 Poster: A snowHead
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Hi Guys,
I've one week left in the office before I change jobs and so I'm basically not doing anything except day dreaming about snow.
I live in London and with the exception of Hemel Hempsted and Milton Keynes the nearest snow skiing to me is about 7 hours away, if you include getting to the airport, checkin, flight, hire car etc. And not to be too dismissive of the indoor places the runs are just too short to get me interested.
Furthermore, if I travel to a resort for a week it probably costs at least 100 quid for each day on the slopes (in pretty rubbish accommodation) and that is without lessons etc. Therefore if I reckoned I would probably be prepared to spend 100 quid per day in a snow centre that was big enough to excite me.
I wondered if it would be possible/economically viable to roof a fairly deep quarry somewhere in the south east. If there was one of depth about 100m or more you would potentially get a blue slope of 1km a red of 500m and a nice black of 200/300m.
Assuming each person spent 100 per day (or several people spent parts of the day there) and the centre operated all year at full capacity each place would bring in 36000 per year. Therefore if the capacity could be got up to around 2000 people. You'd be looking at taking in 72 million a year. That is without considering the possibility of hotels, restaurants etc.
Obviously there would be millions of objections from environmentalists etc, but we could cover the roof in solar panels, so that on the hottest days sunny days the place would generate a lot of it's own electricity.
What does everyone think? I might do a sketch if I can get away with it!
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I wish I could find the thread where I extolled the virtues of building artificial snow slopes in underground caves.
It was the same thread as that rotating infinite snow turntable. Can anyone find it.
(admin - fix the search function!)
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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I like the thinking! I've been off-roading in Farley Quarry in Shropshire and the idea could almost work. A quarry of 100m depth is pretty big though - that's well over half the height of the BT tower in London.
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Obsessed_intermediate, Have a look for the Eden project that is built in a disused quarry and I vaguely recall lots of problems no least of which was how to get waste water back up to the mains at ground level and also stopping mother nature for filling the place with ground water.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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The rotating disc in a quarry was proposed for the snowdonian slate mines, I think
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yeah drainage at the bottom would be a massive probably, most quarrys are full of water arent they?
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water freezes last I heard
And heat rises....
A big fridge coil in the bottom of the "puddle" mixed with some sawdust(pykrete) would stop the ingress of more water
SIMPELS
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Keep the rock walls as a climbing centre
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Boredsurfing, cantridepete, I'm not sure how big the drainage problem would be as working quarrys appear to operate for years without becoming flooded. Perhaps when they are still being dug out they pump the water out. If that is the case then presumably we could do the same.
I like the idea of having the pistes circle a central area. But a long thin set of pistes hugging the edge of a cliff face would work just as well. Plus it would probably be cheaper to roof.
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Ah, just my favorite sort of run - blue track with a cliff on one side and a big drop on the other!
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| comprex wrote: |
| Keep the rock walls as a climbing centre |
Good luck in getting insurance for that! The EICA Ratho tried and failed. Almost the entire rock face is now covered in artificial climbing wall!
If Ratho is anything to go by, then it would be cheaper to build it out of the quarry anyway.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Work out the volume of air in a quarry 100m deep, 200m wide and 500m long, and then work out the amount of air conditioning plant you would need to keep all of that air below zero degrees C. The cost of running it would be enormous, and prohibitive.
More practical would be to carve a trough down the side of a hill and then cover it over again, which minimises the amount of air above the slope, and keeps the building from being visually intrusive. Do it on the line of a large stream to include hydro-electric power, put solar panels on the roof, plus install ground heat pumps, and you might be able to reduce the energy requirement by 25-30%, but it is still considerable.
How about a water-powered chairlift system? 
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There was a proposal to do this in an opencast coal hole in Northumberland :
http://blueskycounty.co.uk/index.htm
Remember that the ground is generally about 10 deg C so you would need to insulate the bottom and sides and top, not unlike the above ground indoor slopes.
Keeping the air chilled is not related to the volume, but the losses - eg through the skin and the doors and any leaks. The volume only matters when you want to change the temperature eg at initial chilldown. There are some vvery efficient heat exchange systems now that allow you to swap the air (to keep the gas mix good) but keep the heat/cold.
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You know it makes sense.
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Technically, the volume of air is not the most important factor. As once it is cooled down for the first time (or you could just finish the roof in Jan) it is the heat exchanged at the boundaries that counts. Due to some nice geometric relationships the volume tends to increase at a faster rate than surface area as you make a building larger. Therefore, it is all about the quality of the insulation that can be provided.
That said having a massive roof spanning the entire quarry would probably be far too costly. So you would probably end up with a cliff hugging design. Probably a bit doughnut shaped.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Obsessed_intermediate, snap!
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Poster: A snowHead
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If he's going to put a roof over the entire quarry he shouldn't have a problem with water at the bottom - unless he employs the same roofers that I used!
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| paulio wrote: |
I wish I could find the thread where I extolled the virtues of building artificial snow slopes in underground caves.
It was the same thread as that rotating infinite snow turntable. Can anyone find it.
(admin - fix the search function!) |
Found!
http://snowheads.com/ski-forum/viewtopic.php?p=1286836
(admin - there's nothing wrong with the search function! It was me being a div!)
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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lampbus, indeed.
Anyone know of a suitable hole in the ground within a 40min train ride from London?
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for us from the north.....we thought london was a hole 
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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kevindonkleywood, You don't count as you can get in your car and drive to the Cairngorms in 4 hours! Furthermore, London is annoyingly flat for mountain centric people such as myself. Oh to have been brought up in Geneva or Grenoble.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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Thats exactly what they are going to do at Ipswich with Snoasis - A disused cement works quarry with the structure rising above ground level.
Got the planning permission, just waiting for them to start work. Biggest slope in Europe supposidly, so will be able to hold Europa Cup races.
Only 35 mins away from me - should be up and running in a couple of years if they start soon.
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Sweet! Will definitely head over there when it's done.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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kevindonkleywood, need to get better at adding  . Seriously though if I live 4 hours from slopes I would be racking up some serious miles on my car!
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| Quote: |
if I travel to a resort for a week it probably costs at least 100 quid for each day on the slopes (in pretty rubbish accommodation) and that is without lessons etc.
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you'd probably do better working on a better value holiday.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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pam w, really? Lets say you go for a week. Assuming you are going in low season a package deal for 300 p/p is do able. 30 getting to the airport. Throw in ski hire and lift pass 230 easily.
So if you spent no money other than on food (which you would have to spend on at home) you might do the trip for 560. Assuming 6 days on the slopes that is 93 per ski day. My guess of 100 per ski day looks quite reasonable unless you are going for an incredibly cheap trip.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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There was chat of roofing over the dry facility at Edinburgh (Hillend) and covering it in snow. Hasn't got very far. I suspect you would have to excavate (cut n cover) to stop it being too obtrusive, presumably it could be grassed/gorse/heather and rocked over.
Advantage is we already have a chairlift, tho a nice new detachable one would be good.
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You know it makes sense.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Obsessed_intermediate, someone's already thought of this:
www.snoasis.co.uk
Whether or not it actually happens though remains to be seen there are issues over the wording of the planning consent. More info here (but this site is quite possibly biased!):
http://www.snoasisconcern.com/
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Poster: A snowHead
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Funny - I think this is basically what they did at Landgraaf. That area has a lot of quarries and they just stuck a lid on the side of a hill rather than building an elevated building at an angle.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| anotherproblem wrote: |
Thornyhill, how do you fancy funding me a couple of trips still be cheaper than last year 
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It started as a once in a lifetime plan to visit New York for Christmas. By applying a careful process of ski logic we thought we should have a week on the slopes as well as they were within easy driving distance, but we didn't think that skiing and jet lag would be much fun, so two weeks skiing might be better, but a season pass was the same price as a two week lift pass over Christmas and new year, so we might as well get a season pass, but we better ski a bit more to justify the cost of the season pass. Seems simple really. Didn't get to see New York at all though ... 
Anyway - would the biggest problem not be insulating the ground. Ice rinks have a fairly complex sub structure to stop heat ingress from the ground and to stop the ground below from freezing, cracking and falling apart. It is an expensive process on a flat piece of ground the size of an icerink, so I would imagine that trying to do it down the side of a quarry would cost about the same as saving the banking system.
As they have shown in Dubai, there are virtually no problems that you can't overcome if you have enough money, but if you spend that much building it, you will have to charge so much for people to use it that the cost of use will be prohibitive.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Why Snoasis isn't being sited in one of the quarries next to Bluewater or Lakeside amazes me.
Cost per day? Our Jan Tignes trip works out at £77per day on the mountain all in. Our short breaks are coming in at between £100 and £130 pdotm.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Upper Beeding ! I'm sure that was the place. There was a plan put forward really early on, Tamworth was possibly finished by then, but Keynes wasn't built and Beckton was underway. I think I had to read about it in the Daily Mail magazine because I wasn't even web connected back then.
Do they still put a snow cannon in Chatham submarine dock in cold weather ?
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Problem with going down into the ground (as in a quarry or a mine) might be be the insulation - the temperature gradient (the deeper you go the warmer it gets - as I experienced in my Cornish tin mining days) is about +2.5 - 3.0C per 100m, so I assume it would take a lot more energy to cool than it would on the side of a hill.
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On the scale of more normal snowdomes, London's best chance of a dome is still Beckton Alps in the Docklands. The foundations are already in (they went in years ago) so it is just a matter of finance to finish it.
For me, though, Hemel is probably closer (I got back to London - the southern edge of Hampstead Heath - in 31 minutes after the last bash).
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| Quote: |
Why Snoasis isn't being sited in one of the quarries next to Bluewater or Lakeside amazes me.
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Because the developer had bought the land in Suffolk for resi development, then had to work out what to do with the quarry - building a leisue facilty such as an indoor slope also helps with planning. If you're interested in the background you can read more here:
http://www.ewssite.co.uk/Snoasis/pdf/EWS-role.pdf
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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| alex_heney wrote: |
Unless by saying "January" you actually mean New year, then that should be very easy to beat. Though I'm not sure how you get 20 ski days - most trips give you 6 ski days each, and 20 doesn't divide evenly by 6. |
10th January - OK 24 ski days, and we are in Northern Ireland, so we always pay a bit more for flights, but £1789 for HB accomodation (kids are free for accomodation but pay for flights) £200 for lift pass and skis per adult. free lift passes for kids. £70.00 for skis and boots per kid. so £2300 for a basic package, add in car parking at the airport, insurance, lunch on the mountain and you are back to £100.00 per ski day. We could do Bride les Bains self catering, (cheapest package in France) for £2200.00 including passes, skis etc, but you need to add brekky and dinner costs as well, taking you back to slightly over £100.00 per ski day.......
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Noggy, good point.
That might explain why the Chill Factore is hollow underneath, air having less heat capacity it's basically a big thermos on end.
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FAQ
