Building a backyard ice rink is a fantastic family project that creates lasting winter memories. With the right guidance, materials, and a little bit of elbow grease, you can transform your backyard into a magical ice skating rink that the entire family can enjoy. A key aspect to your build is your liner.
Anyone who has built a backyard rink (or "ODR") knows that while building a rink is no simple feat, it provides tremendous joy and satisfaction for those who persevere and get it done!
If you live in a cold enough climate you can get away without one by packing the snow up to create the walls. However, if you get a mid-season thaw, you could very well be in trouble! The topic of liners could easily cause quite a discussion among backyard/outdoor rink builders, and everyone has their own philosophy, but I am going to go with my experience and research and share that with you.
What Are The Benefits Of Using An Ice Rink Liner?
Rink liners are the best way to build a successful outdoor rink. When the goal is to build a great rink for yourself or your community that will last and be worth the effort and money, the liner method is the answer. Below are some reasons to use a liner versus flooding the grass, asphalt, or concrete.
- Easier Set-Up: It will take countless hours in the freezing cold to build up ice without a liner. With a liner, it is as easy as frame, fill, and freeze. Frame the rink with your boards, fill your liner with water, and wait for the cold to freeze. After you fill the rink, it is hands off.
- Longer Skating Season: Without a liner, rink builders must wait until they have cooperative weather to build their rink. An unlined rink built too early could end up being a total waste when you are counting on cold weather to freeze the ground. On the other hand, with the liner method, there is little risk of wasted work and wasted water for an early season start. The frame can be built in advance in the late fall. The liner will contain the rink water during thaws and reflect sunrays away from the rink. With a liner, you can start skating in late November and skate as late as early March depending on what region you live in.
- Reduced Maintenance: A lined rink withstands freeze/thaw scenarios with ease. A thaw actually improves the rink surface as the water finds its own level and naturally smooths itself out. When the cold comes back, it could take as little as a single evening to the have the rink back up and running. Without a liner, a thaw can mean that you will need to start over because water will drain away through the lawn. Without a liner, it can take several freezing cold nights, lots of excess water, and countless hours to get back to skating.
- Cost Savings & Ice Quality: Water can be expensive. A small residential rink takes as little as 5000 gallons of water to fill while a larger community rink could take over 100,000 gallons. Without a liner, water can seep away into the lawn on warmer days. With a liner, it takes just one fill up. Besides the cost in water, the cost of maintaining the top surface is much more involved without a liner. As rink water washes away, the top surface has to be continually rebuilt. With a liner, water does not flow away so it just takes minutes to apply a minimal top coat of resurfacing water.
- Site Does Not Need To Be Level: Granted, a level site is always better for building an outdoor rink, but it is not as critical if you are using a liner. If you have less than 12 inches of pitch, do not bother leveling the site. Without a liner, it is nearly impossible to build up an ice surface on the lawn with significant pitch. Water will always find its level. This is a battle that can never be won - except with a liner where you can compensate for unlevel ground by using taller boards where the water is deeper.
- Preserves Your Lawn: Flooded lawns in the winter are not good for grass roots. Many rink areas where a liner is not used leave a partially or fully destroyed lawn. In most cases, a liner preserves the lawn. If the liner is laid after the grass is dormant and removed before it becomes active, the grass usually comes back healthier and stronger. Consider a golf course - they cover their greens.
- Preserves Asphalt & Concrete: Liners work great on asphalt and concrete too because the white surface helps with keeping the stone surface cool and it is essential to keep water out of even the smallest of stone cracks. Water that freezes into concrete or blacktop cracks will eventually destroy a porous surface. With a liner, the ice rink will be much improved by keeping the pavement cool and protected from the negative effects of ice formations and thaw in stone cracks.
Polytarp offers a wide selection of White Reflective Ice Rink Liners ranging from 20’ to 60’ (6.1-18.3 metres) wide. No yard is too small to build your very own rink.
Read also: Ice Resurfacer Selection
Plan early and speak to your local building supply store for all your lumber, fasteners & tools needed to build your backyard memories.
Our ice rink liners are a single polyethylene sheet, pin-hole free, seamless, multilayered, and white. White liners make a big difference for forming and keeping ice on your rink. White liners will help keep the ice from melting by reflecting radiant heat away from the rink on sunny winter days.
ABI’s Liners are manufacturer warranted to be free of material defects for up to 25 years (coverage length determined by liner thickness). This includes the ability of the liner to withstand normal weathering and environmental degradation.
Choosing the Right Liner
Most definitely color does matter. There are many different types of liners or alternatives, but in the end you want to make sure your liner is WHITE. The issue with a dark color facing up is going to potentially cause different issues with your rink. There is, however, some debate as to whether your liner needs to be white on both sides. I haven’t been able to find any definitive answers that either confirms or denies the need for white on both sides. So, I think you are safe either way.
Like you, I struggled for years to find quality rink liners at a reasonable price. First, in terms of quality, don’t take a chance on anything less than 5 mil or 6 mil. You have made substantial investment or time and money on the rest of your rink, and there’s a narrow window of time to fill and allow freezing, so you simply can’t risk water leakage during filling.
Read also: Winter Fun at Hamilton Ice Arena
Some lower cost options that can be found at the local hardware store may be made of recycled materials since they are not specifically made for winter ice rinks. Our manufacturing recipe for liners is proven for outdoor rinks while recycled solutions are a compromise. The first resin melt produces the highest quality plastic which is required to absorb the abuse of a cold winter.
Iron Sleek manufactures our ice rink liners using virgin polyethylene resins - never recycled. Our multilayered liners are much stronger than most other ice rink liners.
Three tips for keeping your backyard rink smooth all winter long
Liner Thickness
You might be researching liners and see them differentiated by thickness (6 mil, 8mil ,10 mil, etc). So what does that mean? The thickness is generally measured by mil (unit of length equal to .001 of an inch). Liners can typically range from 6 mil thickness all the way up to 14 mil thickness, and maybe even more.
As the mil number increases that means the liner is getting thicker and the thicker the tarp the heavier duty the liner is.
The word "mil" refers to the thickness of a particular liner in thousands of an inch. We recommend using a 6 mil liner for your rink. Winter freeze and thaw patterns cause ice rinks to creep throughout the season, while a 3 mil liner is impermeable, it is too thin to endure numerous freeze/thaw cycles. 6 mil is the best option for the majority of rink builders. If you have rocky or rough terrain, our string reinforced liner may be a better solution for you.
Read also: Ice Skating in Great Neck
What Size Liner Do I Need?
This is where it gets difficult. The bigger your rink the more it’s going to cost you, but you have to be careful about what you are buying. You have to choose a liner to be big enough to cover your entire skating surface and then some.
Minimally, a liner should be big enough to cover the entire skating surface and should be able to come all the way up the boards and then droop down a bit on the exterior. The liner should be at least 5 feet wider and 5 feet longer than the size of your rink. For example, a rink that is 30' x 50' should use a liner that is at least 35' x 55'. It is always good to have extra liner just in case you need to use taller boards.
Typically you would add 4 or 5 feet to the length and width. For example, a rink that is 30 by 50 should use a plastic liner or tarp that is at least 35 by 55. It is always good to have extra liner just in case you need to use taller boards due unexpected slope issues.
Conventional wisdom is to use a rink liner that is at least 5 feet wider and 5 feet longer than your boards, but the real answer depends on a) height of your boards, and b) do you want the liner to go up and over the boards (which we recommend), or do you intend to trim back the liner after freezing.
If your boards are two feet high, then 2.5 feet on each end (or 5 feet longer, or 5 feet wider, in total) should be fine. But if your boards are higher on one of both side, then you need to consider rink length + board height on both ends plus 12” inches of slack (6” on each side). If you have four foot boards all around, for example, then you will want a liner 9-10’ taller (and/or wider) than your rink.
You will also want to leave some slack in the liner when filling so the water can fully reach every inch of the ground within your rink without stretching the liner at the top.
Installation Tips
Treat your liner very carefully when installing it. Be sure that nothing sharp is in your rink area or on your boards. Be sure that no screws are pointing into the rink interior. Tuck your liner down snugly into the rink. Fill the bottom gaps with soil or use base cove. Do not staple your liner until it is settled when the rink is full of water. Rink topper is a great alternative to stapling. Never walk on your liner.
Immediately prior to filling! That way you reduce the chance of leaves and branches falling on top, having the wind blow the liner away or out of position, or a snowstorm arrives and now you have to shovel what lands on the liner (which inevitably leads to puncture).
For the installation process, we recommend that you recruit a friend to help you roll out the liner across your rink, straighten out the wrinkles, and then tuck in the corners. In our experience, it’s best to wear socks while walking on the liner to reduce risk to reduce “pulling” of the liners that can happen with grippy boots (or risk something sharp on bottom of boot).
As mentioned above, I recommend that you leave some slack in the rink liner when filling so the water can fully reach every inch of the ground within your rink without stretch the liner at the top.
Can I Reuse My Ice Rink Liner?
It is best to purchase a new liner every year. While our ice rink liners are reusable, it is generally not worth the headache of storing your liner and having to worry if it was torn during removal or storage. Keep it simple - invest in a new liner every year. You can use your old liner as a cover for lumber or anything else that you may need. If you do save your liner, you can also use it as an extra bottom layer for your rink.
Theoretically you can re-use your liner the next year, but I have never heard of anyone who was able to successfully. First, often times the liners get punctured by skates, ice chunks, errant screws sticking out of the boards, or when disassembling the rinks.
Second, even if they remain puncture-free, the liners are nearly impossible to roll back up, get really heavy from being covered with wet leaves and moisture so are tough to transport, and take up too much room to store. Third, if you can solve the roll-up and storage issue, sometimes you don’t realize your liner is punctured until you roll it out and start to fill the next winter. What a terrifying experience that would be!
You might only have a narrow window for that initial fill, as previously mentioned, and it’s difficult to find affordable last-minute liners in December. Can you try to mend the puncture? Perhaps, but not guaranteed.
Duct tape is not strong enough to hold back water during initial water filling...there is always seepage underneath, however gradual, that will impact your freezing. The FlexSeal tape option seems appealing, and if you just have 1-2 small patches to fix then maybe that’s worth a shot.
Lastly, nearly everyone I know that built a rink last year wants to build an even bigger rink this year. Don’t you?
Do Ice Rink Liners Kill Grass?
Liners should be laid down right before a deep freeze is coming. By that time, the grass is already dormant. Snow covered grass gets little to no sunlight and grass still comes back every year. The problem occurs when you leave your liner in place during the time your grass becomes active. If you lay your liner down on dormant grass and take it up when the grass is still dormant, your grass will be fine.
Obviously, the weather cannot be controlled and a fluke season could happen where the grass could become active before your liner is up. All in all, the risk of your liner killing your grass is minimal when set-up and take-down happens in a timely manner.
Protecting Your Liner
The life expectancy of your liner depends on your usage of your rink and how well you are protecting it. You can expect your liner lasting somewhere between 1 to 2 years. It could last longer, but you have to be taking very good care of your liner.
Two things that will help protect and extend the life of your liner is bumper caps and/or protecting the exposed liner from pucks and skates.
Many rink manufacturers sell their version of their bumper caps. They do look like a glorified pool noodle, but it has a purpose of protecting your liner and it does this job well.
The exposed line is that liner that is showing from the ice level to the top of your boards.
Additional Tips
- Use our rink topper to hold the liner in place and to give your rink a classic hockey rink look. Liner clips are an affordable alternative to rink topper.
- Consider using ABI's 12 MIL Black/White Liners to create a winter sports arena right in your backyard! takes pride in the high quality of liner material we have available for our clients.
Winter comes around only once a year. There is only one opportunity to build a rink correctly. People have been building rinks with liners for decades.