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Making a skating rink

© Wayne Dawe

Don't let the title scare you off. I have some sites for those of you not living in cold weather climates, but first I want to tell you about my rink adventures. My kids got skates from their grandma last year but their mom and I were too busy (or lazy) to take them out and teach them how to ice skate. My older son's school class went to a local arena last week for a skating field trip and, though Colin tried his best, it was apparent that he needed some more practice. I decided it was time to get out the trusty garden hose and make a backyard rink. Now it's been about 20 years since I last made a rink so I went searching on the Internet for information to jar my foggy memory. Other than a few post to the misc.rural newsgroup, all I could find was a few sites that wanted to sell me a plastic bag to fill with water. So for the benefit for those who have also procrastinated and need instructions, I will summarize.

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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