Big Lesson of the Year

I went wider this year, out to 28' from my old 24'. Because of the new rink location, I did not know how far the liner would reach up the berm that made part of my boards, so wound up with too little liner on one side. The mud allowed the boards to shift, stretching and breaking the liner and causing a drop of approximately 2" of water depth.

The big lesson of the year is to make sure you have enough liner over all parts of the rink. The boards didn't shift much, only about an inch, but that was enough to cause problems.

Normally, I wouldn't give up halfway through the season, but the forecast is awful. Temperatures in the high 30's, with some up in the 50's. One fellow suggested a replacement liner, and while it would work I just didn't see the water freezing up again.

Experiment 3: Rink Lights

Preface:
A friend and I were playing hockey, and we noticed how dark it was on the shooting end.

Hypothesis:
Rope Lights on the netting will increase the brightness of the area and be worthwhile.

Analysis:
Rope lights put out about the same amount of light as Christmas icicle lights, and since I already have them, I might as well use them. Attaching the rope lights will require something other than the netting to attach to, as the netting is already sagging under its own weight. It will be necessary to run some sort of wire rope line to support not only the rope lights but the netting.

Implementation:
A wire rope line was woven along the top "squares" of the netting. It was pulled as taught as possible, which resulted in the netting sagging much less. The rope lights were then zip tied to the wire rope. An extension cord was attached to one end.

Result:
The icicle lights provided a soft glow and festive atmosphere, but did not provide all that much extra light on the shooting end. Light spilling out on the outside of the rink may make it easier to track pucks that have been shot out, so the icicle lights were left up.

Ultimately, a halogen light head was screwed to the top of the net post and the light was pointed towards the net area. This provided the needed illumination.

The Sword in the Stone

Thinking it'd be handy to have my shovel nearby to clear off the ice, I left it leaning against my fence. I didn't think too much about it when we went on a trip, but got home to find that annoying warm spell had melted all my beautiful snow, then refrozen, and left my shovel frozen solid in the mud.

What was I to do?

Sadly, this is not a tale of a heroic struggle of good vs evil, the mighty vs the weak, but simply another annoying warm spell.

Another warm spell came, bringing rain and making much mud. It left my rink a mess, so I went out and picked up my shovel and cleared off as many sticks and leaves as I could. The boy who pulled the sword out of the stone went on to be king. Me? I flooded my rink and had a good skate. I think I came out ahead, as I never wanted to be king but I always want a good skate!

The moral of the story is:
Don't leave your shovel on the ground.

Games

Chase

When just playing around on the rink, it's easy to get into the habit of shuffling around and not really skating hard. When I get back to playing hockey, this habit seems to follow me for the first few shifts. So, this little game is intended to prevent that.

With the net at one end, stand behind the net in a corner and pass the puck towards the opposite corner. Chase the puck and catch it, then turn around and skate back hard for a shot on goal. For more challenge, pick a corner of the net to shoot at before you start.

Chase - D-zone

Dump the puck. You want to come in towards the fence or net hard, pick up the puck and look for an open man. An alternative is to stop behind the net (it can be imaginary) and get your head up to take a look. Take a few quick steps and either skate the puck out or make a pass. Practice looking around as you're skating for the puck, just as you would during a game.

For added challenge, pick a pass/shot type and keep doing it until you hit your target.

Four Corners

This is perhaps the game I play most often. I pick a corner and a shot type, and hit that corner with the shot. I vary locations to shoot from and after a successful shot I move to the next corner. I keep score by setting a goal like 10 in a row or 10 of 10 shots if close or something more reasonable if further away. This game can be played either stationary or moving.

Hitting the post only counts if the puck goes in!

Do you have any favorite games or drills? Feel free to answer in the comments.

Experiment 2: Fencing Update

When I secured the fence posts to the boards, I did not count on how much pressure/force the end posts would have to handle. The last post on the south side had to deal with strong winds and that post eventually failed by having the support screws pull out. Therefore, I cannot recommend this the two-hole pipe clamp technique as the best way to support a rink fence. Perhaps a third clamp will help?

The problem I face now is that the fence has frozen into the ice and I cannot lift the post to fix it.

Long Range Forecast

I thought I'd share this long range forecast with you guys. It's pretty accurate, I didn't even need to enter my zip code:
http://xkcd.com/1606/

Building: Level vs Flat

Is your site flat? Good. Water doesn't care, though. What water cares about is level, which follows the curve of the earth.

So here's the problem: Our eyes are good at flat but water responds to level. So keep this in mind as you're surveying your rink site. Do what it takes to establish a level line, whether it's with a line level or laser or something else. This will tell you if you should perhaps move your rink over a few feet to avoid a huge drop.

When I sited my rink last year, I could see the ground was flat. It looked close to level, but as it turned out there was a 20" drop over 48' and a 30" drop over 60'. I wound up making rink brackets to handle the load and had to add a few extra rows of boards as I was filling. As it turns out, my laser level wasn't all that far off. (Over 48', a 1 degree error can be as much as 10 inches!)

So when siting your rink, do what it takes to see how level the site is and not how flat it is.

Experiment 1: Ice Rink Cam

The Ice Rink Cam is a webcam on an old laptop running Booru software and Windows 7. The intention of the experiment was to determine where the sun shone most on the rink, so maybe I could put up shade tarp and prevent solar gain.

The camera was placed on a dresser next to a window facing the rink. Pictures were grainy and showed the window screen. However, this was good enough to provide an idea of how bright parts of the rink would get.

Photos from about 10:30 AM until around 1:00PM were flooded out with light, I suspect this was light coming in from the other windows and reflecting off this one. However, this corresponds to the time when the sun would be directly overhead anyway and shade tarps would have to be above the rink to be effective.

It proved to be difficult to see the detail of the shadow lines from the house and trees on the webcam, but from what I can tell the area is pretty well shaded with less solar exposure than the previous rink. One thing to keep in mind is that in Winter the sun generally shines farther South, so if the long side of your rink follows a N-S line, shade tarps will be less useful than if oriented E-W.

In conclusion, the success of this experiment was hampered by the quality of the equipment used and a cat who likes to sleep on that dresser. A little useful data was gathered, but not enough to make continuing or redoing the experiment worthwhile.

Dropping the Liner

When do you drop the liner?

Here's the conditions to look for:
1. Calm winds
2. Favorable forecast
3. Cold weather happening soon

Calm winds are self explanatory. You can drop the liner with an infrequent wind, but it's annoying. The wind will catch and blow that liner without much trouble and make things difficult. Wind is perhaps the most likely to affect your liner drop experience.

A clear forecast is a good place to start, but it's possible to drop the liner ahead of some rain or snow and let nature help fill your rink. How much snow? Well, I'd say less than an inch won't bother anything. There's always the risk, though, of getting more snow than was expected and now you'll have snow ice rather than the best kind of ice: clear ice.

What needs to be explained about the "cold weather happening soon" condition is what "soon" means. It doesn't have to be tomorrow, next week might be soon enough. If you're filling from a well, you might even prefer to fill slowly over several days rather than fill all at once. Your water will come out of the ground at around 55-60 degrees and has to cool to below 32F for ice to form. It doesn't matter if the water loses that 30 degrees slowly over several days or quickly over one, it's got to do it.

On the other hand, you don't want a lake for any longer than you have to have it. While we did notice on the Backyard Rink Yahoo! group that rinks that were liquid didn't seem to have any problems, we don't want to encourage them by having a lake for too long. Animals will remember where the bodies of water are and visit frequently. A week or two won't be bad.

So, when you're planning on dropping your liner look for calm winds, favorable weather, and cold weather forecasted soon.