Freedom Rink - The Flood

The weather report called for below freezing temps and multiple snow storms over the weekend. I thought I should take the next step in the Freedom Rink saga. Over the last few weeks many of the neighbors have inquired about when I would put the ice in, but I kept reminding them of the Farmer's Almanac and that warm weather was ahead...wait no more. Winter would finally be here this weekend.

The first real snow fall was Wed and left a few inches inside the rink. I needed to remove that to make sure I did not have any sharp edges underneath the tarp. The kids had played inside the square and caused the ice/snow mix to be full of sharp points. I borrowed a snow blower and tried to get some of the sharps out. I am sure those who watched wondered what the heck I was doing snow blowing my yard. Of course Cory and Lucy wanted to be in the middle as well. Silly kids - who is this rink for anyway?

Now that I had a nice smooth bed, I decided it was now or never. We busted out the tarp. Jason (Freedom #3) helped spread the 30x50 blue monster. Then the real risky part. Running the water hose in 17 degree weather. I used an old hose that had plenty of holes, and started about 1130. For the rest of the day I was this nervous nilly checking the water and side boards and then looking in the back of the house to see if I had busted any pipes or anything.

After about 5pm I decided to call it quits. I didn't quite have all the water in there I wanted, but it was full in the deep end and had just reached the corner of the shallow end. There is about 12-15 inches in the "deep end" of the rink. The pic below was taken only a few hours into the flood. I'll get a few more pics tomorrow to show you the latest. We currently have about 8-12 inches of snow with more predicted tomorrow.

By the next morning I had a few inches of ice on top in the deep end. The shallow end is still very slushy with snow. Today was cold cold and the next few days will be cold enough to keep the freeze going. I want the ice to thicken up before I do any more work on it. It needs a little more water and some smoothing, but I wanted to see how it all worked out first before I run the hose any more.

As I pondered the worst case scenario and at least a thousand gallons of water flooding my next door neighbor's house, I asked K, What do you think? She said "This will either work perfectly, or fail miserably." I wonder which one it will be - so far so good.