J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by tino_11

I don't book so early cos I'm lazy.

I love idiot watching on ski buses, especially the idiots who are not prepared for the idiots who climb on with skis on shoulders and get clobbered in the process. I'm sure this is the real reason for helmets.

Saying that, tunnels are the worst.

Cheers SwingBeep,

I have heard about this (or rather my other half) whilst shopping in the North Face shop in Zermatt. The girl mentioned you get reduction on just about everything to the order of around 10%. Is there a bigger discount with the bergbahnen? If not then the Italy option still sounds good value!!

Been doing a wee bit online browsing and discovered that an International season pass (Zermatt - Valle d'Aosta) is 1704 CHF (1248 EUR) if bought in Switzerland, but significantly cheaper at 1000 EUR if bought in Italy. Does anyone know if there is anything to stop me doing the latter?

From what I can see the physical process of making the snow is chemical free, however I assume there are chemicals used in the water cooling system which is supplemental.

These are ferociously power hungry bits of kit, and not practical for keeping pistes open. However they may have some application in shaping parks etc for competition when snow is sparce. According the companies own literature there are only 2 of them (smaller of the two models) in the world, Zermatt and Pitztal. They are bloody huge things.

 
The system needs cooled water to run the condenser and keep the deep vacuum which provides the cooling for the feed water at any temperature.

 

With feed water @ 4.5°C the unit has a capacity of 480ton/day, which I can work out is 24 hours from the power usage stats on the website.  For each 1deg increase in feed water temperature the efficiency of the unit is decreased by 1.5%, so providing feed water at say 25°C means that cumulatively you are down to 355ton/day, using the same power as required for 480ton/day at 4.5°C (74% efficiency).

 

Given that 480ton/day is equal to 800m3 of snow, then at 25°C you will get 592m3 of snow.  This will use 12.6kW per ton of snow which gives coverage of 1.67m3 of snow. 

 

Given that you need a 2400m3 of snow to create the strip described in the article (200m long, 20m wide, 0.6m deep), this would use 18108kW of power, taking 6.8 days and costing 2445 GBP assuming 10p per unit.

 

Now that is all well and good, but only considers the cost turning the feed water into snow.  According to the technical specs.  This requires a water feed supply rate of 20m3/hour, which is quite feasible if you have a nice reservoir on hand.  However as mentioned at the top, the system needs cooled water to maintain the vacuum and condense the feed water to create snow.  The required flow rate of this cooling water is a whopping 480m3 an hour, which cannot be supplied by your 25°C reservoir, and therefore must be cooled first.  Taking the disclaimer from the companies own website….

 

The above power consumption refers to the VIM unit only and does not include the supporting cooling system, (Chiller, Cooling Tower and Cooling Tower circulation pump)

 

……I can assume this is a closed system, however is going to require a hell of a lot of power to cool the water which will ultimately be used to,..wait for it,….cool water.

 

This further increases the cost, and may go some distance to explaining why Snowdomes are so bleeding expensive.  The flip side of all this, if you believe in it is, that this frivolous energy consumption (similar to air-conditioning a baseball stadium for 6 to 8 hours as I witnessed in Arizona), warms the environment and potentially causes……yep, you got it,…..a lack of snow.

 

 

 

 

Disclaimer:  I am not entirely 100% sure about my cost calculation above, but it's safe to say it's bloody expensive. Suitable maybe for extreme cases, but we are not gonna be sliding down the highstreet in July anytime soon.

Can anyone tell me the science behind creating snow at 25degC without the use of beefy chemicals?

Curious.

They have horses in Saas Fee, I saw one.