This year, early January did not bring much snow, but there was
another asset coming down the pike: subzero weather! My kids and
I decided to take advantage of the approaching frigidity, and go
for a backyard ice rink instead of an igloo this year. Here is
our ice rink diary.
Tuesday, January 11 -- We decided tonight to launch the project. It
was a balmy 35 degrees, but the forecast called for 15 below by
Thursday. My kids and I spent tonight readying the rink area. We
had been told to build up a snow bank around the perimeter,
but with only an inch of snow on the ground, there wasn't much
to scrape up. We laid down plastic sheets in 8-foot widths, and
curved them up over some PVC pipes that we used for the border.
Then we waited for the mercury to plummet.
Thursday, January 13 -- PERFECT! It was the coldest day in a
year, so I started filling the rink with water. Unfortunately,
the overlapping sheets of plastic weren't watertight -- after
at least an hour of watering, the water level still wasn't much
higher than the surrounding ground.
Friday, January 14 -- My son Benjamin and I figured out how to
"seal" the ground against leaks, by hooking up the sprinkler.
This created a nice thin coat of ice all over the rink.
Saturday, January 15 -- Finally, a whole day to work on the rink
and finish it! Still subzero temps, and we were now using the
"Greg Thorson" method of building up the ice. That advice from my
favorite banjo-playing engineer was to fill up large garbage cans
with water, then dump them out all at once. This puts a nice even
layer across the whole rink, without the holes and hills that come
when you simply let the hose run. We're home free now; all we have
to do is keep filling those garbage cans!
Later that day -- Oops. Yes, I did remove the hose every time I
was done using it, to prevent freezing up. But I thought it was
okay to leave the little nozzle on the spigot that makes it easier
to get the hose on and off. Big mistake: at subzero temperatures,
drips accumulated on that nozzle and froze over, even after only
three hours in broad daylight.
I got out the blowtorch and frantically defrosted the frozen
faucet, then continued filling the garbage cans. That's
when my four-year-old, Simon, wandered out and said, "Daddy,
I think there's a leak in the basement."
Dutifully marching downstairs to see if I could find the dripping,
I opened the door to a stunning scene -- this was not a leak, it was
a firehose! Water was screaming out of the pipe under high pressure,
drenching my workbench and leaving a deepening pool of water on
the concrete floor. I quickly closed the shutoff valve, rendering
the faucet useless. Looks like we were done with this ice rink idea.
Sunday, January 16 -- sons Ben and Jasper persuaded me to carry on.
With the backyard faucet out of commission, we could tap into the
faucet in the front of the house, they explained, and run a longer
hose through the garage. The downside of this is that we'd need
to roll up the entire hose and haul it downstairs every time we
were done, to prevent it from freezing. But they were persistent,
so we tried that and got a few more valuable layers on the ice.
Later that day -- Oops. My lovely wife pointed out that the front
hose had been leaking the whole time, and we now had half an inch
of solid ice on the front sidewalk. Oh well, we still have six days
to get that chiseled out before hosting 50 people at our house for
a friend's surprise birthday party. I guess we are done working
on the rink. Again.
Saturday, January 22 -- Stu Krause to the rescue: Stu insisted on
helping me fix the burst pipe in the basement. It took five days,
but this got us going again with the backyard faucet, only ten
feet from the rink.
Friday, January 28 -- A RINK IS BORN! With regular applications
of the Greg Thorson method, we were finally able to iterate on
the layers until we actually got a real ice rink built. Just in
time, too, as we had a dozen kids using the rink tonight, during a
cast party at our house after our
church choirs sang
at the Heyde Center. It was a big hit!
Friday, February 4 -- Darn, everything is melting. But we've
had a good week's use of a genuine ice rink. During that time, we
bought clearance hockey sticks and pucks at Spring Street Sports,
and had a great time skating in our own backyard. Too bad it
couldn't have lasted longer.
When will these blasted mild winters end so we can get back to
the endless blizzards of old? In the meantime, maybe we need to
figure out a family project involving slush.
by Tom Arneberg,
