Since 2017, I have been building a little ice rink in my yard every winter. It is not much work and something to look forward to during the colder months.
The rink is typically around 20’ wide and 40’ long. Construction materials include a bunch of 2x12 boards with 2x4s screwed into the bottom and top edges for extra support. These board sections are fastened together with common door hinges, which makes them very maneuverable. A ring of these board sections is created and then a tarp is laid down in the center and pulled up over the boards. Filling the tarp with water can take around 10 hours. Because the lawn is sloped away from the house and toward the street, I typically use some wooden pallets to level it out a bit, which also helps slightly with the freezing of the water since air can get between the tarp and ground. Near the house, the water level does not rise up the boards that high, so I can usually get away with having boards that are a little less fortified in those areas.
Here’s a GIF showing the construction of the ice rink in 2018:
New Jersey winters are increasingly warm, but usually there are a few cold spells that allow the ice to freeze to an acceptable thickness. We need approximately 2.5” inches of ice to be able to bear an adult (maybe only 2” for kids). Typically, this means 4 days where the low gets down to around 20 degrees. Because of the warm winter weather, we typically don’t even need to worry about resurfacing the ice: just wait until the next day and the sun has usually done enough resurfacing as it is. But, when we really want a clean sheet of ice, a few buckets of hot water mopped around will do the trick!