Backyard Rink Calculators

The 2008 rink in all its pre-frozen glory

Curious how much water you’ll need to fill your backyard rink? Need to figure out how long it’ll take? Want to know how much water each homeboni treatment will require?

You’re in the right place.

Below is a link to an excel file with a few simple calculators that will answer those questions. Until I can find someone who can code these calcs directly into this page, simply right click on the link below and select “Save As” to download the file to your hard drive.

BACKYARDRINKCALCS.XLS

A few tips:

• Very rarely will you have a flat slope beneath your rink. So to ballpark your initial fill volume, you’ll need to use the average depth of your proposed slab and enter it in the “Thickness Desired” field. (For example, if you have a deep end of 12″ and a shallow end of 4″, and the slope is gradual, use a “Thickness Desired” of 8″.)
• If you want to use the “How Long To Fill” calc, you’ll need to know how fast your hose pumps out water, which is measured in gallons-per-minute (or GPM). To determine this, grab a 5-gallon bucket, your hose, and a stopwatch, and time how many seconds it takes to fill the bucket. Divide 300 by the number of seconds it took, which will give you your hose’s flow rate. (For example, if it took you 45 seconds to fill the 5-gallon bucket, your calculation would be: 300/45 = 6.67 gallons-per-minute.) You can then enter your GPM calculation into the file above.

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