The Ploetz Centre  

The Ploetz Centre, frozen solid!  December 23rd, 2004.

  Ever since I was 15, I’ve wanted my own backyard hockey rink.  I was inspired by the last chapter of “Sports Illustrated Hockey: Learn To Play The Modern Way” by Jack Falla (which I bought to improve my game as a young player) that describes how to build and maintain an ice hockey surface in your own backyard.  For years, I could be heard saying, “When I get my own house, I’m building my own hockey rink.”  Even when my wife and I went house shopping, I could be seen scrutinizing the backyard…figuring where the rink would go, and what trees would have to come down.

And then, the Fall of 2004 came.  My wife and I had been in our home in Janesville for more than 3 years, Connor (our youngest son) was just born that September, and Avery (our oldest boy) had just turned two.  Well, Walter Gretzky got Wayne started skating at the young age of two, so wouldn’t that be a great time to start Avery?  He liked watching hockey on TV, had seen the Admirals play once and the UW Badgers twice, and LOVED it.  He loves playing NHL 2001 for PS2 (as best as a two-year-old can), and he plays with his hockey sticks in the house so much, that we have to hide them from him after a while.  Wanting to take my help my son’s enjoyment of hockey as much as I could, I set-out to get him some skates, and even went to a USA Hockey Level 1 coaching seminar.

Oh and yeah, I decided to build my own ice rink.  Of course, I had NO idea of the magnitude of the project that I had just undertaken.  

First of all, this tree was in the middle of my backyard, and had to be taken down.  That was a fun day in October.  Lots of wasps, and I only sawed through my electrical cord once.  My buddy Rick came down to help me remove what I couldn’t salvage for firewood, and my Dad helped me grind-down the stump.  Of course, now I had a huge hole in the middle of my backyard.

The big tree in the middle of the yard had to come down...October 5th, 2004.

Next, I called Digger’s Hotline.  As I’d have to dig twelve 2’ holes to place the board posts, I’d better know where the gas, electric, phone, and cable lines are.  Actually, in Wisconsin , there’s a state law saying that you have to call BEFORE you start your project, and they’ll usually [have the respective companies that own the lines] come-out and mark you within a week or so.

Knowing that I’d be starting soon, I measured-out the room that I’d have.  Leaving a 3’ gap by the house (for the Alliant meter guy) I’d have about 40’x30’ to work with.  Not bad.

First, I had to get the materials.  I bought a roll of 100’x25’ 6mil plastic sheeting, cut it in half (for two 50x25 sheets), and used bathroom caulk and duct tape to secure it into one 50’x50’ piece, to function as my liner.  Then, I borrowed my buddy Trent’s truck (a Chevy S-10 on it’s last leg, that was so decrepit that I needed to LEAVE IT RUNNING in the parking lot of Home Depot), to buy the plywood.  Seventeen sheets of 4’x8’ plywood were needed, and at $13.99 per sheet, that was quite an investment.  But, I’d only have to buy this stuff once.  Next, I needed twenty 8’ 2x4’s.  I actually managed to fit them all in my Ford Focus, with the trunk closed (took two trips to Home Depot, though).

With the materials in-hand, I built the boards.  For my rink, I built thirteen 4’ boards (had 3 extra), seven 2’ boards (2 extra), and one 1’ board (for the entrance).  Next, I had to dig the holes.  Not finding a posthole digger in any hardware store (people don’t sell them in November?), I borrowed one from Barb and Jeff Barnett.  I spent two days digging the holes (one day in pouring rain…actually made it easier) and got my large boards (the 4’ones) in-place.  Next, I secured my small boards (the 2’ ones) with shelving brackets and tent stakes (because it was easier than digging four more holes).  When all was said and done, I had a cool “plywood corral” going on.

I used 2" screws to bolt the 8'x4' sheets of plywood to the 6' 2x4's, for the big boards.  The remaining 2' of post was then burried in the ground.

Realizing that the colder and windier it got, that the harder it was going to be to install my liner.  So, I made my biggest mistake (on this project) and installed my liner and began flooding on Thanksgiving Day.  Although Thanksgiving was cold, it wasn’t cold-enough to freeze, and it’d be three weeks before I had ice frozen-enough to walk-on.  Of course, I developed all kinds of problems while flooding.

My backyard isn’t exactly flat.  Actually, there’s about an 11” difference between the middle and the ground alongside my house, so to fill my rink’s outskirts at 2”-3” (a bare minimum), I needed to put about 13” in the middle (ended-up with about 9").  Now, when you have a rink of 783 square feet, filled with an average of 4” of water…9” in the deep end…as my Dad would tell you, that's a hell of a lotta water, and a LOT of weight.  Of course, since my big boards were anchored into the ground, the weight of the water attacked my small boards.  And it was more weight than 3 pieces of plywood supported by shelving brackets and tent stakes can handle.  Mental note for next year…big boards all along the deep-end.  

Here's an angle of my "problem area" in the deep end.  Believe me, it was a straight-shot from corner-to-corner when I started.

So of course, my rink started to buckle, I did my best to re-enforce it.  As I succeeded, the water would find new ways to frustrate me, finally by pushing the liner UNDERNEATH the boards.  But, with some remaining 2x4’s I was able to reinforce it to the point that it would support the weight.  But, not before all that weight (grinding the liner up against plywood) created seven or eight leaks in my deep-end, which Coriene and I struggled to fix at 3:30am on Thanksgiving Friday.  

Here, you can see the juncture of two of the little boards in the deep end.  The shelving brackets (one large on the right, and one small next to it) are anchored into the ground with the (yellow) tent stakes.  I also screwed them together at the top, but that didn't seem to help much.  Here you can also see the pieces of scrap 2x4 that I used to keep the liner from pushing underneath.  If you look closely, though, you can see that some of the liner was still pushed-through.

To fix the leaks, I used a basic approach.  Duct tape on both sides (if I could get at both sides, otherwise just on one) and an adhesive compound in the middle.  I tried three different types of adhesive compound (basically, you need something that’s waterproof and won’t eat polyethelene).  Bathroom silicon caulk, E-11 marine epoxy, and aquarium glue were the three that I tried.  If the hole was out of the water, the caulk would work fine (it would need to be dry to cure...after it dried, the duct tape and caulk held nicely).  But to fix holes underwater, only the E-11 marine epoxy would work (and not perfectly)...and duct tape doesn't grip for crap underwater, so I'd have to use spare scraps of liner.  I also was able to fix leaks in my liner seam (the seam I created when I combined the two pieces of liner) with the aquarium glue (which, by the way, in small letters tells you that it’s not recommended for constant underwater use…go figure) before I finally got my base frozen.  But what finally worked, was that when I flooded it the final time, it was just so damn cold, that water leaking out froze almost instantly, and plugged the hole(s).  

Here the other side of the deep end...otherwise known as the "problem area".  All of my leak repairs are pretty apparent from here.  Note the curvature of the board, indicating how much the water weight caused the board to buckle.

Basically, in order to freeze solid-enough for an adult to walk-on, you need 3-4 days of sub-freezing weather.  I got that the 2^nd full week of December, and I could walk on my rink in the middle only (2/3^rds of the water from my first flooding had leaked-out by this point).  Sunday the 19^th was in single digits, and I could walk on the entire thing (no matter how thin), so I flooded again, and this time got a nice frozen surface that was solid for over 90% of the rink.  I had one corner that just wouldn’t flood, and the last foot or so of my east wall wouldn’t flood (and I didn’t want to chance the whole weight issue again), so I just left it at that.

By the way, the water bill for the month(s) that I flooded it was better than people told me that it’d be.  I flooded it three times, for an average of 6 hours at a time, and my every-other-monthly water bill only went-up $20.  No big shakes.  Not nearly as bad as my Dad said it'd be (my Dad is a supervisor at the Sheboygan Water Utility...FYI).

After reading all this, you might ask “Why did you bother with all that?”  Everyone naturally assumes the answer to be that of propelling my sons into a career of professional hockey.  That couldn’t be further from the truth.  Let’s face it, if I knew how to get people to the NHL, I’d be playing there myself.

Skating is a fun, family-oriented activity.  My backyard rink was built for that purpose…to have fun.  If my boys want to spend hours-on-end skating backwards and honing their snap-shots, I won’t chase them off.  But if they just want to have fun, goof around, and just be kids, then that’ll make me the happiest Dad in the world.  When I look in my backyard, I don’t see an NHL player-development-center, or even a bunch of plywood surrounding frozen water.  I see a dream.  My dream…one that I’ve had for years.  And now, I’ve finally realized it.

Aaron Ploetz
Ploetz Centre Owner, Architect, Contsruction Foreman, Construction Grunt, and happy Dad of two goofy boys

First day of skating, December 22nd, 2004.

We didn't have Avery's skates sharpened yet, so he's just out there in boots.  Normally, I'd make him wear a helmet, but it was 8 degrees out, and I was more-worried about him getting cold.  Anyway, we were just out here a few minutes for fun and pictures.

P.S.- I’d like to take a second to thank my lovely wife, Coriene.  Mostly for her support, but also for putting up with her crazed-hockey-fan of a husband, who spent about $550 on removing a tree and buying plywood, 2x4s, water, a plastic liner, duct tape, and glue, just to build a monstrosity of a pipe-dream in her backyard (while making our neighbors think that I'm a total nut-job in the process).  Oh yeah, and for that night I dragged her out of bed at 3:30am to help me fix the liner.  Love you Babe!