There are a lot of things to keep in mind when you’re building your ice skating rink at home. Where you want to put it, what kind of tiles you want to get, your budget, the list goes on. It can be a difficult task, but fortunately, there are plenty of ways to make sure that you’re getting the most bang for your buck. If you’ve been looking into hockey flooring there’s a good chance that you’ve already done some research before you found this article, but whether or not that’s the case we’re here to help you make the best, most informed choice possible.
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Why Pick Hockey Flooring?
There are a lot of choices that you can make when building your home ice skating rink. After all, you are putting it in your home or business, so you’re the one that has full control over what is used. Hockey flooring is definitely a great choice for your home rink, and for a lot of reasons, too. You’ll likely be the talk of the town once you get your hockey flooring all set up, but why exactly would one pick hockey flooring? Here are a few good reasons:
- Easy setup. Hockey flooring is designed to be set up pretty easily. It’s made up of interlocking tiles, which means that you just need to line them up in the configuration that you feel is best and pop them all together.
- Practice at home whenever you like. Because you’re the one in control of your personal indoor ice skating rink, you can practice whenever it feels right. It doesn’t matter if it’s day or night, summer or winter. You have full control of your practice schedule, and that allows you a great deal of freedom.
- Don’t wear down your ice skates. Unlike real ice or synthetic ice, hockey flooring is designed to be used with rollerblades or even just in your regular, everyday shoes. That means that you won’t need to worry about wearing down your ice skates just to get some practice, saving you both time and money in the process.
These are just several reasons why hockey flooring is so popular among people that have their own at-home skating rinks, but there are many other benefits that you’ll probably find once you actually have your hockey flooring installed. Whether you’re just getting this set up for your children or you’re an amateur hockey player in your own league, you’ll be able to see growth in your performance in mere months.
Making Sure to get High-Quality Hockey Flooring
There are some things in life that you don’t want corners cut on. You wouldn’t want to find out that the manufacturer of your car’s seat belt cut corners during the process, just like you wouldn’t want the firemen putting out fires to cut corners. It’s also important that no corners are cut when it comes to your hockey flooring. Of course, you might not need the absolute highest quality hockey flooring on the market if it’s not within your budget, but this isn’t something you want to skimp on too much. After all, it’s your training and you wouldn’t want to cut any corners when working towards becoming the best hockey player you can be.
There are a few major things that you’ll want to look for when searching for your hockey flooring. The first is UV protection. As you’re probably aware, the sun can take a huge toll on a lot of things that it touches. Plastics are especially prone to discoloration and disfiguration. Some sort of UV protection is needed, especially if you’re planning on keeping your hockey flooring outside, as most people do. This will help keep your hockey flooring nice and usable for as long as possible.
You’ll also want to make sure that the flooring you’re getting is sturdy enough to support a great deal of weight. That, firstly, will allow you to have as many people on your hockey flooring at once as you like, which is especially nice if you’re hosting your or your children’s team for an impromptu home practice session. Secondly, if the flooring can withstand a good deal of weight also means that you don’t need to move to park your car if you leave it set up on your driveway or in your garage. That saves you a lot of time, and we all know that the last thing most people want to do when they get home from a long day of work is futz around with their hockey flooring just so they can park their car and get to relaxing.
Pay Attention to the Glide Factor
If you’re using your hockey flooring for hockey practice, you want to make sure that your pucks will be able to glide across the flooring just as easily as they would on ice. That allows you to get a real feel for it and increases the effectiveness of your training. There are a lot of stickhandling exercises that you can do on hockey flooring just like you can do on the ice, which is why it’s so important that the surface is slick enough for the puck to slide around.
Not every company will display their glide factor on their product, in fact, most don’t. It’s kind of a hard thing to quantify in an easily understandable fashion, so it makes sense that most companies aren’t going to break their back to get and provide that information. After all, what good is a number that doesn’t really mean anything? There’s no real unified scoring system for the glide factor other than comparing it to ice, but hockey flooring and ice are two entirely different substances so even that number might not mean too much. You can’t even use metal skates on hockey flooring, so it could potentially lead to a lot more confusion than needed.
The best way to find out the glide factor of any particular hockey flooring you’re looking at? Just find reviews online, video reviews are usually the best. Reviews allow you to see what other people that bought the flooring think about it, but videos can let you see the flooring in action. Both of these are important for making your choice because if most people that bought a product regret it, there’s a good chance you will, too. Fortunately, there are plenty of people that have found a way to make a living on sites like YouTube doing reviews of products, so you shouldn’t have too hard of a time finding someone to demonstrate and review the product you’re considering purchasing.
Think Hard About What You Need
When putting together your home ice skating rink, you actually have two big options. The first is the one that we’ve already been covering in this article, hockey flooring. The other is synthetic ice. Synthetic ice is a surface that allows you to use your ice skates on it, so it’s a little different than hockey flooring. Both are made up of interlocking tiles, so the setup and tear down of either is just about the same. Both allow you to get good stickhandling practice in and provide you a surface that allows the puck to move smoothly, so either one is a good choice.
Synthetic ice is, as we mentioned, meant for ice skates. It does wear your blades down twice as fast as normal ice, so keep that in mind if you decide to go with this option. Synthetic ice isn’t quite as slick as real ice, so you may find some resistance when you try to skate on it. That just means extra resistance training to help you out when you get back into a game, so it works out in the end.
The biggest thing that you need to think of when choosing which is better for your rink is what you hope to get out of your practice. Both hockey flooring and synthetic ice offer you space to do a large number of drills that can improve many of the skills that you need to be a formidable hockey player, but the only one allows you the chance to get some extra training in your skates, but at the cost of your skates wearing down more quickly. At the end of the day, either one is an excellent choice for your at-home rink.
Get the Best Rink Possible Built in Your Own Home
It’s every hockey player’s dream to have somewhere they can play no matter the season or weather. This is easy enough in the winter in some places, but in many other places, even winter doesn’t provide many options for hockey playing. If you want something with the same kind of feel as ice and don’t want to resort to playing street hockey, getting a rink is really the only option you have left. Luckily, there are many options available for your at-home rink and most of them will leave you feeling more satisfied with your training.