Last year was my rookie year with a backyard rink. Small, but oh so much fun for the family. Year #2 should be bigger and better.

I've seen a few posts here and elsewhere about strategies to build up the "ground" under the rink with things like bags of mulch...I'm intrigued by this concept because I could make the rink quite a bit larger if I expanded it to go on top of some raised landscaping beds in the yard...but getting to 4-5 inches of ice on that area would mean 12+" everywhere else.

What substances or objects have you guys seen or heard of being used successfully in this scenario? I want something that isn't going to result in a gigantic mess in the Spring...

Any ideas?

I personally have never done anything of this sort. But many folks have.

Bags of mulch are preferable for several reasons...assuming the bags stay intact, you simply pick them up and open them over your mulch beds in the spring, and your lawn is fine. They're also readily available. Some have wondered about the natural heat release found in mulch, but not sure I know enough about that to give any direction. I would wonder how many bags of mulch you'd need to cover such a large area.

You could also use sand bags, but there's not much of a spring use for those.

I've used a product called Geofoam, which is like a giant (4'x4'x8') chunk of styrofoam that construction companies used for cheap, light fill under parking garages and buildings. But it's not available anywhere, is expensive to have delivered, and is a mess to store since it's so large.

http://www.geofoam.com/

For the raised landscaping beds, may I suggest one of these:



They can be a lot of fun!

- Kevin

My first year I used a few things, 4" cinder blocks, a few bags of sand, and some pallets. I placed a bunch of empty sandbags over the pallets to prevent the water from going down between the slots. The bags of sand got wet and fell apart (luckily only used two bags). Everything else worked fine. I was going to use the cinder blocks for a fire pit, but never got around to it. I'm not sure if any of the things I did would be recommended because my rink was so small (12' x 24').

I am honestly tempted to dig up my backyard to flatten it out a bit. I should put curtain drains in anyway.

Bring in topsoil. It's always easier to bring up the deep ends than it is to lower the high ends - trust me, I have done both and highly recommend the fill option (I used to have a 16" gradient and after the years, I'm probably down to about an 8"). Scraping grass and topsoil off your backyard is frustrating as you don't realize how packed your ground can be under there even with heavy machinery. Also, once you start scraping off the topsoil you are down to the 'clean fill' level which is filled with dirt, rocks and whatever else can be found in 'clean' fill. So if possible, level it out as best you can with topsoil - plus grass grows much nicer on topsoil.

Kev, do you have any old pictures of that process? Just curious if that would help. I have 4-5 customers this year doing yard leveling...I should take before/afters just to share with the board.

Which process? Scraping down to the rock or filling up the corners? Or both? :-)

Whatever you have.

Here goes:

2009: Load of topsoil delivered and we leveled each board at a time. Problem with this method was it created a bowl effect in the spring and raked it out to make for easier mowing. Here are a couple of pictures of that work:


2011: Load of topsoil delivered. Kubota dropped off for me to play and I scraped away down to the fill. I then leveled as best I could with my topsoil and here are the resulting pictures:


2012: Yet another load of topsoil delivered and my wife and I spread the dirt with shoel, wheelbarrow and rake. Basically I just tried to fill the areas that were low in the past in the hope of bringing it up. I don't have any pictures of that work but I have pictures of the resulting rink and this is more for bragging than anything else:


Let me know if the links don't work for you.

Regards
Kevin

Awesome stuff, thank you! I especially like the coffee mug shots. Mind if I use one for the FB cover photo?