KSC's Ice Melter

If you’ve been climbing over the snow piles on campus, or venting your frustration when you find half the spaces in the parking lot taken up with mounds of plowed snow, you’ll appreciate this contraption. It’s the new KSC ice-melting machine. It’s been a couple of years in the making, but it’s finally perfected and on the job of removing much of the campus’ excess snow.

It sprang from a demonstration at the City of Keene that Bud Windsor, assistant director, Physical Plant, attended. He saw a machine that allowed cities to melt much of the snow that was plowed into huge piles that then either had to be trucked away or left perhaps for months hogging valuable real estate. Bud realized that the College could sure use such a machine, but the cost was prohibitive: nearly a quarter of a million dollars!

So he brought a brochure back to campus, and the guys at the plumbing and heat plant departments started building one. Forget the $250K - they had an axle and a dump truck bed, and bought and scrounged a few more parts and built the machine for somewhere around $30K. That’s quite a savings, and another great example of KSC’s Yankee frugality and do-it-yourself ethic.

According to Bill Rymes, supervisor-Plumbing/Heating Physical Plant, the melter can easily liquify 25 2.5-yard bucket loads of packed snow, reducing much of the expensive trucking that had to be done in the past. Now, the snow is turned into pretty clean water that goes down the storm drain, instead of adding to the burden at the City’s snow dump. Better schedule your sugar-on- snow party while there’s still some left!