£300000 to install and between £1500-£2000 a day to run, that's the hot water pipe version although an english company installed an electric undersoil heating system at Ajax, not sure how much that would cost.
Been up to measure and my bathroom is just under an acre in the East Wing, and one of the staff left the windows open so it is open to the elements ;-).
You can have undersoil heating so your pitch is perfect, but still have to postpone your game like Derby today, or us a few years ago, because the roads and pavements around the ground are too dangerous...
A slightly mad mate of mine couldn't work out how it cost so much to run so he installed his own in his garden,probably about a third of the size of a pitch.His worked off coal with electric water pumps and seemed to work quite well and wasn't that expensive to run.Don t know if it still going as he would have lost interest once he had proved his point.
Couldn't we just pay some of London's homeless to sleep top to toe on the pitch on cold nights? I'm sure a job lot of sleeping bags, a few bags of H and and a 100 crates of special brew would be well under 60k.
Maybe the solution is to invest in the same sort of frost covers as Carlisle have which I'm sure I read work up to -10. We probably only need these for the half of the pitch that doesn't get the sun and we could double up the other hald with the old covers.
The club hires frost covers when it is predicted to be very cold. I suspect they didn't bother this time which is why it was cancelled. But as others have said, being in a valley means that the surrounding areas will often lead to a cancellation anyway.
Gotta say if it would have cost us only £250k to install when we were in the Prem, that seems like absurd short-sightedness and decision making from the board given that we spent that sum on speculatively signing Martin Christensen, and probably on a single signing on fee for hasselbaink or faye etc, it is frustrating
Gotta say if it would have cost us only £250k to install when we were in the Prem, that seems like absurd short-sightedness and decision making from the board given that we spent that sum on speculatively signing Martin Christensen, and probably on a single signing on fee for hasselbaink or faye etc, it is frustrating
I think you can assume that is the view internally, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.
they could cut the pitch up in to small pieces then keep it in the airing cupbard. stitch it back in for matches. pre-match entertaiment piecing the valley jigsaw back together.
Gotta say if it would have cost us only £250k to install when we were in the Prem, that seems like absurd short-sightedness and decision making from the board given that we spent that sum on speculatively signing Martin Christensen, and probably on a single signing on fee for hasselbaink or faye etc, it is frustrating
I think you can assume that is the view internally, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Indeed, thanks Airman. Just surprising as we did / do seem generally quite forward thinking in terms of developing facilities / academy / training ground etc, but I guess everybody makes mistakes and it only seems to have been post-prem days since the severe weather conditions have become so regular. Can only remember the one game (West Ham New Years day) getting cancelled in the prem so I guess maybe it didn't seem like that much of an issue at the time.
As others have also mentioned it's no longer just about the pitch but the surrounding areas too.
I guess "D'urso's match" and perhaps Saturday too would have gone ahead with undersoil heating but if Charlton Church Lane (say) was an ice rink would the Club be allowed to play the match even if the pitch was fit? 'Elf and safety and all that...
Dont see the point in spending so much money on stuff like that really. Especially as it only really affects 1/2 games per season. Look at Derby (?), they used hay/straw. And that oversoil heating nothing wrong with how that was coming along St Elens or whatever they was called.
When youve got a ton of money like most of the prem teams, then yeah, why not. But if it came to it theres no reason why we couldnt get the burning barrels out on the pitch.
Gotta say if it would have cost us only £250k to install when we were in the Prem, that seems like absurd short-sightedness and decision making from the board given that we spent that sum on speculatively signing Martin Christensen, and probably on a single signing on fee for hasselbaink or faye etc, it is frustrating
I think you can assume that is the view internally, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Indeed, thanks Airman. Just surprising as we did / do seem generally quite forward thinking in terms of developing facilities / academy / training ground etc, but I guess everybody makes mistakes and it only seems to have been post-prem days since the severe weather conditions have become so regular. Can only remember the one game (West Ham New Years day) getting cancelled in the prem so I guess maybe it didn't seem like that much of an issue at the time.
You mean like our state of the art ticketing system and barcode reading turnstiles . . . In fact the club has often been a bit short-sighted about long-term investment in the stadium, while focusing available resources on the team and sometimes the whims of the incumbent manager. Not saying that was always wrong, just that the idea we were generally ahead of the curve is a bit of a simplification.
The board which turned down undersoil heating also decided to build itself an extension to the boardroom over reception one summer, which was not a project that generated any obvious commercial revenue AFAIK.
Comments
(BTW I agree that we should get it, and I'm sure that the club have looked at the ROI carefully - second in line after the potholes?)
The quotes on that page are dated 2010, I'm sure our system had packed up well before then?
pre-match entertaiment piecing the valley jigsaw back together.
I guess "D'urso's match" and perhaps Saturday too would have gone ahead with undersoil heating but if Charlton Church Lane (say) was an ice rink would the Club be allowed to play the match even if the pitch was fit? 'Elf and safety and all that...
Especially as it only really affects 1/2 games per season.
Look at Derby (?), they used hay/straw. And that oversoil heating nothing wrong with how that was coming along St Elens or whatever they was called.
When youve got a ton of money like most of the prem teams, then yeah, why not. But if it came to it theres no reason why we couldnt get the burning barrels out on the pitch.
Operation Fire
The board which turned down undersoil heating also decided to build itself an extension to the boardroom over reception one summer, which was not a project that generated any obvious commercial revenue AFAIK.