the world's premiere online community for backyard ice rinks

Leak below the ice...now ice is not level.....help??

I have a 28 by 75 rink, and this is my first year doing it so am learning a lot. The first month was great and we had awesome ice, using hot water at night to refinish the surface. We had a warm spell, and after shifting of ice/water, I have a leak under the ice line creating an issue.

Our rink is 14 inches of ice on one side and three on the other, so ground is not level. When I add water at night, it is leaking out from the bottom of corner of the deep side, as it goes around the ice in between the liner and ice. I can't get the water level high enough to make level ice anymore, and can't patch the liner.

Any ideas on how to "dam" up that corner so that the water will rise high enough to freeze and get the rink level again?

Thanks in advance, Jeff.

Comment

You need to be a member of mybackyardicerink.com Community to add comments!

Join mybackyardicerink.com Community

Comment by Eric Ross on February 5, 2011 at 10:03am: Do you know exactly where the hole is? If you don't you may want to try what I did. I had a hole in my shallow end where a free standing basketball net blew over when I was filling the rink and after the water froze realized I had problems in that area. I melted the ice using the hot water from my hose. Very quick ( two-three minutes to get through the four inches or so) after I patched that hole, I realized that there was still another hole somewhere along the boards. So I filled the spot where I melted the ice (probably a foot and a half diameter) with water and put in some food dye. Within minutes the dye started to move under the ice towards the deep end. I kept an eye the dye as it moved for an hour or so to the point where it stopped moving under the ice. Where the dye stopped which was 30 feet or so from the where I put it in, I marked the spot and took out the hose with hot water and again, two-three minutes with the hot water I had melted the ice down to the liner and sure enough, at that exact spot where the dye stopped moving, I found a two inch rip in the liner. Patched that and have had problem free ice for the past five weeks. Hope that helps, Eric

Comment by Karen Noto on February 3, 2011 at 7:07pm: Well, your best bet is to break out the ice where the liner has a hole and patch it. If that isn't possible, try adding slush over where the liner is leaking and let it freeze. Little by little you may be able to get a frozen slush patch over the leak and then you will be able to get your ice level up. But you must do it little by little. Don't flood it all at once, you will only get shell ice that will break and has air pockets underneath. I am dealing with the same issue, but I broke my ice out and patched the liner. Unfortunately, we got hit with the blizzard (28 inches of snow on the rink) and I haven't gotten down to the original ice surface in that corner yet to see where I stand. Good luck. Let us know how it goes.

Also, you may want to post stuff like this in the forum so others can also reply.