My wife and I finally got a house with a yard and I'm looking to put my first rink up this winter pending how cold it gets in lower Michigan this year! I've measured it out and I'll be able to get a 30'x50' rink in the spot I want it. I could get a 50'x100' but I gotta let the Husky run too. I have a few questions to help me be successful and have a sheet for this winter. Please reply for clarification if you don't understand what I'm asking on anything below.

- First, the land. The people we bought the house from had a kid who used the yard as a dirtbike track. The grass has grown in, but there's a round groove right where I want to put the rink. It's not that deep, maybe 2-3" at the deepest points. Do I need to fill these in with dirt before I put my liner down, or will the liner stretch or move to fit in these holes?

- Second, the boards. I found some OSB in Chicago. I want to use them more than a year, so my question is, what kind of paint should I use to prolong the boards life? I plan on painting it white, but is there a special, cheaper paint that will "seal" the OSB from water? I do plan on separating them during storage and covering so they can breathe between seasons. I'd also prefer rolling on instead of spraying a ton of boards.

- The OSB I found is a $1 for a 2'x4' sheet. That's basically $4 for a 4x8 which is a steal. I currently have a bunch of 24" long landscaping stakes. If I support the boards with these stakes, is that enough? Basically I'd pound the stake 12" down into the ground, then the remaining 12" would support halfway up the 2' boards. I can get 36" stakes too, would that be better? For most of the lawn, the ice will be up at most 6" on the board, so that would still be behind the stakes.

- Lastly, I am also going to buy enough OSB to cut 4' long, 6" wide strips and screw on the inside boards to cover up the liner. Most liner places say to add 5' to stretch over the boards. But since my boards are only going to be roughly 18" high from the top of the ice, is there a reason to add so much? What would anyone suggest for a 30'x50' rink where I want to freeze 4-6" thick ice, and roll the remaining liner under a 6" kick plate(I'll probably need to keep the liner within a 4" area so I can screw the kick plate 2" down from the top).

I've also posted a pic of my layout. The pano on the iphone makes it look bowed, but it is straight. You can see in the pic some of the low spots where the dirtbike went if you look close. The big hole towards the middle left is an old fire pit and I'll have that leveled before i get the liner.

Thanks in advance for all the help. Happy freezing!

Hey Brandon. Welcome! I'll tackle your questions in order, but only after I ask the question I pose to all new forum members: HAVE YOU CHECKED YOUR SLOPE YET? It's the single most important thing you can do while preparing for your first rink. Until you know exactly how much water you'll have in your rink along all four sides, the rest of these conversations are moot. Here are some instructions (http://www.backyard-hockey.com/2011/10/ ... yard-rink/) to use if you want to DIY. A friend with a rotary laser is even better. If you already did this, NICE WORK.

-If the holes/ruts are only 2-3", you're probably fine. The liner doesn't necessarily stretch, but since you'll have extra slack in your liner (more on that below), the water pressure will just push the liner down into any divot, hole, or rut that is under it. Provided you have enough liner to do this (again, more on this topic below) then 2-3" is no big deal. If filling it makes you feel better, then more power to you.

-OSB. I know that our "build a cheap rink" post talks about OSB, but I should probably update that to set the proper expectations. As far as wood goes, OSB might be the hardest one to keep "dry", even with paint or stain. I'm sure it can be done, but just the nature of the way those boards are built means they probably won't last very long. What I would do? Pick up the cheap stuff you mention, try to get a year or two out of them, then maybe save up for some real 3/4" plywood over the next two years. I wouldn't spend the time painting or staining OSB, but I'm lazy and my honey-do list is full of things that sound more productive than trying to save OSB from moisture. I built my first rink using OSB, and after year two half of it was flimsy and in rough shape.

-I'd get the 36" stakes if you can hack it. Nobody ever said "I have way too much bracing in my rink." Lots of people have said "I just didn't build it strong enough". Especially in your first year, overbuild the CRAP out of the thing.

-Kickplates are personal preference...I have friends that use them and love them. Personally, I only use my liner for a single season (and advocate that approach), so I don't see the need in protecting it. I just let the pucks, skates, and shovels beat on it all winter then throw it away. I'm not sure I understand what you mean when you say "roll the remaining liner under a 6" kick plate", though. For the rinks I build (and I'll be up to about 70 builds after this install season next month), I typically order a liner about 6'-8' wider and longer than the rink dimensions. Remember up above when you mentioned the ruts and grooves in your yard? If the liner gets pushed down by the water into those ruts, it has to come from somewhere. Your extra width/length provides the slack. It's also almost impossible to roll out the liner perfectly flat...you're going to get SOME folds in the middle while you fill. The extra width/length makes this a non-issue. Then finally, what I do on all my rinks is run the liner up the boards, over the top, and onto the outside of the rink. I keep it in place with bumper caps (which both Nicerink and Iron Sleek sell). I love them, and use them on my own rink, because they keep the liner in place but also allow you to adjust the slack in the liner as you fill, which you CANNOT do with stapling (which is why I don't condone stapling the liner to your boards). Given that you'll have 18" of liner showing on the inside of the boards, I agree it would be a little odd to only have a 6" kickplate. But I'm not a kickplate guy and so my rinks (even those of my customers) always just have liner showing for the full board height on the inside. On the outside, once the water is in and I'm comfortable that I won't need to let any liner slack out, I trim the excess liner so that there's about 8" on the outside. I never, ever, ever cut the liner "just above the ice" on the inside as some do -- just my personal approach. I always run the liner up over the top to the outside. If you were my customer, for a 30x50 rink, you're look at AT LEAST a 36x56 liner. Nicerink comes in 32 or 40, so more likely it'd be a 40x56. That runs you about $170. You'll have extra that we'll trim...that's true...but like the bracing, it's better to have more than not enough.

Keep the questions coming. You're in the right place!

Thanks for the lengthy reply Joe. Some forums you'll get a 2 word answer, but you took the time to write it all out and it's very helpful.

I already did the slope check and my slope is about 6-7" down. I can move the rink over a few feet and my slope would be 3-4" so I think I'm set there.

-I would say that the holes are not more than 2-3". I'm still going to do some filling because I'm hoping that the weight of the ice naturally packs it down for me for spring!

-I got the cheap OSB because I don't expect it to last more than a couple seasons. The weather in SW Mi has been an average of 45 degrees during the peak of winter the last 4 years. However, the weatherman thinks this year is going to be bitter cold for this area, so I didn't want to pour a fortune into the rink incase he's wrong. Do you think Thompsons Waterseal would work if I didn't care about color? It's on sale at Menards for $13 a gallon and I would need about 3-4 gallons. My longterm goal is to build and paint boards out of 3/4" ply and 2x4s eventually.

-For the same reason as the temp problems as above, I want to try to stretch the liner out to 2 years. That's the main reason of the kickplate, to protect the excess liner. My plan was to get a good thick layer of ice, then tuck the excess liner behind my homemade kickplates. If you think the liners are strong enough to withstand some pucks, then i'll just go your route and stretch it over the top. My plan if going that route is to use Binder clips to hold it over the ledge.

Just as a clarrification, here's a pic of my kickplate idea.

Liner.jpg (20.77 KiB) Viewed 22603 times

I want every one of my readers to have a good rink experience, so no worries!

I'm sure something like deck stain would help, I just have no experience to be able to say definitively that you'll get X number of years out of it if you stain it. You may still only get two years, or you may get more. Sorry I can't help with that one.

As for the kickplates...I'm not crazy about your design. Others may chime in and disagree with me (which I encourage), but given your diagram above (which is super helpful, btw), your liner isn't really being held up at all. Now, given that you won't put the kickplates in until you have ice, you MIGHT be ok. But in year one at my current house, we had a warm spell with rain in January and my brackets/boards moved a bit because the ground thawed. And with a backyard rink, when your boards move OUT, your liner gets sucked DOWN. I was lucky that I had a few extra inches of liner and didn't lose any water, but if my liner had been sucked down under the water/ice line, and it was still in the midst of a thaw, I'd have lost a lot of water. I completely understand the need and desire to get multiple years out of a liner, but I'm just not sure that design is the best way to do it. All you have is the pressure between the kickplate and the boards holding your liner (essentially the most important component to your rink) from sinking down below the water line.

I wonder, if you're dead-set on this kind of build, if you could bring your liner up over the top of your boards, then have the kickplate held to the top of the boards with some kind of clip instead of using a screw. Obviously if you bring your liner up over the boards and then screw the kickplate in place, you're putting a hole in the liner and defeating the purpose. I dunno. Nicerink pretty much does this with their L-style kickplates (which are admittedly expensive). But the concept is great and requires no screws, yet still protects the liner.

http://www.nicerink.com/store/product.p ... =18&page=1

So here's my layout. The boards are short, so I supported just about every 2 feet of each board. Again, there's no such thing as TOO much support.

Layout.JPG (202.4 KiB) Viewed 22585 times

And here's the stuff I'm going to paint the boards with. This paint retails for $180 or more, bonds to pretty much everything, goes on thick, lasts forever, and can even be applied in freezing temps. Why did I buy such an expensive paint for boards I only expect to last a year? Because it was $15. Menards sells misscolored paint for DIRT cheap. Someone ordered this, wanted to add some color, and menards added too much. It's a pale white color instead of ultra white. So I win! We'll see how it works.

5548112B.jpg (31.68 KiB) Viewed 22585 times

That's awesome! I recently re-did our main bathroom. My wife and I couldn't decide on a color, so I went to lowes and found a $40 gallon of light gray, mis-tinted, for $5. We used it and she loved it. But I digress...

The design looks good. The bracing looks must better when it's supported to the top of the boards, in my opinion. What tool did you use to draw this? You're the second person to post a sick diagram like that this week...you kids and your newfangled computer machines...

Yeah, if you're not too picky with the colors, mis-tints are amazing. The only caveat is making sure that you get enough, because it's hard to re-make a mis-tint.

I drew those drawings using Google Sketchup. It's a free program offered by Google. I've used it for awhile and for people that don't know much about AutoCad, it's pretty easy to use.

As for the bracing, looking at how many landscape stakes I need, it's going to get quite expensive. So I'm going to draw up another one with angled brackets made from 2x4's and figure out the most cost effective way to make it. With 2x4's I should be able to only have to put a brace at every seam every 4 feet, then use various landscape stakes in between the boards. This would eliminate having to use 2 stakes at the seams of the boards.

Now for the AutoCad people, if you go nuts like I did with the resourses on my company laptop, I used CAD to design a community rink proposal that eventually went nowhere last year. Here's the boards.

boards.JPG (167.25 KiB) Viewed 22583 times

So I ran into a caveot this weekend when I was planting trees in my backyard. My goal for my stakes were to be landscaping stakes every 2 feet around the perimeter. This weekend I found that most of my lawn has about a foot of good dirt, then solid clay. So I'm thinking it's going to be hard to pound the stakes down in all the spots successfully without splitting them. So I'm thinking of possibly making the triangle supports as shown in the banner for this forum. Any thoughts? I'd hate to buy all the stakes and find out that I can't pound them deep enough. I think I'd be able to make the triangle supports as shown in the banner, then use rebar to support them from moving. Would I be able to spread the distance out more between support using a sturdier support, or should I still shoot for every 2 feet?

Has anyone ever used the Polytuf superwhite tarps as a liner? They're advertised to work as a liner, seen a few people around the net using them, but never seen them really on any of these hockey forums. They're basically the same price, sometimes cheaper than the same size 6 mil poly liner. They're 7-8 mil, and because they're more of a tarp than a liner, I'd expect they'd last longer right? They also have grommets so that would help with tying down if needed. I can get 1 6-mil liner at 35x55 for around 180 shipped, or I can get one of these tarps, 40x60, for around 160 shipped. Any thoughts? I already ordered my liner for this season, but if I could make $160 stretch over a few seasons, might be worth a try.

Just google Polytuf Superwhite. They're basically boat tarps.

So looking at how much rebar is and how much wood stakes are, I'm thinking of getting a stock of rebar instead of using stakes. My original plan was to pound 36" long, 1.5"x1.5" garden stakes into the ground every 2 feet. But after looking at how my rinks going to go up, I think I could get 1/4" rebar, cut it into 3' sections, and pound those in every 2 feet. Thoughts? Once I have help from some friends holding boards up until we create the box, it should be self supporting, and the rebar stakes will just assure that the water doesn't push the boards out.