Snow and Slush

[kevmac]

My cut-off temperature for regular flooding is -8'C or 17.6'F. Anything above this I find the water pools and you tend to get more shale ice than solid ice. My preferred temperature for regular flooding is -10'C/14'F or colder.

For the spot treatments, don't pour the whole bucket in one spot at one time. Use your judgement, pour slowly and watch the warm water find the air pockets. Once all the bubbles stop and all the holes are filled, move to the next section.

[Yooper]

We were hung up on "hot" water for our rink rake, but the 40f water from a regular spigot will melt the bumps out just as good. The rink rake cures all problems. What temps do you have coming at you?

[kevmac]

Exactly Yooper: Last night, I was considering renting out the backyard to the local curling team for practice until I resurfaced 3 times (2 did the trick, 3 was just cause) and then it looked smooth as glass. All hail the rink rake!

[HaleSkater]

...Things are vastly improved in our backyard. Many thanks to the posters here.

Early last week during a cold snap I put on a 1" layer. Starting with warm water I focused on the worst of the heaved and rumpled and pimpled areas. The hot water gave out eventually and I was working with tepid water, but oh well.

I was mindful of water going underneath...didn't see that happening so I pressed on. Eventually I stopped when I could see no ice peaks poking through the water. Everything looked great. That night it was pretty cold and spirits were high.

We had some RAIN (in december?!) on Saturday and that has goofed things up a little. I tried some spot treatments and a light zamboni-like treatment after scraping off fresh slush and ended up with some new (minor) wrinkles and a few small patches of shell ice. I think I should have listened to kevmac...it was about 30 F when I did this and not close enough to his professed cut-off of 17F. Also, I think I didn't melt all of the thin ice/slush when I added the thin layer. Note to self...dont resurface unless its colder, and when you do, be sure to MELT any "junk" that has formed on top of the sheet.

At this point, I’d say the surface is adequately “skatable” – now we just need it to thicken up! I’m thinking about letting my 6 y/o out on there tonight solo. We are up to 4” as of this morning with 4” of water underneath at the deep end. Presumably the other end (shallower) is nearly frozen through. I’ll probably wait for more thickness before I get on it. I think if the sheet were larger I could get on right now, but with such a small total area, my weight doesn’t have much space to be distributed and I’m afraid it might crack or heave or something.

For the surface…should I throw on another half inch or inch layer sometime this week (perhaps Wednesday night right before its slated to get cold again)? When I added a significant amount it seemed to freeze like glass. Any downside to this?

[kdukatz]

If your shallow end is 4" of solid ice, then you should have a thick enough surface and adding another inch just to add an inch probably isn't neccessary. At this point you can probably just add whatever it takes to get a smooth resurfacing, IMO.

[kevmac]

I agree with kdukatz - 4 inches is plenty thick for your shallow end. I wouldn't worry about building that up much more - other than slowly with light resurfacing when it's cold enough (:-P.