Dry shaving for great ice

"Dry shaves" are part of the standard REALice maintenance routine. More ​arenas are dry shaving their ice first thing each morning to set them up for success all day long.

Steven Wolf, Spartan Arena's Director of Athletics, says they've made it a best practice to try and dry shave their ice first thing each morning.

"That sets us up for great ice all day long," he says.

Here at REALice, we love to hear about what our users are doing and share their experiences. And we are always talking about dry shaving, and how it's critical to great ice -- even when you're first building your ice up or adding REALice to your facility halfway through the season.

Better Ice
"Dry shaving is not really a money saver, it just gives us better ice," he says.

"Dry shaving gets the impurities off the ice," says Håkan Grönlund of H2OVortex, the worldwide distributor of REALice. "As the ice freezes, the impurities find their way to the surface. Dry shaving takes those away and gets rid of many of the scars in the ice."

Wolf says this best practice is an additional improvement to what was already "good ice" before they implemented the dry-shave practice. In addition to removing the scars and impurities, they're removing the little layer of frost on the surface of the ice that forms while it was resting overnight.

The Spartan Arena is owned by Castleton University in Rutland, VT. This is the fifth season for REALice in their single-pad facility, which was originally purchased to combat slow ice caused by well water. You can read more about that journey here. ​