I built my first backyard rink in 2010 when my kids were 11, 8, 6, 4 and 3, and today they would tell you that that rink and the ones I have built since have been my greatest dad accomplishments. Our homemade rinks have provided hundreds of hours of winter enjoyment for my children and have transformed us into a bona fide "hockey family." But constructing that first rink was a momentous challenge, and before embarking on such an ambitious project, I wish I’d known the five basic steps for successful rink building:
1 Choose a flat space
The first step in building a backyard rink actually comes way, way before you buy materials or start constructing anything. For the greatest skating pleasure with the least amount of work, make sure to buy a home that has a flat outdoor space of any size. If buying a new home with a perfectly flat outdoor space isn’t an option for you, read on.
The laws of physics rule all homemade outdoor rinks, and the No. 1 law that must be respected is the law of gravity. Unlike backyard soccer and football fields, which are relatively unaffected by a yard’s contours, outdoor rinks are dramatically altered by even the slightest inclines. The surface of your rink will always be flat, but if your yard is even a little bit crooked, the rink’s depth will fluctuate at various points. The deeper the water, the more vulnerable the rink will be to changes in the weather and the higher the boards will need to be. If you don’t know how flat your yard is, you’ll know about an hour after turning on the hoses. Either the whole floor of your rink will be covered evenly with water (this is ideal), or you’ll have a pool on one end that keeps getting deeper while no water flows to the other end (this is not ideal).
2 Assemble the materials
No matter how much research and planning you do ahead of time, unless you are a professional contractor, you will probably need to make at least four trips to Home Depot when building your first rink. So much of the process is a trial-and-error mind-bender, and you won’t know exactly what you need until you’re faced with a construction problem that can’t be solved with the materials and tools at hand.
That said, here are the basic materials I use to build my backyard rink:
▸ Wood boards. Mine are 2 feet high, a half-inch thick, and 3 to 5 feet long. In total, I have 32 boards. Depending on the size of the rink, some years I use them all, some years I don’t.
▸ Steel stakes. These stakes hold up the boards once you’ve poured numerous liquid tons of water into your backyard plastic baggie. I recommend enough stakes so that you can place them about 3 feet apart around the entire perimeter of the rink. The length of the stakes depends upon the height of your boards. I use 3-foot stakes and I drive them a little more than one foot into the earth so they’re firmly entrenched and don’t protrude above the boards.
â–¸ Corner braces (two per corner), tie plates (two per sideboard seam) and wood screws (four per tie plate).
â–¸ Mini spring clamps. These keep the liner intact while filling it with water (about one per six feet of boards).
▸ Plastic liner. This must be large enough to cover the floor of your rink and also to line the inside of the walls and go over the top of the boards. The liner’s thickness matters, too; I use a white, 7 mm polyethylene sheet.
3 Gather your tools
Some of the most important work that goes into building a first-rate rink takes place at a desk with a blank piece of paper, a pencil, a ruler and a calculator. Other required tools include: tape measure; hand sledgehammer; power drill; plastic garden stakes (one for each corner); string; and hoses. Optional tools include: small chair or stool. You’ll spend at least a few hours screwing the boards together, and you can squat, kneel or sit. I prefer to sit; wood saw. If you’ve planned the exact size of your rink ahead of time and you’ve had the boards custom-cut to fit your plan — and your plan ends up working for the space you have chosen — you won’t need the saw. But even with thorough planning, sometimes I need to cut a board to a new length.
4 Build the structure
Finally, it’s time to put this thing together!
▸ Determine the exact location of the corners of the rink. Using your tape measure, confirm that opposing sides are equal in length, and use the Pythagorean Theorem to ensure you have perfect right angles at the corners. (Bet you thought you’d never use a2 + b2 = c2 after high school!)
â–¸ Place a garden stake at each corner, then tie a piece of string between the stakes along the perimeter of the rink space.
â–¸ Drive your steel stakes straight into the ground (about 12-18 inches deep) along the string, about 3 feet apart, on all four sides of the rink space.
▸ Carry the boards to the rink and prop them up against the stakes (with the stakes behind the boards) in the configuration you’ve planned out on paper ahead of time.
▸ Sitting on your little stool, power drill in hand, attach the boards to each other using the tie plates and small screws. I affix one plate at the top of the sideboard seams and one at the bottom (on the outside, of course). Starting with a corner is a good idea; it will help prevent your boards from falling into the rink while you work. (For the corners, use your corner brackets, not the plates.) Once this final step is complete, you’ll have a beautiful rink shell. Take a photo!
5 Fill the rink
The next step requires a close eye on the five-day weather forecast. Ideally, you want the process of spreading out the liner and filling the rink to coincide with the start of three consecutive days of freezing temperatures (with no snow). Wait to add the liner to your rink until right before you start the filling process. A liner that sits idle for even a few hours gathers leaves and other debris and is vulnerable to a puncture or wind damage.
▸ Carry the plastic liner into the rink. (It’s heavy. Ask a friend to help.)
â–¸ Unroll the plastic liner along the center line of the length of the rink.
â–¸ Carefully unfold the liner to cover the entire floor of the rink structure; roll it up the inside of the walls, then over the boards.
â–¸ Gently tug the liner to eliminate as many large wrinkles on the floor of your rink as is possible.
â–¸ Place clamps along the tops of the boards to keep the liner in place during the beginning of the filling process.
▸ Drape the mouths of your hoses over the side of the rink and turn on the water. (If your spigots are frozen, blast them with a hair dryer for a few minutes.) Once you have at least 3 inches of water covering the entire rink floor, turn off the water, put the hoses back in the garage (so they’re not frozen when you’re ready to resurface your rink), and let Mother Nature do her thing!
Depending upon the depth of your rink and the degree to which temperatures drop below freezing, your rink will need about three or four days to become skateable.
Of course, the building process is just the beginning of your backyard rink adventure. I could write another full column on day-to-day rink maintenance, but right now I need to run outside and shovel snow off the rink before it ruins the ice surface.
Follow Rob Crawford’s backyard rink on Instagram @backyardrink.
