LV
LV

Pasta Island ice rink in Jelgava, Latvia

A roof was built for an existing open-air ice hockey and skating rink to protect it from rain and snow.

  • Location
    Jelgava (Latvia)
  • Year of construction
    2017/2018
  • Dimensions
    Building area: 1163.8 m2, roof span: 22.6 m
  • Client
    Municipality of Jelgava
  • Architect
    Ineta Buka

The role of ZAZA TIMBER Engineering (previously: Rodentia) in this project:

- Structural design developmentof timber load-bearing structures
- Detail drawings
- Technical drawings for manufacture and assembly.

The most significant challenges were finding a solution for the bending moment connection and finding a suitable solution for the foundations, bearing in mind that the site was in a “jungle” of city utilities and other buildings: extremely close to the main water pipeline, pressure sewage, electricity cables, a changing room and a bridge.

As the roof structure was built on the existing site of the ice rink, we could not use ties and a foundation lever for horizontal support forces. Our solution was to use inclined injection piles for vertical and horizontal support forces.

The roof structure is made up of a frame joined to glulam purlins. One glulam frame consists of a curved beam which is connected to the tapered column by a moment-resisting connection on the lower side. On the higher side, a pinned connection is used to connect the beam with the tapered column. The frame span is 24.70 m.

The bending resisting eave connection is made of steel parts and fully threaded timber screws. Plywood is used to transfer contact pressure more evenly between the glulam elements as well as plywood shear keys to reduce the usage of steel.

When designing an open ice rink, the lightness of the timber and membrane roofing had to be taken into account, which in combination with the island’s dominant winds generate uplift loads on the structure and its foundations.

ZAZA TIMBER Production (previously: IKTK) manufactured the glulam structures for the ice rink roof from spruce. It consists of 123 curved and straight parts with a total volume of 112 m3. The design mainly used 24 cm-wide boards. The strength class of the structures is GL28h.

The parts consist of curved roof beams, columns of variable and constant cross-section, and purlins of various sizes. The largest parts were the roof beams: curved, 25 m long, 1.2 m tall and 24 cm wide.

The factory did all the necessary milling, drilling and sawing, as well as embedding the steel parts.

ZAZA TIMBER Construction (previously: Igate Būve) provided the complete construction cycle: foundations, roof structure, wind mesh, electrics, lighting, rainwater drainage and landscaping.

We built the roof around the existing ice rink site.

Before assembling the timber structure, we built deep foundations: 86 injection bars 7 m deep, did all concreting works.

We oranized special transportation for oversized parts, assembled the timber structures (in seven days), and inserted additional steel parts to support the roof membranes and to ensure horizontal stability.

We used Remess HK Lasure and Adler platinum paint to treat the parts which were not exposed to the elements.

Construction time: 7 months.