Okay, this year I will be dragging the hose down to the pond and just using our regular outdoor spigot to resurface. This is a cold water spigot but I have heard that warm water is better to use.

Does warm water really make the big a difference in the quality of ice? The cold water will have to do for this winter but toying with the idea of adding a warm water spigot next summer if I can justify it.

Hey Joey - welcome to the forums!

This is a very timely post as I just had our hot/cold spigot installed this past Monday. Obviously I haven't tried it yet. I've used nothing but cold water the last several years and I've had some stellar ice. That said, my reasoning for putting in the hot/cold spigot is that there MUST be a reason why zambonis use exclusively hot, right? So once we have ice, in the next few weeks, I'm going to do an experiment. I'll homeboni half the rink using hot water and half the rink using cold, then compare. Look for it in a blog post sometime this winter!

Yeah, I am curious to see how that turns out.

Also interested if you have any issues with the hose freezing up faster with the warm water as opposed to the cold, as I heard that is the case.

Good luck!

if our ice surface is a lil snowy or skate marked up pretty good we'll try and use some hot or at least warm water to resurface. we think it helps to melt in a lil bit and bond to the existing ice. it tends to freeze a lil faster too. but cold water works pretty good if we're cleaning it up for the night and wont be on it till the next day. if joe doesn't care i'll shamelessly plug my youtube acct sometime and show our zamboni in action. works pretty good.

If you are able to, resurface and spray with hot water. As strange as it sounds hot water freezes faster than cold water due to whats called Mpemba effect. The chemistry behind it is somewhat complicated but it does work.

Hot water not only freezes faster but it will help smooth out any uneven areas do to its melting capabilities as well as cleans the ice. As mentioned in another post it also works better if you have a layer of snow on the ice because it will melt the snow.

As far as flooding goes, i would also like to recommend flooding at night or when the wind is down, wind creates ripples in the ice (hot water helps get rid of them). Also do not "flood" the rink, simply put a light coat of water down several times a day and your ice will turn out better.

Good luck this season and happy pond hockey to all!

Hmmmmm.......starting to sound more and more like I have a outdoor hot water spigot in my future. :)

The other good quality of Hot Vs. Cold resurface is that when you use cold water, occasionally the ice will peel away in layers. Using hot water prevents this from happening. However, if the climate in which you live has fairly warm temps by day this is usually not an issue. I have found that the "layering" becomes more present as temps stay colder - like down around zero for the entire day.

We saw some had some questions regarding modifications
Especially regarding using rubber instead of a towel
Click link below where we have photos of our rink rake posted



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