Waterloo, ON Canada
January 2005
38' x 21'
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Paul writes: "What a labour of love this has been, I have been bitten by the rink bug hard. This is my second year and I am getting closer all the time to doing it well. Last year I went without a liner because I started too late, I packed the snow down by dragging my kids aroung on their sled while wearing snowshoes. This worked pretty well and with a lot of water and patience we had our first rink. After running a lot of water over my side walk and chipping away inches of ice it was time to get a liner this year. I used 1x12 rough pine for my low side, its cheaper than the 2x12's and really is 1 inch by 12 inches, it has held up very well. I used 2x6 on the high side and for the end boards I used various sheets of plywood that I had around to keep the pucks from leaving the ice behind the net. My friend found great plastic sheeting for us at the TSC store, it came in a 40x100 foot roll and that did rinks for 3 of us with lots to spare. The roll cost about $200. I learned quickly that you need to overlap the plastic big time over the sides of the wood, I just tacked it to the top and started filling....just because the plastic seems fitted to the ground doesn't mean that it is, the weight of the water and the snow melting under the plastic made it sink quite a bit. I had to do some creative work to keep the water in, during a melt I pulled up some of the low spots and put lumber under the plastic to basically raise the ground level and therefore the top edge of the plastic. I have learned that it is best to pierce your plastic as little as possible, I will be leaving the staple gun in the garage next year, it is brutal cleaning ice off the sidewalk after the water leaks through the numerous staple holes. I made my own ice resurfacer using 3/4 inch conduit pipe and joiners from Home Depot, go to the sprinkler section for a lot of the parts that you might need, it cost me about $25. I added the best part after the original construction and a few uses, it is a hose attachment with a valve that you can control; no more kinking the hose to control the water flow. We had a rough start for weather, I put the water in on December 27th and we got one skate in before I went through the ice while flooding and it eventually all melted during a warm spell to start the new year. Over the past 3 weeks it has been very cold and we have been skating quite a bit. I put in my daughter's minor hockey logo at center ice by laminating the design that I copied. It has less than an inch of ice over it so we are having trouble with the ice chipping away on top of it every time we skate, I will need to plant it deeper in the ice in the future or more likely just put it up as a logo on the boards. The rink is awesome and a great way to do something cool for my kids Grace(6) and Zachary(3). Thanks for the great website and all of the helpful tips." Nice job Paul, especially the logo. Thanks for the pics. |
Last Updated on Sept 11, 2005