An Unmitigated Disaster

 /frustrated

 So there was a hole in the liner... AT least one... 

 I had tried to do another fill, with the same result...  I noticed a small orange wiffle ball under the tarp in the middle of the rink... I had to make the hole larger to get it out and repaired it with multiple strips of duct tape.

 Another fill, same result - so the liner itself might have a defect in it somewhere... somewhere I just can't find.

 The rink is now 7" deep with snow.  I had thought about watering the top of the snow - getting that to freeze then flooding over it.   After trying to do that with 2 applications of water of incredibly cold days, I've given up....

 The liner was $160.  I can't afford to drop that kind of cash around Christmas time again...  Others on the Yahoo board suggest going back to Home Depot and see if they can swap it out...  That may be my only option at this point...

/frustrated

*Grrrrrr*

 So it was nice and cold on Saturday morning...  I stopped in at Home Depot to see if the liners were in for the rink... Luckily enough, they were...  but they'd raised the price of the 40x60 to $149 this year!  Freakin scammers!

 Got it home, and Hannah helped me put it down... Got the water running....  It filled and filled and filled...  I had a feeling that it was leaking somewhere, but there was no evidence of it anywhere.  

 Left it filling overnight.   Woke up this morning, and it was at  the same level... Checked again, and the area by the cement path was submerged in 5" of water...

And it's snowing now, with the rink 1/4 filled...  and I"m leaving for work reasons for a week in a few hours.

 NOT the start I wanted to have.  :S

Side boards

Are up!  (No picutres - I think you've seen enough of that!)

 Chainlink fence along that side is up as well and secured...

 I'm not going to make the same mistake that I did last year - Putting up the end boards BEFORE laying the liner... That just caused all sorts of problems trying to do it that way.

 So I'll go back to my regular way of base boards, then liner and filling it up - once frozen THEN I'll put up the boards...

 Temps still +10 some days here, so it may be a couple more weeks


 - k

New "boards"

 So my (ex) girlfriend has a dog named Bella that she brought into the home as a 'surprise' when we were first living together.

Odds are, I'll be keeping her when she moves...  And I'm getting tired of putting her on the chain everytime, so I figured I'd put up a chain link fence...  Which, coincidentally will run right along side my rink... kind of giving the once side of it a new "board" to keep players and pucks on the ice...

 Just a thought.

The Rain commeth...

 It's March 10th, and it's pouring rain...  

 The rink has been dead for a couple weeks now and in fact, before coming to work I poked holes in the liner to start the draining process...

 Soon the boards will come down and be stored for another summer... until a chilly November day comes along and spurs me to put them back up....

 Goodbye HIA, see you in the fall.

Hockey Day in Canada!

 Rink needs a fair bit of work before Saturday's annual game... Going to be hard between working midnights...  will see.

 Hockey Day @ Kev's house starts around 2:30 and runs into the night.... BYOB!  Fire pit, boot hockey, xbox hockey, tv hockey... gonna fire up the BBQ and cook some burgers.

 Let me know if yer interested!