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20 - The Oakville Beaver Weekend, Saturday February 21, 2009 www.oakvillebeaver.com EVOLUTION: Local resident Russell Gunner combated slope in his back yard by installing a level wooden platform and building the rink on top. Teamwork helps with maintenance Outdoor conditions present challenges Here are some tips to deal with potential pitfalls of an outdoor rink: Warmth Today's focus on climate change may have you thinking that it isn't feasible to build a rink anymore. However, I have found that the past several seasons of rink building have been particularly good ones. I typically fill the rink in early December, and have been skating before Christmas every year. And I strongly recommend you build your frame in November before the ground freezes. I know people who have waited too late in the season and ended up having to use blowtorches and hammer drills to stake their boards up. And if you're going to go to the trouble of putting up a rink, you might as well use it for as long as you can. Snow Cold weather brings ice, but also can bring snow, which can wreak havoc on your ice. The key is to get as much snow off your ice as possible before flooding your rink, as flooding on top of snow produces weak ice. Leaves You can expect a rink to melt once or twice in the season, leaving you with a very cold, shallow pool which acts like a magnet for leaves. I've spent more time than I care to admit in my backyard with a pool skimmer in the middle of January, fishing sticks and leaves out of my rink. I recommend getting the leaves off your ice, as a leaf or twig can very quickly melt a sizable hole in your ice in a single sunny afternoon. Predicting the weather Today's weather websites do a pretty good job of helping the rink builder know when to flood, shovel and skate, which can lead to obsessive-compulsive checking of the Weather Network dozens of times in a day. These high-tech tools allow a degree of preplanning for skating get-togethers, but sending out invites for a specific date too far in advance is dangerous, as the temperature `window' for a good skate is relatively narrow - anything above zero degrees Celsius results in overly soft ice, and anything under -12 usually results in a short skate due to complaints of cold toes, ears and fingers. An almost surefire way to guarantee a January rainstorm is to book a group of guests a month in advance for a Saturday skate. The flip side of this issue is that it forces some spontaneity in this age of planned playdates and electronic calendars, and some of the best skates are the ones arranged at the last minute. Excessive cold This year, rookie rink builders Glenn Tautrims and Steve Hayes of White Lane learned that adding too much water when the temperature is below -15 can produce nasty ripples in your ice, as the water freezes almost as quickly as you lay it down. You can guard against this effect with a rink rake, which is a device that spreads water out evenly across the ice like a handheld Zamboni, or by using hot water to produce a super-smooth flood. Just make sure no one in your house wants to take a shower for a while after you have flooded. Thin ice You don't need to wait for all the water in your rink to freeze completely solid to be able to skate, but to be safe you really want about three or four inches of solid ice on the surface. This guideline can be hard to adhere to at the start of the season when everyone is itching to get skating, but if you crack and shift the ice, it can take a lot of work (and water) to get it back into a usable state. Remember that kids weigh less than adults, as Hayes found out this year when he put his foot through his ice in spite of his children already being on it. And also keep in mind that skate blades concentrate all your weight on a very small surface area, and the more people you have on the ice, the better the chance that you can crack it if it is on the thin side. Slope Many rink builders find that there is more slope in their yard than meets the eye of the casual observer, and given water's natural propensity to find the lowest ground, this can pose issues. One option to deal with slope is to outright remove it, and some Oakville residents are installing sport pads in their yards, which is effectively a concrete slab, potentially with a rubber surface, ideal for playing basketball or road hockey in the summer, and providing a perfectly flat surface on which to build a rink in the winter. Of course, some go the extra mile and install refrigerated rink systems, but such installations can easily cost $25,000 to $100,000 or more, versus a few hundred dollars to build a non-refrigerated board & tarp rink. For those who aren't willing to take such drastic measures to fight slope, there are several strategies. You can add something temporarily to the low end of the yard to help level things out. For example, David Dell of Balsam Avenue spreads out hay from leftover fall Halloween decorations to fill in low spots under the tarp and reduce the amount of water he pours into his rink. Russell Gunner of Redbank Crescent actually installed a level wooden platform on top of his sloped lawn this year, and then built his rink on top of that platform. While it added a lot more work up front, Gunner said it was worth it to avoid repeating the frustration of having his rink literally roll down his backyard as it did in a previous season, forcing him to start over from scratch. I don't recommend fighting slope by trying to `make water run up hill'. The other approach to fighting slope is simply to build a deeper rink and add more water. I have about a foot of drop in his yard so I have approximately 18 inches of water in the `deep end' of my rink, and about 9 inches in the shallow end. I ran the hose for 24 hours to fill this rink in December, and I think my neighbours are really hoping that my rink frame is solid. Neighbours I try not to shoot pucks or scrape the rink too late at night, and try to keep the lights from pointing directly into their windows. I also put up a six-foot-tall screen on top of four-foot end-boards to help keep errant pucks from flying into my neighbour's yards. My daughter also helped me find some nylon mesh called deer screen, which has been perfect for keeping pucks in the rink. It beats buying dozens of pucks, losing them in the snow and picking them up in the spring. -- Max Farley Continued from page 18 hovering around minus-25 Celsius. We had a sound system, two BBQs cooking burgers and dogs, a popcorn maker donated by Encore, hot chocolate for the kids and some refreshments for the adults. A great time was had by all. The rinks bring all families together. Families from all over the neighborhood have got to know each other better because of the rinks. They also provide a great unstructured environment for teenagers to get together and have some fun without coaches or parents setting the rules. Anyone who shows up is welcome to play shinny, regardless of their abilities. This year we have a team of over 20 volunteers who help to maintain the rinks. Three different guys shovel, scrape and flood the rinks each night between 10 and 11 pm. It's a huge job building and maintaining the rinks, but many hands makes light work. I would mention a few "pops" make the job more tolerable on those cold nights, but we have already got in trouble with the Town on that front." THE Up to A E BIGGEST SEVLR! 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