Horse arena footing

[TheMan419]

Next Thursday if all goes well we should be starting a footing project in the riding arena. We have a 60x140x16 riding arena. Currently it is a clay base with washed sand on top for footing.

Project is to remove all the sand down to the clay base - about 95 tons of material. Put in #10 stone dust. 4 inch depth and compact to 95%. It will be lazer leveled.

At each of the 4 exit doors to the barn (they are roll up type) there will be a 6x6 timber installed and rebared to the ground to prevent the stone dust and sand from exfiltrating the barn.

Once the stone dust is compacted the sand will be put back in the barn to 2.5" depth. Either adding sand or leaving sand out as needed to hit that depth.

Contractor estimates a total of 30 working hours for the project. They intend to do it in 3 days Thursday, Fri and Saturday. They specifically asked if we have lights in the arena (we do) so they could work regardless of the daylight hours, although we are getting just over 11 hours of sunlight these days.

I will work from home Thursday and Friday. Hopefully good pictures to follow.

 

[bunyip]

We had a 45x45m arena that was a base of ground ashpalt from a local road that being resurfaced, many truckloads, spread and levelled and alowed to settle, topped with packing sand which has a clay content, about 4" then topped with washed sand, then we sold and are starting again.
May go grass this time.

 

[TheMan419]

We had a 45x45m arena that was a base of ground ashpalt from a local road that being resurfaced, many truckloads, spread and levelled and alowed to settle, topped with packing sand which has a clay content, about 4" then topped with washed sand, then we sold and are starting again.
May go grass this time.

There is certainly some utility to go grass. Wife is a dressage rider so footing requirements are different than if you were say running barrels.

Summer project may well be to do an outdoor arena for her much larger than the indoor that is being redone. Not sure I would put all this work into the outdoor. Drainage will be the issue there since we are such a clay based soil.

 

[Dougeye]

Good luck with this. Our 200 x 100 outdoor arena is compacted aggreggate under hog fuel. We replaced the hog fuel a year ago, the old stuff had been there 14 years. The hog fuel is delivered by a tandem straight truck with a ram pushing the material out. They dropped it around the space a fair bit but I did the bulk of the spreading with my little Mahindra. Hog fuel is very difficult to move around, especially when it's new. It really bunches up. It takes at least a year to get it evened out and compacted nicely. I hoping that's the last time for that job.

 

[ponytug]

I guess it depends on your usage.

We went with 1/4"-3/8" (1cm) round pea gravel, about three to four inches (10cm) deep, with geotextile underneath, and French drains below that. The goal was to have sound barefoot hooves. It has been almost 14 years with no maintenance beyond picking out the manure, and back dragging the surface once or twice a year to keep it even. The rain drained through the French drains heavily for the first couple of years, but tapered off thereafter. The rain puddles a bit, but is gone in a few hours. The arena has a one degree slope east /west (long side) and a two degree slope north/south (short side)

We went from eighteen inches of mud to an all weather arena.

Mostly, the horses loaf around, and run around, in the arena. We use it occasionally for dressage training, though it isn't full size.

Hooves have been great. Our elder horse year old stayed sound, and went happily out for trail rides every week for thirteen years until he died a few days shy of his 38th birthday. His hooves were tough enough to flex nippers nearly together. I don't think we have had a single abscess since putting in the pea gravel in the arena.

All the best,

Peter

 

[bunyip]

We ran harrows over once there was the first sign of a weed, kept it pretty much weed free, was a lot easier to maintain than I thought it would be.

 

[TheMan419]

Well contractor called off due to forecast of 90% chance of rain and getting an inch or so of rain..... not raining and the skies are partly cloudy.... we will see what next week brings.

 

[TheMan419]

Project took about 18 hours to complete. Two guys with two skids, a roller and some fancy lazer equipment to do the leveling.

When we had the arena originally finished the guy doing the finishing did it by eye, no lazer. So we figured it was not very level. Lazer proves that to be wrong. There was no more than a 2 inch variance anywhere in the arena.

The piled the sand in the middle of the arena as it was the level they wanted. Then moved the clay base around until the rest of the arena was level. Ran the roller over that.

Then moved in 175 tons of #53's (stone dust). Leveled that and rollered it.

Moved the sand out of the middle and put stone dust there and rollered it.

Then spread the sand back out and lazer graded that level as well.

I woudl not have thought this project would have made much of a difference. You can tell just walking on it the surfance is different. It is easier to walk across.

A couple pictures attached if I am doing this right.

We are getting a bit more sand delivered tuesday as we are just a bit over 2 inches of depth and would like 2.5 to 3 inches of sand.

 

[drssg]

Looks good! For some projects, it pays to get the professionals with the right equipment and experience.

 

[tallyho8]

I put on western horse shows for 20 years and it didn't matter how good the footing was in the arena, the barrel horses managed to ruin the area around the barrels in no time.