Hey Kevin, thanks for the kind words. Since you mentioned the lighting, I wrote up a fairly detailed description of how I made the lights. I live in an older house with an older electrical system that couldn't handle the usual 1000 watt halogen work-lights that most people use. Had to go with fluore...

Bob- Gland to see another MSP resident around the forums! Judging by your nickname, guessing you don't live too far from me either! I'm just W of Cedar Ave (a couple of blocks W. of Fat Lorenzo's). If you are ever in the neighborhood and see me out skating/working on the rink, stop by and say "...

If you'll have some good cold temps for a few days post-snowfall and your liner isn't in yet, I'd say wait until the snow falls, shovel/snowblow the rink area and then get the liner down and fill it up afterwards. I do know a few people who put in their liner and fill as the snow falling and let the...

Hey Joe, Yes, they are NiceRink boards and I essentially removed one board section and created a lift out gate so I can get the snowblower and lawn tractor (zamboni) onto the rink. Unfortunately, i don't have a writeup yet about how i did it, but I'll take some close up pics this weekend and post so...

Glad to hear that you are making progress smoothing out all of the rough patches. Once you get the ice mostly smooth, the homeboni should put down a thin enough layer each time to prevent the ice from chunking/slushing up. I had a pond rink for a nuber of years and tended to have the same problem th...

Joe-

Had some time this afternoon to write up some of my gate construction for the NiceRink boards. Hope it helps someone out there.

Not sure if this will be helpful, but if you are at all handy with photoshop/illustrator type programs and can do your own image resizing/uploading, I did all of the signs and banners for my rink through vistaprint.com. I used their medium size banners (4' x 2.5'). You can edit/upload whatever desig...

Although I love having the neighborhood kids and friends' kids over to skate, my wife and I don't have any children, so honestly, all of the work on the rink is basically for me to screw around and burn off some calories over the winter. Frequently have passers-by stop and ask how old our kids are. ...

Very nice!! Beats the heck out of the 2x4 and PVC monstrosity that I have in my garage for keeping my gear organized/dry. Will have to keep that in mid for one of those oddball 40-degree weeks that pop up seemingly every winter and I'm in need of a project until I can get back and tinker with the ic...

Sounds about right. You'd be surprised how close you can get to your fill time estimate if you sit down to do the math, just like you have. I used a 5 gallon bucket to estimate my GPM the first year I did my current rink and I'm somewhere between 5 - 5.5 GPM. Unfortunately, I have some slope to my r...