A leak? Under the ice in the deep end? After 6 weeks?

[Joe]

So this is from a customer, and it's perplexing me. We filled them on 12/9. They have skated dozens of times. Their rink is 24x44, and had 4" in the shallow end and 16" in the deep end the day we filled it.

We've had a cold winter, but last week it was in the 40's and 50's for about four straight days. Now it's around 0 and very cold. Last Saturday, right in between the warm weather and the cold, we got about 6" of very wet, heavy snow. Lots of folks had slush in this area because the warm weather had melted their rinks some. We've had 2 or 3 of these warm spells this winter, but otherwise very cold temps.

Customer emails me yesterday and says there is nothing in his shallow end and the deep end only has about 6" of ice. He says the ice appears tilted (a sign of a leak). Can't see any water/ice outside the rink, though it's tough with the snow.

So clearly he has a leak somewhere down under the ice in his deep end. But the confusing part for me...how does this happen? How does his liner hold water for 6 weeks, then underneath the ice level he gets a hole? Especially since it drained almost 10" in his deep end, that tells me the hole is way down there.

My experience with holes over the years has been exclusively on fill day...patching seam rips here and there. But I've never dealt with something like this mid-year. Any ideas? Anyone experience something like this?

I figure our options are to chip out the old ice, drop a new liner, and fill, hoping to get another 6 weeks out of it. Or we can drop the hose in and fill, which I never like to do. But as it is, his ice is very thin across much of his rink and it may be unusable.

[Joe]

And just to clarify, my question isn't exactly why the rip occurred...but why it took six weeks to manifest itself. That's the confusing part.

[kevmac]

Weird. It's not like the weight of the snow would be much more than the weight of the water during the fill so I can't imagine it being a pressure rip or tear.

Is it still leaking? The funny thing about water is that it flows away from the leak and loves gravity so they are hard to track.

If possible, I want a follow up story on this in the spring when you are tearing it down. Need to find out what caused the leak. :-)

[Chris]

if I had to guess I'd say because the slab was floating. When you are at the beginning stages you are very careful and wait to make sure ice is good. Once you get into it you know the ice will support you and dont care if its a little bit melted. With the crazy weather we've been having perhaps some odd melting points happened on edges. Once you get back on there not realizing that the whole thing is shifting (you can hear it pulling on the plastic on the edges when it does) maybe a tear down one of the sides happened and with all the warmth we've had it just kept on draining and melting and draining with no refreeze over a few of those nights to calm it down. could be?

[Joe]

There doesn't appear to be any water left in it...it's crazy cold here right now and this all occurred last week when it was warmer.

Chris, I'd considered that but hell, EVERY year has a bunch of really cold and really warm weather...but maybe something about the way the ice hit the liner just right this year jeopardized it.

At any rate, after going over his (relatively crappy) options, he's decided to skate on what he has left. Hopefully it stays cold and he doesn't lose any more. But yeah, I can't wait to tear this one down.

[soupy01833]

I no my source of my leak now. The liner went under the boards and was ripped by the plywood edge. It was very large. I made sure that would not happen with the replacement liner. It was a newbie mistake. As for your situation the only very strange thing my neighbors had were Moles. They ate through the liner under the ice and created holes.

[kevmac]

I caught a mole in my liner one year as well, but that was well before filling. He never came back :-)

[MLeslie347]

Pretty much exactly what happened to me last year. Had 3 weeks of great skating after the initial flood and then encountered the inevitable mid-December warm-up which melted a decent amount of ice. Came back from a business trip to find my shallow end liner exposed and down about 6" in my deep end. Found a small hole near the base of my boards that I patched and re-filled. Turned out there was a 2nd hole about a foot and a half away as the re-fill leaked right out too- so patched that and re-filled again.

Never did figure out why. Didn't think of mice/moles, better than my previous theory of a malevolent spirit haunting my backyard. Know one thing, was one hell of a water bill that month filling the rink 3 times.

[Chris]

I bet! ouch!
Once is enough for me :)

[mbalcs33]

Based on my experience with the ice this year, it wouldn't surprise me if it was self inflicted by the slab itself. With the rapidly changing temps this year (the back and forth from real warm and wet to deep freeze is unprecedented in the years I've been at this). During one warm/cold cycle the ice expansion was strong enough to push about 50% of the kick boards up by about 6-8 inches. I was able to reset them on the next warm period and secured them with more screws. With this amount of pressure and movement it wouldn't surprise me if a sharp edge or a foreign object buried in the ice created a tear. One of my first years I dropped a few screws during the construction / fill and they ended up creating some small tears when it froze and leaked as the slab melted.

Does the customer have a dog that enjoys the ice? My lab has jumped on thin ice a few times and although he never ripped a liner I'm sure it could happen.

Anyway, def let us know what you find.