Dam!

Oh, we thought we were so clever when we built our backyard rink. Over on the west side of our yard, right near the house – there was plenty of room and only one corner ever got a significant amount of direct sun, so most of the ice stayed nice and frozen.

And then came spring. See, our yard slopes down away from the house and then back up to the woods behind us. So, there’s a sort of ditch that runs through the middle of our yard. And the yard slopes slightly to the west where there is a swamp — er, protected wetland. This is what provides sufficient drainage for our yard so all the melting snow and rain that comes in spring flows peacefully into the wetlands. That is until we built a 32′x32′ ice filled dam in the middle of it.

Ah yes, as with many other aspects of our first backyard rink adventure, we have learned a valuable lesson the hard way. Because now we have what was several feet of snow plus a week’s worth of rain standing in our backyard. Even better (and by better I mean much, much worse), is that we own a rather large dog. If you own a dog, you can probably see where this is going. If you own a dog and live in a place where there is several feet of snow covering the ground from December till March, you know exactly where this is going.

So now the question is: how on earth can we drain our little cesspool of doggie doo and spring runoff? We can’t move the rink – there’s still a thousand (roughly, maybe, possibly) gallons of mostly frozen water in there! We can’t make the earth tilt the other direction…can we? Is the only solution really going to be to patiently wait until the rink melts and drains away so we can disassemble the whole thing and open the floodgates? Are we going to be flagged as a health hazard in the meantime? And what will happen to the duck family that made it a home thinking it was a pond? Ok, that last one didn’t really happen, but it could!

One thing is for sure: next year there will be a 36′-40′ length of PVC with a substantial circumference running East to West beneath our winter wonderland. In the meantime, I guess we can use the Rocket Fishing Rod from our backyard dock, I mean, deck.

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