Last November the Manitou arena committee received a used vegetable storage chiller and condenser hoping to transform it into an ice plant.

0 which put us over our goal for getting a plant installed and operational. Back in July they started putting all the pieces together, all the pumps. They had to change out all the old headers and change a bunch of the plumbing and bring in new electrical. Last week we fired it up for the first time. It’s been working-actually exceeding our expectations over the last week, even with this hot weather.”

It’s a second life for this unique unit.

“The ice plant came out of a potato storage facility in Carman,” says McLean. “In speaking with the company that builds the unit, they helped us change over some of the components to turn it basically from a big refrigerator into a freezer. With them we worked that out and made a couple changes to make it so that it puts out colder temperatures.”

McLean says it cost much less to adapt a vegetable chiller for their purpose than to buy a new ice plant. Now that the retrofit is complete, the arena committee has settled on a unique solution to house the unit.

“There [are] groups in Manitou that required some storage. So we went out and purchased a sea can and changed it into part mechanical room part storage and insulated the mechanical room side for the ice plant and then it's cold storage on the other side. This winter we’ll have probably two or three community groups using it for winter storage.”

A sea can is a steel container used to transport goods on ships.

McLean says they’re just beginning to flood now, with the goal of producing a finished ice surface by the middle of October, weather permitting.

The committee is thankful for the community support that helped complete the project in such a relatively short time.