Frost protection for Serneke Arena - Skidome

Skidome was forced to close temporarily due to frost heaving. This had caused part of the building to rise, the floor to slope and minor cracks to appear. 

In the company's newsletter, Charlotte Sandberg Oberdorfer, property development manager at Serneke, explains the background to the problems:

A combination of reasons led to frost heaving. One of the main reasons was down to poor drainage, which had caused water to remain in the draining tarmac layer and occasionally rise towards the cold foundation slab of the ski hall. Over the years, this has caused an ice layer to build up in the ground bed under the building. This in turn resulted in frost heave due to the fact that frozen water takes up more space than in liquid form. The frost heave has been rectified after our actions.

Ebeco's task was thus to prevent further frost heave in the future by installing frost protection under the insulation. We supplied a total of 7500 m of heating cable for the project where, among other things, Multiflex 20 was installed. The heating cable covered an area of over 2000 m² with c/c 20 cm which was laid directly on the concrete slab and then sand, insulation and cooling loops. The entire system is controlled by the EB-Therm 800 thermostat, which is mounted in specially ordered electrical enclosures to cope with the special climate in the Skidome. The ski hall maintains a temperature of around -5 degrees all year round. 

Despite the holiday season, we were able to deliver and install materials in less than three weeks in collaboration with professional electricians from Elcenter in Gothenburg. 

In October, Skidome opened its doors to skiers once again!