Should I flood over existing snow?

[drbhomer]

My deep end has 15 inches of solid ice but my shallow end only has 2 inches. We just had a snowfall and I have 3-4 inches of snow covering the ice. I want to add 3 more inches of water in order to bring the shallow end up to 5 inches of ice. I am planning on adding the new water in 1 inch layers, allowing that to freeze before adding the next inch. I'm getting 2 different opinions...the first is to flood the first inch directly on top of the existing snow, and the second opinion is to remove the snow and then begin the flooding process. My concern is if I flood over the existing snow, when it freezes, the surface will be more difficult to manage than if I first remove the snow then flood directly onto the ice.

[Joe]

I'm in a similar boat...I think your two options are to pack the snow down and flood it, or remove the snow and flood the ice gradually. Packing the snow and flooding it might be your best option to gain the most depth in one shot, but the ice will be rough, and will likely have boot prints and whatnot. Shoveling the snow and flooding will only add fractions of an inch each time, but will likely be smoother. I will most likely pack my snow down and flood it, as it is supposed to rain and be warm this weekend, hopefully smoothing out what will probably end up being a pretty choppy surface.

Where are you located? If you fill out your profile with your location and rink details, it'll help us when giving advice like this.

[drbhomer]

Thanks! I think I'm going to remove the snow to avoid a slush issue. My next concern is filling. Will using a hose melt a hole in the ice (15 inches deep)? What i f I move the hose every 20-30 minutes?

[Joe]

Others can chime in because I've never tried...but yes, I think trying to "fill" two more inches isn't going to happen gracefully. When I say to shovel and add depth, I meant more along the lines of doing repeated floods or bucket dumps over time to gain more depth. I imagine a hose will bore a hole and start filling up underneath your slab very quickly, and I wouldn't want that large an ice chunk floating around and bumping into my liner.

[drbhomer]

A friend of mine just suggested setting up a sprinkler outside 1 corner of the rink, setting the coverage area at 90 degrees and just letting it run. This would obviously avoid the "hole" issue as well as the extensive labor involved with hours of garbage can dumps.

[kevmac]

Be very careful with sprinklers, especially when the weather is cold. It sounds like a great idea but you will end up with something that looks like this:


Thanks to this article for that picture: