Pond big enough for skating?

[PolarBair]

How big does a pond have to be for skating on? Anyone nail that down yet?

[RainBeau]

I don't think you can ever skate on your own lot, if you're trying to do that.

[Vinyl]

I think you can skate on your home lot, but the pond has to be quite large.  Like the size of a festival lot skating rink large (can't remember if the small or big size rink is what you need to make).  It's much easier to build one on a large lot than trying to squeeze one into a normal size home lot - and it's probably easiest to build the lot/home from scratch starting with the skate pond first!

[PolarBair]

Well This was interesting. When I posted this I was trying to skate on the pond on my home lot which is about 8x11 tiles and the skate option was greyed out with a mouse-over tool-tip saying the pond was too small.

A little while later, while waiting for replies to this post, my sim autonomously started skating on my pond. I hadn't changed the size at all but suddenly the option to skate was no longer greyed out so apparently 8x11 is big enough.

[Vinyl]

Interesting!  Next time I play with winter enabled I'll try making a home skating pond, now that I know 8x11 should probably work.  Thanks for the info!   

[Neashaleigh]

You can skate on your own lot, and the pond doesn't need to be that large. I made a small pond on my lot once, and it was big enough to skate on. I think it needs to be round enough for the skaters to go round in circles. If it's too narrow, it'll say it's not big enough. I haven't fully explored this yet.

[nomad]

On a lot the pond needs to be big enough to contain at least a 6x6 area or a 10x10 area if you want an inner lane as well, beyond that it gets a bit complicated. I suspect you may need to have some free room available around these sizes making the pond slightly larger overall.