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A family in the quiet, wooded Wesley Heights neighborhood in Northwest D.C. is upsetting its neighbors with the construction of a backyard ice rink, but there’s very little they can do to block it.

The Post today reports on the complaints Brooke Coburn, a managing director at the Carlyle Group, started getting from his neighbors when he began construction on a 30-by-64-foot rink in his back yard. It’s a very noisy process, but there are no regulations prohibiting D.C. residents building hockey rinks on their property. (To say nothing of the emotional salve such an addition might offer in the wake of a nearly-lost NHL season.) The rink is also the latest in a series of improvements Coburn has made to his home; he previously installed a swimming pool and a retaining wall, the construction of both of which ticked off the silence-loving denizens.

But D.C. has lots of building codes that need to be followed, and that’s where Coburn went wrong, albeit briefly:

[Councilmember Mary] Cheh’s staff members said they contacted the District’s Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, which sent an investigator to the site last week. He determined that although Coburn had approval to build a retaining wall and swimming pool, he did not have a permit to construct the rink. The investigator then stuck a large orange “stop work” order on the front door. (The family later covered it with a wreath trimmed in pomegranates.)

Coburn said his contractor made an honest mistake. The response was to submit technical drawings of the structure, which he said is seasonal and can be removed during the warm-weather months.

The permit on building the ice rink was subsequently granted. As for Coburn, he doesn’t begrudge his neighbors. “Complaints aside, my neighbors’ children are welcome to come over and skate over the holidays,” he told the Post.

Fun fact about the house: It was previously inhabited by Richard Nixon, when he served as vice president.