I may have built a rink for five years, but even I've never seen this one. Got an email from a local guy asking for help - he had used a sprinkler to flood and had unskateable ice as a result. He was at work when I stopped by today, but here's what I found:

-A nicely built 25-ish by 50-ish rink full of ice. He did his homework and had taller boards in his deep end, with plenty of available height. Braced with 2x3 or 2x4, very solid.

-A clear deep end, which has several inches of ice but it topped by about 45 linear feet of shell ice, about 2-3' wide.

-The shallow end is only about 1-2" thick, and the liner is even showing in several areas - one entire corner, then in a couple spots randomly a few feet in. The liner looks to be two pieces duct taped together, but it's been so cold the last two days that it's frozen solid and doesn't appear to be leaking considerably.

-Where there is normal, non-shell ice, it is extremely bumpy. Lots of golf-ball sized bumps, plateaus, ridges. My guess is that he shoveled about 90% of the slush off last week, then it got warm and rained on it, then froze again. It's pretty bad, nothing you could fix with a floor scraper.

Now I know how to fix shell ice, and I've skated down and done bucket dumps to help with plateaus and bumps, but part of me thinks all his problems would be solved if he could add 2" of water on top of everything. And he has plenty of board height to work with. Of course, as we know, the water doesn't exactly sit nicely on top of the slab, it wants to go underneath. So what should I tell this guy? In order of importance, I'd say he needs to get thicker ice where the liner is showing, then break up and fill the shell ice pockets, then just skate down the bumps and learn not to use a sprinkler next year (thanks for nothing, Walter Gretzky).

What would you do? We have about 5-6 weeks left in the season if we're lucky.

Oh, and I've attached some pictures.

Shell ice

Tons of shell ice

2012-01-19_08-49-17_9.jpg (1.43 MiB) Viewed 36690 times

Exposed liner and thin ice

Exposed liner, thin ice

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Some bumps/plateaus, and what looks to be a leak, before it froze solid

Bumps, and what looks like a leak underneath back before it froze solid

2012-01-19_08-51-52_149.jpg (1.39 MiB) Viewed 36690 times

First of all, wow, that's a lot of mess!! Without seeing the ice or knowing what weather it went through, I can only throw darts in the dark.

Here's my guess:

It looks like there was a good base of ice, then water was added either by sprinkler or running hose... the water will run to the lowest point (and out the hole if there was one). This running water will eat through the previous ice which will cause a trench in the ice causing the aforementioned plateaus and ridges.

Since there is so much shell ice, there was obviously a flash freeze which would also cause those "golf ball" bumps. If there is a pocket of water in the ice and it freezes, that expansion has to go through the path of least resistance. The effect of this expansion is a volcano-like hump on the top of your ice. If you have these, scrape them down as best you can and flood over them. The water will flow off and build up at the bottom - usually not the top. If they are very bad, to the point where you need inches of water, get an axe and chop away (not too hard though). You can lower them to a more manageable height this way or get rid of them completely. Protect your eyes because that ice will fly.

Overall, the rink sounds like it's in rough shape but nothing that surely can't be fixed. If there is more cold in your forecast and there is still tarp showing, either call a water service or get that hose running (without the sprinkler) and hope that there isn't a hole in the tarp. As I stated in another post, if you need fill and have snow... use it; it's just free water sitting beside the rink.

Last thing, good luck!
Kevin

kevmac's suggestion to me in a different post is what saved my rink. I needed to add significant water to build up my surface again after lots of melting and lost water due to a leak under my deep end. Used snow to create about a 3 inch "lip" all around my boards. Got that snow wet, let it freeze solid, then flooded. The lip of frozen slush held the water in, like a big bowl. I've got a little ridge of ice all around my boards, but so what, I have a skatable (is that a word?) surface. If you need to add 2-3 inches of water to cover everything, make a 4-5 inch lip of slush.

Don't worry too much about the ridge around the boards. You can either chip that down when you get your base to the right level or it will wear itself down from skate blades or the constantly scraping from shovels (constant because you will be skating on it so much!)

/Kevin

KevMac strikes again! Passed along the "slush berm" idea to my customer and they skated over the weekend. Of course now it's 50 and everything is melting, but that should leave him with a nice smooth surface when it freezes back up. Great idea!