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.