Question about Well-water use

[krusher]

I have a 20'*30' rink. Deepest end will be 12", shallowest will be 4". I figure on between 400 and 500 cu-feet of water. Should I be concerned about my well (I'm a former city-boy). I was told that my well was 120' deep and that I had 80' of water for what that's worth.

Ever hear of anyone draining a well dry because of a rink?

[Joe]

Using our calculator here (http://www.backyard-hockey.com/2012/08/ ... lculators/) and entering in an average of 8" thick, it comes in at just under 3,000 gallons. Since everyone's well is different, nobody on here will be able to tell you if it'll work. I have customers who fill their 20x40's with well water and have no issues. Personally, I've owned two homes in the last six years and have had to replace the well pumps in both (not because of filling a rink, they were just due to be replaced). And that is NOT a fun $2500 to spend. So I've always had my water trucked in. $300 is a lot more palatable.

[krusher]

Well so far so good. I have it filled most of the way. I've stopped about 1" shy of my target on account of my tiredness and the fact that I want it to start to freeze solid without water currents.

Well seems to have held up.

[Joe]

Good deal! Definitely try to top it off asap though...filling in multiple sessions can cause problems.

[kevmac]

As Joe said, every well is different. It all depends on the aquifer you are tapped into and how many other people are on the same one. The person who drilled the well would be able to tell you more details.

I've filled my 33'x75' with my well for years now - with a little help from a friend called Mother Nature - and so far so good.

Sounds like you are well on your way. Hope you get a cold snap to freeze it solid.

[kdukatz]

I'm also on a well. 32 x 56 rink with average 8 inch depth. Last year took me 12 hours constantly running the well to get 'er filled (there was a significant amount of snow in the liner when I started, so I had some help). No issues. I use the same well to fill an above ground pool every summer, that's about 5000 gallons. In full disclosure, this is not the same well that our house is on. We have two wells, one for the house and one for the barn. The rink and pool are out by the barn. But both wells are about 100 feet deep.

[Matt]

it would be awfully difficult to drain the water source your well pulls from. even with the widespread drought we had this year. sometimes if your well is not very deep you can run the water a little low, but if your well goes 100' plus you should be okay.

[Jesse10]

As long as you know how good your water source is you should be ok. We have a forty foot deep well that is three feet in diameter, and it will run dry if a hose is left on for more than a few minutes. If you can find out who drilled the well and contact them they can probably help you.
jesse

[zondu]

For smaller rinks, we sometimes fill up with well water, and as long as you have a good aquifer it can be fine. However, for a larger rink, we utilized the potential of roof run-off to fill the rink for free instead of using well water, or worse yet, buying water! We had a rink that was 50' x 65' (3,250 ft2) and an average of 6" deep (approximate volume of 12,155 gallons), and we filled it quickly for free by simply using our roof run-off.

We did this by connecting some of our roof's downspouts to pvc pipes (using elbows at the bottom to connect to horizontal pvc pipes lying on or partly buried in the ground) which connect into each other at the corner of the house. We then built what we called the "Alaskan pipeline" of several pvcs pipes (using bricks and scrap wood to support them) across the yard to the closest edge of the ice rink. We used a level to make it to slope just slightly downhill across the entire length (to prevent freezing blocakges) because the level of the lowest downspout and the level of the rink were about a 1 inch difference.

Our house is a modestly sized rancher, and when we did the math, we realized that we could get thousands of gallons off the roof in a very short amount of time. With just one day of steady, moderate rain, the rink was completely filled and ready for freezing. We disconnected and reconnected the last section of pipe on the pipeline to control topping up or resurfacing if we needed to adjust things.

We used old pvc pipes that we had lying around (many were cracked or had holes, so we put the cracks and holes to the top so that the bottom few inches were solid to allow water to flow without leaking). If one doesn't have pvc pices, it's a good investment to buy them and avoid paying a few hundred dollars each year to fill up an ice rink. They quickly pay for themselves.

In the summer, we use the downspouts to collect and store roof run-off in large barrels to water the garden.

[Joe]