The ice gets cut and flooded on a schedule — every 90 minutes of use on a busy public-skate day, every hour under hockey. Ice hours divided by the interval, rounded up, is how many trips the resurfacer makes. Each trip lays down a fixed volume of hot water, so multiplying gives the gallons the boiler has to heat and the tank has to hold.
14 hours of ice at a 90-minute interval is 9.33 floods, so 10 trips; at 150 gallons each that is 1,500 gallons of hot water.
The example
Three kinds of day. The interval is a policy set by the ice manager; the gallons per flood depends on the machine and how thick a cut it is making.
| A | B | C | D | E | F | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Day | Ice hours | Interval (min) | Gal/flood | Floods | Gallons |
| 2 | Saturday public | 14 | 90 | 150 | 10 | 1,500 |
| 3 | Weekday hockey | 8.5 | 60 | 150 | 9 | 1,350 |
| 4 | Tournament | 16 | 75 | 120 | 13 | 1,560 |
The formula
Two columns, because the floods number is a staffing question and the gallons number is a boiler question:
How it works
Convert, divide, round, multiply:
B2*60turns ice hours into minutes so they match the interval./C2divides by the interval in minutes. 840 minutes over 90 is 9.33.ROUNDUP(...,0)makes it 10, because the last partial block of ice time still gets a flood at the end of it.*D2multiplies trips by gallons per flood. Most resurfacers carry 150 to 250 gallons, and a light cut uses most of a tank.
Add the opening flood if you do one before the first session — many rinks do — by adding 1 to the trips column. And remember each trip is 10 to 15 minutes of machine time that has to fit between sessions.
Try it: interactive demo
Enter the ice hours, the flood interval, and the gallons your resurfacer lays down per pass.
Variations
Machine time per day
Trips times minutes per trip tells you how much of the day the ice is closed for resurfacing.
Water cost
Gallons times your cost per gallon including heating. Hot water for a flood is a real line item in an arena budget.
Pitfalls & errors
Hockey and figure skating want different intervals. If a day mixes both, split it into two rows with two intervals rather than averaging — the average produces a flood count that satisfies neither.
Water quality matters more than volume. If you are budgeting for a treated-water system, the gallons column is exactly the throughput figure the vendor will ask for.
Do not forget the 60. Dividing 14 hours by 90 minutes directly gives 0.16 floods, which rounds up to 1, and the ice is a mess by noon.
Practice workbook
Frequently asked questions
What interval should I use?
Why round up rather than to the nearest?
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