Outdoor rinks: repairing tarps ?

[NuggyBuggy 0]

Last year I built an outdoor rink using a big white tarp that cost me about $130 and was marketed for use as a rink liner. When it came off there were several holes. I'm not sure if it was caused by rubbing against the somewhat uneven ground, rodents who found their way underneath, or something else. Anyways, I'm wondering if it's possible to repair it.

I took a quick look and it seems that neither Tuck tape nor duct tape is are waterproof, only water-resistant.

Anybody know how one would repair tarps ? The tarp is bigger than my rink so I do have room to cut material to use as patches, if needed.

thanks for looking.

[dsjunior1388 81]

Last year I built an outdoor rink using a big white tarp that cost me about $130 and was marketed for use as a rink liner. When it came off there were several holes. I'm not sure if it was caused by rubbing against the somewhat uneven ground, rodents who found their way underneath, or something else. Anyways, I'm wondering if it's possible to repair it.

I took a quick look and it seems that neither Tuck tape nor duct tape is are waterproof, only water-resistant.

Anybody know how one would repair tarps ? The tarp is bigger than my rink so I do have room to cut material to use as patches, if needed.

thanks for looking.

For what its worth, most of the people I know who have an outdoor rink buy a new liner every year.

[jds 20]

Last year I built an outdoor rink using a big white tarp that cost me about $130 and was marketed for use as a rink liner. When it came off there were several holes. I'm not sure if it was caused by rubbing against the somewhat uneven ground, rodents who found their way underneath, or something else. Anyways, I'm wondering if it's possible to repair it.

I took a quick look and it seems that neither Tuck tape nor duct tape is are waterproof, only water-resistant.

Anybody know how one would repair tarps ? The tarp is bigger than my rink so I do have room to cut material to use as patches, if needed.

thanks for looking.

One year I joined two tarps together. I overlapped the seam by about 10" and used acoustical sealant in a zig zag pattern down the seam and smeared it together. Never had a leak. The stuff is cheap and comes in tubes that fit a caulking gun. It is waterproof but it is messy AND it is black (at least what I used) so go easy else you attract too much sun in the spots. It didn't cause an issue for me because of the overlap of two white tarps but still...

[NuggyBuggy 0]

For what its worth, most of the people I know who have an outdoor rink buy a new liner every year.

I'm willing to do so, if that's my only alternative. It just seems wasteful and environmentally irresponsible to throw away about 2400 sq feet of tarp, if the holes can be repaired.

If was just using clear poly, I'd probably throw it away.

@jds - I'll look into the acoustic sealant route - thanks for the suggestion. I'm also going to go to my local hardware store and see if they can suggest a waterproof tape.

[BarDownGinos 3]

Gorilla Glue makes Gorilla Tape, that would probably work as well.

[biff44 0]

A leaky rink is a major problem, so I did a new liner every year. I used clear polyplastic, not a tarp, though.

I guess if I had a tarp lying around and it looked like it was still waterproof (they DO degrade), maybe gorillat tape.

If you get a tarp, get a WHITE colored one. The sunlight gets absorbed in dark colored ones and melts the ice more (ala al gore style). If you use a clear poly liner, wait until it snows, and THEN lay it down. The white snow base will reflect the sunlight.

And try to not put a rink over a leaching field. The warm water from the house will keep the rink from freezing well!

I can pass on this one tip: If you punch thru and cut the liner after the rink is filled/frozen, get some of that expanding foam insulator (like "great stuff"), squirt it thru the rip to the ground side, and mash it down so it makes good contact with the plastic liner. Will stop a leak for the rest of the season!

And you need a flat area. if the water will be more than aroudn 6" deep in one corner, that is about the limit. Deeper means a major engineering effort (water is wicked heavy)!

But I highly recommend it. Nothing more peaceful and zen-like than laying a smoothing layer of warm water over the top of a rink, and seeing it freeze smooth and solid.

For those of you not in the great white north, if you are having trouble getting it to freeze (once again thanks al gore), run a fan over the surface on colder nights. The moving air makes it freeze 2x faster.

[dabeechman 0]

Gorilla Glue makes Gorilla Tape, that would probably work as well.

That is what I was thinking as well. That stuff is absolutely amazing. Puts every other tape to shame.

[NuggyBuggy 0]

Update:

The weekend before last, I bought some tape called "Ultimate duck tape". It claims to perform in "extreme outdoor conditions" and that it can "be used to repair, fix or seal almost any substrate", and I believe the packaging said it was waterproof. I found that it would not adhere at all to my tarp, so much for the "any substrate" part. All I had in hand was some regular red tuck tape, so I put that down and found it did stick and seems to be holding tight even under water. I was even able to apply it to wet tarp. I saw Gorilla Tape but didn't try it because it didn't claim to be waterproof, IIRC.

Anyways I set up my boards (dimensions 18' x 54') and started filling it with water. Last year I spent my weekends up 4 or 5 times a night to add small layers of water. This time I decided to try and flood as much as I could at one time, and hope it was frozen solid in a week or two. I set my hose on at about 11AM, and kept checking it through the day. At the end of the evening, the end of the rink that was on the lowest ground had about 8" of water, and I had water up to most of the rest of the rink except in the high corner. I decided to let it run overnight.

Big mistake.

By the next morning, the weight of the water in the low corner pushed the tarp out underneath some of my boards (my ground is neither perfectly level nor flat). Almost all of my water poured out, which meant I literally had flooded what I estimate to be about 3000-4500 sq feet of my neighbours' property (going out to two lots, no buildings). Now, in the spring that land usually floods anyways (we're on a lake which does not have controlled levels), so it's not disastrous and I don't think they'll care.

So this weekend, I stopped when the water was at about 8" in the low end of my rink. Then I did what I did last year, which was pile snow up against the boards in the lower parts. When I get around to adding more water next weekend, I'll lay the tarp over the piled-up snow and effectively use that to raise the water level.

I would have built some of my boards up higher but unfortunately 10" wide lumber is the widest 2x that I could source at Home Depot.