Building Our Homemade Zamboni

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Building a Zamboni or “homeboni” is very simple. We used 1 inch PVC pipe and glued it together in the shape you see in the picture.

Once you hook a hose to it, you just need to adjust the water to the right amount. The right amount is very hard to know. We put one hole in the top T so we could easily see the water flow. After a few trials, we knew how much to adjust based on the top hole. On our homeboni we adjust until the water lands on the outside PVC and no farther.

Another thing that we did with trial and error is second and third coats. We adjust the water so that it freezes fast and by the time we are at the end of our first time zamming the ice, we can go over it again with a second coat. This gives a really nice smooth surface to skate on.

One other tip is to use a leaf blower to clean out the ice particles from the groves. This makes the ice cleaner before you Zamboni the ice.

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Next then drilled holes on the lower front and also installed hooks on the bottom to keep it up off the ice.

We then bought a kit from Fleet Farm for installing grommets on an old towel. To hang the towel on the PVC we installed some hooks.

Make sure that you have a way to hook it to a garden hose. We used a quick disconnect.