I'd like to say hello to everyone here. I've ben monitoring this site for a while now and I'm finally going to put my research to work. I bought a home in central NJ a little over a year ago and this year I plan to build my first backyard rink this winter. I'm not sure that the winters get cold enou...

Hey All, All my life I've wanted to have a backyard rink, but growing up in the outskirts of NYC, in a middle class home, the property sizes didnt allow it. I've since grown up, gotten married, bought a house in NJ with a nice sized backyard, and convinced my wife to let me build a rink in it. It's ...

This is my first ever rink in Matawan, NJ. It will be 20' x 40' without any impressive looking boards but I'm sure if all goes well this winter, in the summer I will have my hands full of awesome projects.

Aerial shot of my 20x40 backyard rink.

backyard-rink.jpg (51.62 KiB) Viewed 5581 times

Thanks Joe, I've seen you help countless people, and I can say that I feel completely comfortable with any suggestions you make. For my rookie rink building session, I'm going to follow the How To for building a rink for $250. Mine might come out to be a little closer to $300 but if it's a complete ...

Yea, cleanup is a real pain. Unfortunately I'll need to get an excavator back there to chip away at the untapped land. For now, 20'x40' was all I could fit. Really can't wait to begin construction. The biggest issue is going to be waiting for the cold nights to flood. I can see myself getting over e...

Two days with temps as low as 29F in the morning. This is getting exciting, unfortunately it's supposed to be 50-55F tomorrow and up over 60F this weekend. Still about 3-4 more weeks away from flooding.

Yea, I'm assuming I wont be able to flood until the middle of December, maybe not even till January, but lets hope for December.

@five8five - I'm in the process of building my first rink as well and I have a similar pitch. I planned on doing 16" boards or maybe even 24" to be safe.

Being a web developer by day (psychotic hockey fan by night), I start my mornings off pretty much the same every day; sit on a bus for an hour long commute, walk about 2 miles from my bus stop to my office, grab a bagel and settle down at my desk. Lately I've been skipping the email portion of my mo...

@Lbruski - I was going to go with 2x2x24" wooden stakes for support, and attach them to the boards. They are pretty inexpensive, and seem to be widely accepted as proper supports. Another question I just thought of, I plan on mowing the grass one last time before the rink construction. I'll pro...