BackyardRink.net

Build a Backyard Rink in Six Easy Steps

Last Updated: 11 December 2015

Asking "How to build a rink" is kinda like asking "how to make meatloaf." Everyone has their own recipe and they all work. It is a matter of what works for you. If you have an unlimited budget and are not as handy you can buy all the stuff you need from places like NiceRink. If you live somewhere REAL cold all you have to do is flood your yard and watch it freeze. This article is for those in the middle of the two extremes, those that are handy enough to do it themselves, but know when a good quality product is a good idea as well.

Winter 2015 - 2016

Last Updated: 11 December 2015

Season 11 is off to a slow start.

December 11, 2015
The frame is not up yet, things have been a bit busy. It has also been very warm here in the Northeast, so no real rush to get the frame assembled. Crossing my fingers that the remaining 50' of the roll from last year is in better shape that the first 50' was, but I am prepared to deal with the potential slices on the folds (unlike last year).

Winter 2014 - 2015

Last Updated: 05 January 2015

Season 10 is off to a..., well not so great start.

The frame went up the way it always does and then the waiting began. Looking at the temps I decided to drop in the liner and hope the forecasts were right. After about an hour of filling, with two hoses, I noticed water outside of the frame, NOT GOOD! After a close inspection it appears that the liner has razor cuts along one of the folds. Out comes the submersible pump and three 45-50 gallon barrels. I took enough water out to inspect the entire length of the fold and low and behold it is all the way down the fold.

Measuring Water and Ice Depth

Last Updated: 11 December 2015

You know you need a minimum of 3.5 inches of water when you fill your rink and you know that a couple kids can go out on the ice when you have 2.5 inches of ice. The question is how to measure these depths easily. I have made two tools for just such a thing and here they are...

Brackets

Last Updated: 16 December 2013

I know I have stated that I started out by using 2x2 stakes to hold my frame and they worked "fine" for the first couple years. I then moved to 1/2" rebar and again they served me well. Now "well" is a relative term here. By that I mean that I never had a blowout because they didn't hold up to the pressure of holding back a little under 6,000 gallons of water. I did however have the frame lean from the pressure.

Bumper Caps

Last Updated: 21 December 2013

Are your boards standing above the surface of the rink? Are they shorter than four feet? You may want to pad them with something in the event someone falls on or near the boards.

Kickplates

Last Updated: 11 December 2015

Protecting the liner from skates, pucks, shovels and so on has become a pretty important thing for me.As I reuse my liner for at least a second season it is important to keep it hole free (well as much as I can anyway)....

Ice Resurfacer

Last Updated: 22 October 2013

We have all seen the machine at the local rink or at a Hockey game that cleans the ice (at companies request their name has been removed from this article as to "protect" their brand name). We all know what it does (to a certain extent). A homemade version will do some of the same ...

Repairing a large hole in the ice

Last Updated: 01 January 2014

Sooner or later someone is going to try and walk out onto your rink when they really shouldn't have. The result will be a mess that may seem impossible to recover from. Someone did that to me and I got lucky and things warmed up before the rink froze again and things worked themselves out. If you are not so lucky, here is what you can do to speed up the repair.

Season 11 is off to a slow start.

Season 10 is off to a..., well not so great start.

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