Postby Joe » Wed Nov 13, 2013 9:48 am
Cheap is good, especially with your first rink. Only thing I'd be worried about is the height of your boards...ideally you want 4" minimum of ice. This means that in your high end, you have 4", then according to your post, you'd have 11" in your deep end. That's still under your 1' tall boards, but gives you almost no puck retention. Also, what if your slope estimates are a bit off? What if it's 8" or 9"? You don't give yourself much wiggle room. I very much subscribe to the "overbuild, especially in year one" mindset so I would consider bumping up the height of your boards to 16". You can get three 16" strips out of one piece of plywood, so you do have to buy more, but not a ton more, and you give yourself that much more wiggle room. Another suggestion...brace the CRAP out of that side. 11" of water isn't a TON, but it's not insignificant either, and the water is not going to be happy to be contained inside your rink. You'll want to use wooden stakes (if that's what you're using) to brace the bottom, but I'd consider adding some diagonal 2x3 or 2x4 bracing at the top of the boards on your deep areas. I've attached a picture to show you.
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- Note the 2x3 supports on the right side (before we trimmed the liner).
- 535950_393347770684810_136946367_n.jpg (108.14 KiB) Viewed 11829 times
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