This is something I’ve want to post about for a while, but never really had the courage. I have so many interesting work stories that I might post about in the future. Hope you enjoy!
Back in 2020 I was home from Philmont for the first summer since I started working in 2015. As such I needed a new job and I started work at a (Boy) Scout summer camp in Massachusetts. Originally I was a cook like I was at Philmont, but when COVID hit it ruined everything to the point where I had to switch departments. We weren’t serving anyone since it was too much of a health hazard, so I went into the maintenance department. Since then, I’ve had a blast! I’ve done so many epic things and the ice rink story is one of my most well documented.
Deconstruction
The first big project I had to do was take apart this massive ice rink behind the welcome center. It was June, so needless to say it was miserably hot some days. You see the idea was a good one the placement was just not really ideal. It was the perfect place because the yard here was big enough to hold it, but the ice wouldn’t stay frozen. Unless there is blizzard, usually Boston doesn’t hold a constant freezing enough temperature to sustain a large outdoor ice rink for weeks. At night it would freeze and during the day the sun would melt the top layer of ice. So eventually it became my job to tear it all down.
The first step was to clear everything off the surface that wasn’t meant too be part of the ice rink. The basketball hoop, milk crates, and tarp had to go. (Also in this picture you can see 65% of the fence is gone. The fence used to line the whole rink, but by the time I took this picture I had already cut off most of it.
To get the fence off was surprisingly harder than it looks. The people who built the rink were professionals who did a great job of making sure this ice rink would last forever. I was trying to salvage as much as I could for reuse because lumber prices are expensive during the pandemic!
To take down a fence I first had to take out a bunch of screws that may or may not strip. Stripping a screw means that it becomes a huge pain to take out without destroying the wood. I had to be extra careful with the last screw because that was the main support behind each fence wall. Anyways! Lastly I used a sawzall (vibrating demo saw) to cut each one off the rest of the fence (in about 6ft sections) and stack neatly in piles. There were a few hazards such as sunburn, wasps, and splinters during this phase of the takedown.
Those wooden posts you see were annoying to get out peacefully. They each had 2 long screws with a bolt head on them and more often than not they would spin in place and not come out. The expert approach was to force the post off with a mini sledge hammer, being careful not to destroy it in the process. 4×4 posts can be really useful so they were all saved.
As I took down the first half I started pulling off the massive boards on the sides. They are really heavy to lift solo. Especially when wet. For these boards I needed the impact gun, a sledge hammer, a hammer, and a pry bar (think of a crowbar) among other tools. I think around this time another coworker got involved and we went to town on it together. The Kubota on the far side came in really handy if I forgot a tool and helped transport everything from the maintenance warehouse (QM for short) to the job site.
Eventually we finished the fencing and the side boards. Next came the liner. We had to save that too because it was largely undamaged and a perfect size for any future ice rink we wanted to build. There were actually 2 components. A really thin top layer of plastic that was the main barrier between the ice and the bottom tarp. That tarp was covered in pollen and was gross by the time we got to it. It had to be hosed off and left to dry, but once that was done we ended up folding that up (I think). Similar process for the white tarp underneath. It was sort of a hassle to fold the white tarp up because the white tarp was one massive unit boasting a size of 30ft x 53ft whereas the clear plastic liner was still an impressive size, but cut in half.
Once the liners were off the challenge of removing the deck was on. It took AGES. There were screws and nails galore. There were 3 main sizes of board: 2”x6”x8’, 2”x8”x12’, and 2”x8”x16’. The 12ft and 16ft boards were really heavy to left my myself mostly because the bottoms were wet.
There were 2 basic strategies for removing the boards:
- Unscrew all the screws then just lift / slide it out easy peasy.
This only works if you don’t strip any screws. I’d say there was a 75% chance of that happening. Also it was key to wear proper gloves as the heat the drill bits and screws gave off was high enough to burn you.
2. Take a long pry bar, gently wiggle each screw/nail out, and slowly but surely lever the board out. Then tap all the nails/screws out with a hammer.
After a few hundred nails had been surgically removed via hammer/screw it was mutually decided to just forcefully whack the pry bar into each crack with the mini sledge hammer, put all your might into the bar, and when the board is out just use the angle grinder to grind off the nail/screw tips with an angle grinder and pick up all the metal bits later. This was the ultimate board removal method and saved a ton of time.
Removing the joists supporting the deck was rather difficult without mutilating the end of each joist. More often than not the screws were stuck inside or the nails broke in half. Everything was so weak! It was easy to just call on the power of Thor and separate each board with the big sledgehammer, but that gave us maybe a 50% chance of not damaging the end. To top it all off, getting rid of them meant that we couldn’t run across them Ninja Warrior style anymore. Getting the big 6x6x8 posts off was near impossible without the sledgehammer and they were surprisingly not the worst things to lift. That award goes to the soaked 2x8x16’s I think. Wew, my back shudders at the thought.
Once again lifting the boards was a major struggle and took a lot of manual effort. We stacked them in neat piles all ready for the tractor to come pick them up. They were sorted by size and it was important to not stack them too high since the tractor can only handle so much weight. Every so often the boss would come by in the mighty green tractor and haul away each stack of wood. It was taken to the side of the QM where it was more protected from kids climbing on it and was closer to all the work projects in/around the QM. Every time the tractor took a trip up we had to be there to direct traffic and guide it around turns. Think of those airport employees that wave those wands to help pilots. Like them sort of.
The cleanup after everything was apart involved picking up trash, using the magnet bar to get all the screws and nails out of the ground, and raking the dirt until it was a level surface again. It took many passes with the magnet bar to insure that there were no pointy objects for kids to step on.
Overall this project took about 3 weeks of on / off work and I had a blast doing it. We kept a few buckets of the screws that looked normal be used somewhere else, however I don’t think they were ever used somewhere else haha. Well, that’s about it. I love looking at the pictures from this event and I hope you did too. Next time I will talk about the building of the pavilion ice rink. Goodbye for now!
(Trip) Stats
- Boards stacked: hundreds
- Stairs removed: 3
- Fencing removed: many
- Bee stings: 0 (I’m careful)
- Bee freak outs: many (I’m terrified of wasps)
- Nails / screws taken out: 10,000 (probably more like thousands)
- Times my water bottle got hot in the sun: too many
- Did the grass grow back: eventually
- Wooden benches removed: 3
You must be logged in to post a comment.