Building a Backyard Skating Rink

2010-12-15 14:19:01

What does a girl born and raised in the warmth of the Caribbean know about building an Ice Skating Rink??? Absolutely NOTHING!!! But that’s not going to stop me from trying to build one:)

The winters in Canada can seemingly last FOREVER – and you can only hibernate so long before the kids start to go stir crazy! So I had the idea to put an ice rink in the backyard. That way the kids could go outside and skate, while I sit inside by the fire – watching them through the window!

So I took to the internet and read a lot of information about how to do it, and realised something very fast – I didn’t want to do one as fancy (aka expensive) as the ones I had been seeing online. So I decided to just wing it!

First I decided on the size of the rink – I was going to make it 24ft X 32ft. Mainly I did this size because I wanted to buy 8ft lengths of wood, and wanted to limit the amount of cutting I would have to do. So I bought 17 lengths of wood. They varied in size – I got some 2x6s and some 2x10s because there is a slight slope to my backyard, so I know I was going to need a higher border at the back/left.

I was going to need 14 of the lengths of wood for the actual border of the rink and the other 3 8ft lengths I cut into 1ft pieces. This pieces would be used later to join the pieces of the frame.

One thing I learned while doing this – do it early! I didn’t decide to make the rink until the middle of December, and working outside on the table saw in my coat and gloves was not fun.

Anyway, once I got them cut – I moved around to the backyard. I built one of the 32ft sides first. To do this, I just stood the pine on its side (the 2” part) and placed 2 of the 8ft lengths side by side, flush with each other (A & B in the figure below). Then I took one of the 1ft pieces that I had cut (C), and centred that against the join. Then I drilled in 3 decking screws on either side of the join – this was more than enough the keep the wood in place.

At the corners I just lined up the wood to meet, and drilled 3 decking crews there as well. Continue doing this all the way around – and your frame will be built!

There are a lot of opinions about what should be used as the liner for the rink, but as I said earlier – I used the least expensive option, a blue tarp I bought at Home Depot. To attach the tarp to the frame I went to the dollar store and bought some regular clamps and some screw clamps. Next year I will only use screw clamps, all the regular claps broke on my be the end of the season.

Then it was time to fill the rink up – this took forever!! Because we had decided to do this so late in the year, we had no water source outside because we turned the water off to the pipes and they were frozen anyway. So I bought an attachment for my kitchen faucet that would allow me to screw on my hose, and we filled the rink up using that.

Someone told me after the fact that I could’ve gotten a water truck to come and fill it for me – so maybe I’ll try that next year. The hose was definitely a slow way of doing it, but it worked out fine – and after a few days the rink was filled.

And voilà! We have a skating rink in our backyard!