If you live in Minnesota -or any northern state or Canada- the ultimate in backyard family fun is a skating rink. More and more people are dedicating an area of their yard to a winter rink. Still, that fun comes with maintenance concerns. Professional rinks use Zambonis to condition the ice, which are a bit expensive to use in a private backyard. But where there’s a will, there’s a way. Backyard rink owners are a creative bunch, and they’ve employed all sorts of methods to bring the ice on a homemade skating rink to pristine condition. These methods and gadgets are called “homebonis.”
Rink-makers are famous for their homemade resurfacing contraptions, from PVC pipes and towels dragged behind buckets to tanks hauled on modified golf carts. Traff hooks three snow blowers together to clear his rink and invested in a military-grade water heater to make fresh coats of ice more robust.
But all home rinks share some universals: sun and warm temps are enemies; post-skate shoveling is a necessity, and late-night flooding is a mystical state.
“When you’re out there at 10 o’clock and it’s dark and the wind is still, you can hear everything from miles away,” Greco said. “Then once you’re done, you look at that perfect sheet for the morning and you’re like, ‘This is awesome.’ “
Watch a homeboni in action.
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Read more about backyard rinks and what folks go through to maintain them at the Star Tribune. -via TYWKIWDBI
Source: neatorama