Such stories have become the norm in this, the annus horribilis for the backyard rink builders of New England. They’re a hardy group, resourceful and not easily deterred. But they are powerless without winter, and even with occasional stabs of cold like this weekend’s, the parade of balmy days has meant one disaster after another.
Like a baby or a puppy or a saltwater fish tank, the amount of work required to keep a backyard rink alive is more than anyone thinks going in. The maintenance is continual and can’t be skipped, but the real dangerous time, the one that can completely ruin an entire season before it starts, is when the rink is filled but not frozen.
No one’s yard is level, veteran rink builders will tell you. A yard with even a few degrees of slope will translate to many additional inches of water at the deep end. And until it freezes and stabilizes, that water will spend its time trying to rip down the wall and get out and over and through the liner.
That makes choosing the right time to fill an art that all builders obsess over. When the first real cold nights came two weeks ago, most everyone gambled and lost. The cold produced maybe a day or two of skate-able ice, but the warm spell that followed turned the rinks back to liquid. Last week’s rain only compounded problems.
“The stress of 10,000 gallons of unfrozen water and soft ground is enough to keep you up at night,’’ said Steve Goldstein, who has a 33-by-72-foot rink in his backyard in Hopedale.
As it is, the warm weather has eaten away a good chunk of what is usually a short season even under the best circumstances. In the Boston area, the roughly 60 days between late December and late February are usually all you get. Steve Gruber’s three kids ask him every night when they will be able skate in their backyard in Brookline. They should be out there every night by now, they say; instead, it’s just their dad with the telescoping pool net he bought this year to clean the leaves and sticks out of the water.
