BY RYAN WELLICOME
Red Deer Express
City council passed a motion to allocate $138,000 of savings to improve the CanPak Ice Complex 2 envelope and roof this past Monday.
The request, presented to council by Acting CAO and Director of Operations and Planning Matthew Goudy, was accepted in a 6-1 vote.
“What’s been proposed is a new roof system that goes right over top of the current roof that adds additional insulation to the roof as well and would be, essentially, a complete new roof,” said Engineering Services Manager Jordan Thompson.
Ice Complex 2’s current envelope – essentially, the building’s shell that separates outside from inside – consists of un-insulated metal clad walls that, over the years, have been spot repaired with mismatched panels. With the walls currently un-insulated, energy costs are kept higher in order to reach and maintain an ideal building temperature. Thompson proposed new metal cladding that would match the rest of the building’s colour and insulation of metal clad walls to improve the building’s energy efficiency.
Over a number of years, the facility’s maintenance staff have reported water leakage in the complex’s mono-slope metal roof. The report attributed this to dried out screw hole gaskets. The proposal detailed a design for a new roof to be constructed over top of the existing roof. The proposed roof system consists of standing seams for weather tightness, roof panel clips to accommodate thermal expansion and contraction and supporting structural members that could allow minimum impact on the current roof and are adaptable to the current roof design.
The new roof will also be insulated, thereby providing an extra layer of insulation with that of the current roof.
Goudy also added that the roof and envelope improvements would take place separately from the current renovations and would not affect the rec reno’s timeline.
Councillor Peter Bouwsema showed support for the idea saying, “I really do like it.
“I think that’s a very good thing to do. It appears to not affect any of our financial obligations. It’s all there ready because we have the savings amount,” he said.
Bouwsema then made the motion to allocate the requested funds while Councillor Reuben Konnik supported it.
“I would echo Councillor Bouwsema’s sentiments. I think it’s a terrific idea. Having sat in that back ice for five years, it is cold,” he said.
As a side note, Konnik also asked if the portion of 54th Ave. in front of the sportsplex would be ready for bus traffic come Sept. 1st, to which Thompson replied that it would, in fact, be ready.
As part of the overall update presented to council, Goudy claimed that unforeseen circumstances have created some delay.
“We have unfortunately experienced a number of unforeseen hurdles in the project and so we have had to do some fairly significant structural improvements and deal with foundation that wasn’t properly reclaimed and abandoned in the past,” he said.
“That unfortunately has pushed us back a couple of weeks from our intended close date for the project which will now be January 20th.”
He did note that obligations to user groups are not affected, apart from possibly having to enter the arena at an alternate location.
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