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Slush! (Lesson learned)
I had the rink as smooth as I may ever get it (Thurs night) in anticipation for my daughters friends to come over (Fri night) for an evening skate party. It was going to be an awesome event. I woke up Fri morning expecting to find a dusting of snow on the ice so i figured I'd bust out the leaf blower and have the problem taken care of in a few but to my dismay I found about a 2-3 inch cover of slush on the rink. (With only an hour to get ready for work) I grabbed a shovel and thought "may its packed enough where i can shoverl it off". About 1/3 of the way through (and 30 min. later) I realized I was just making a complete mess. No way (unless i had the day off) I could get that rink ready for the skate party. Out of desperation i left the sprinkler on for the day (33 F and sunny temp). When I got home from work I found just a mess.
Now we have about another 6 inches of snow coming and a warm week ahead. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!! I guess the lesson learned for me is if I ever find myself in this position again I'll just let the slush freezed and try to resurface with a hose??? * Any input/help would be appreciated.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by steve m on -
same here my rink is a complete fiasco
Now 6 days of 40 degree weather coming in mass
Guess I am a mass hole eh
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Permalink Reply by Magnus Leslie on -
As hard as it is to just sit there and look at your slushy rink, I've found that doing nothing until it refreezes is the best option. Unless it is a thin enough layer or you have the time/manpower to shovel it all off in one morning you usually just end up making a huge mess. A thin layer could refreeze in a couple of nights, but I've had to wait 5-6 days before with temps in the low teens before a 6+ inch layer of slush solidifies. It sucks, but the good news is that it is salvageable once the slush freezes again.
I had some slush on New Years Eve, but once it refroze was able to have the rink back in action in less than two days. Can read about the details here if you care ( or get bored enough while you wait for your slush to freeze): http://edgewatericegarden.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/on-the-seventh-d...
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Permalink Reply by Todd Creel on
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Mass hole here too Steve and thanks for the advice and link Magnus.
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Permalink Reply by Mark Cunningham on -
I made the same mistake of trying to remove a large covering of snow from off the centre of the rink with a shovel this past Thursday, while standing on the outside of the rink frame because the ice was just not strong enough at that time to walk on...boy what havoc I created as I was removing/scrapping towards me large amounts of slush ...that section of the rink looked like a bad scar by the time I finished...so to correct it (knowing that it was going down to -10 that night), I hooked up the garden hose and flooded that area until it was as level as I could get it with the rest of the ice.
When Friday morning came (7:30am by the time there was enough light to see), I had what looked like mountain peaks as the remaining slush just froze in place...but the good thing was, it was staying cold for the weekend so I grapped the garden hose again, hooked it up to the hot water tap and screwed on the nozzle head, setting it to JET and took aim at mount everest...this helped as the frozen slush peaks broke off and each slid across the surface of the ice to the sideboards (which I scooped out)... I then changed the setting on the nozzle to SHOWER, and gave the rink a quick hot treatment across the entire surface...this took approx 15mins to complete as I didnt spend too much time in any one spot.
I then left the rink alone for the rest of the day till Saturday morning (again 7:30am) where I was able to now walk across the ice rink without fear of creating cracks etc across it, and hooked up my homi-boni to the garden hose, the hose to the hot water tap in the kitchen, and re-surfaced the rink...took about 10mins, and then once finished went to my Dad's for coffee, returning around 9am to have our 1st skate of the year (Jan 22nd...unreal late start).
Time spent building the rink: 6hrs
Time spent waiting for the temps to get cold enough to drop in the liner: 30days
Time spent laying out the liner and filling the rink: 10hrs
Time spent battling warm temps/snow/slush warm temps: entire 2011/12 season
Time spent actually skating on the rink: 1 day so far...priceless?! Hell ya :)
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Permalink Reply by Captain Purple on -
Sometimes the hardest thing to do is nothing.
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