The benefit of leaving the slush to freeze is that it adds base to your ice and it's really really heavy (pain in the butt to shovel). I tend to judge my opinion on how my rink is doing. If it's early in the season and my ice isn't quite ready, I'll leave the slush to freeze. If it's in the middle of January or February, I will remove the slush to get back down to my ice since I've worked too hard to get it to that point to start all over again.

I think you did the right thing by getting it to the 1st picture. Hopefully it has been cold enough to solidify your base before the next storm. If not, you might have to repeat the whole process again. Isn't owning a backyard rink fun?

As for the hot water floods, I never use hot water so I'll leave that to another person to answer.

-Kevin

P.S. That second picture looks like a stipple ceiling.

I started getting concerned that I was shoveling water/ice that I had spent the last 2 mos making so instead of shoveling all of the slush all the way down, I left it and started to cold water flood it. It seemed to have been the right move. It's not even remotely skateable at the moment, but we have an ice storm coming tonight so after this passes, I'll try and make the ice skateable again.

Why don't you use hot water?

Most people hate ice storms, I think they are great as they always add base to my ice, as long as I have it shoveled clean before the ice rain hits.

I don't use hot water because my ice is absolutely perfect with the water straight from the well. The added cost/hassle of installing another spigot outside for hot water and running my hot water tank dry on my 2400 sq ft rink every time I flooded wasn't something that I wanted to entertain. Also, I wasn't about explain to my wife why our hydro bill is through the roof and she can't take a hot shower because I used hot water to make my ice look good. Honestly, I have yet to hear enough merits of flooding with hot water over cold water to make me even want to try it. Heck, I don't even see the point in using a towel when resurfacing. A good shovel, a rink rake and the ability to somewhat walk a straight line has done me well during my ODR career. ;-)

Second year rink guy here, first year actually getting an education since conditions were perfect last year (not so much this year). My problem is the snow/ thin layer/ now slush problem. I'm going to leave it since there is really nothing to do based on reading through almost every post out there on this issue. But my problem that is a little unique is that I put too much water in this year (6.5" in shallow/ 15-18" deep). What ice that exists is pretty thin, and mostly slush. With the extra accumulation of snow, and rain this weekend, I might end up with an extra 2" of total depth. Any opinions on punching through the slush and pumping out some water before I get a solid layer of ice in the coming weeks? I'd never pump water out from under the ice, but the slush may be a different story. Any thoughts...

well the sun came out and the snow has stop.... The couple inches of snow that was on top is fading into the rink. The surface once frozen will be a golf ball, but once it's solid I'll probably be able to salvage with some re-surfacing... Or more rain/ sun mix into the weekend will probably bring me back to reality that skating in SE michigan before thanksgiving was probably just wishful thinking... I'm a little concerned about the extra water but what's done is done I suppose.

If you break the ice free around the entire perimeter so your block is "floating", you can pump water out. If your block isn't floating, it could tear your liner or create air pockets underneath.

I've done this nearly every season to deal with torrential mid-winter rains here in NW Indiana. Where you could run into an issue with this, is if you pump enough water out that the shallow end of your block "bottoms out". That will cause your ice to slope, which leads to additional cracking among other things (yes I've dealt with this too, but due to an unknown leak vs. too much pumping).