Making a skating rink
© Wayne Dawe
There are two major techniques for building a backyard ice rink, the traditional method and the high-tech method. Both methods require to find a relatively flat spot to place the rink and to tromp down the snow in the area where you want the rink. In the high-tech method, you then ring the area with scrap two by fours and use a large plastic sheet as a liner. Fill the plastic sheet with an inch or two of water, and, if you have a suitably cold night, the next day you have a rink. It's important not to use the cheap black plastic unless you want no grass at all next spring.
The more traditional method requires you to spray the tromped down snow base that you prepared above with water over a few days to "seal" the snow base. It's important that you also make some banks around the future ice surface and spray these with water so that you have something to hold the water in when you start adding it in more volume. One rink constructor stated that he could get about one-sixteenth of an inch of water onto his rink between periods in the hockey game.
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