leave a noticeable path on the ice. So we slow as we near the doors. Off goes the pump, off goes the make water, off goes both of the augers, up comes the conditioner and off the ice we go. Now our help is clearing the little pile of slush we left behind.

We pull the machine to a spot in front of the pit. We check to make sure the pit is open and then we raise the dump tank which is now full of snow and ice. It slides out and with any skill you hit it right on. If not so skilled then time to close the tank, turn off the machine and get a shovel to push the snow into the pit. Then close the pit and pull the machine into a spot over the pit. Turn off the machine. Remove the covers from the back of the conditioner and wash out the slush in the augers. Not everyone does it but it does eliminate a possible problem if the slush freezes and is stuck there for the next make. Replace the covers. Make any notations in the log book, such as time of make and how much ice was in the tank. Then check the wash water tank and basket. Fill and clean if needed. Then I always put the hose in the machine for the make water to remind myself that it needed some before I went out again.

That is a basic ice make and beginning of a day on the machine. I will tell you driving the machine can be a lot of fun when you get the hang out of it and making a nice sheet of ice is a great feeling. Things can go wrong and for those times you need to be ready but thankfully they are very rare. I hope this helped with your dream of driving the zamboni. Anyone can learn if given the proper setting, time, and patience.