I’m building a 70x140 outdoor ring. I’d like to put lights on it as economically as possible. For this size ring will two lights work if they’re strong enough? Four? What kind and what strength? Thanks!
Google “yard lights” and you’ll get a bunch of choices. We have 65x200 covered arena and have 8 sodium yard lights. Unless we are doing something exciting we seldom use more than four. They are “ganged” to each.
I’d bet you’ll be looking at 6-8 lights depending on what you want to do. For flat work the lower number might suffice; for work over fences maybe the higher one.
When we did the arena the first electrician we talked to submitted a bid of close to $10,000 and was going to light the place up like a plant doing fine engraving! I got a second bid of $2800 and that included the lights, wiring, boxes, and timers (to make sure nobody forgot to turn the lights out 
). We also had a 110 outlet run on each side of the arena. That was a REALLY smart thing to do as it has saved us a lot of time and effort when performing maintenance tasks or dealing with occasional emergencies.
Ensure that when you get any bids they are using proper outdoor fixtures, switches, wiring, etc. Not all electricians are created equal!!! 
If I ever need to replace any fixtures I’ll use LED technology as it’s much more energy efficient.
Sometimes folks think solar fixtures might work for this. And they might, but read the specs very carefully and, if possible, visit an installation with what you’re looking at and see what it REALLY does. I know you’ll find this hard to believe but some sales folks will actually LIE to make a sale!!! LOL This will be real money so be real careful.
Best of luck as you go forward.
G.
Our arena is 100x120 and we have three lights. My dad did ours, so I think we maybe spent $5000? That’s with 3 25’ poles (the poles were about $1000 each), LED lights, 100 lbs of concrete, and rental of the trencher and concrete mixer. I can find out more information if you want, I can’t recall the strength of the lights, They were fairly easy to install but my dad is an electrician so that probably had something to do with it.
We were quoted $25k to put them in by an outside electrician. My husband laughed and said “you do realize my FIL is an electrician and we know the materials are less than $5k right”.
We did timers as well. Plus my dad put a lock box in so that our lights can only be turned on after 6am and before 9pm (we can adjust these times, but it was to prevent our boarders from annoying our neighbors).
I think for your purpose, you need four lights minimum. I had a small arena that is about the same size of yours, that I put only two lights. I regretted afterward every time I rode in it. The two lights cast such shadow that even my steady show horse spooks constantly in that arena.
I am finishing putting lights in our new arena. There will be ten lights total for the 100x200 area (five on each long side, so 15 meter apart). They will be mounted on ten 35’ tall poles (so the lights will be ~28’ above the ground). The poles are old telephone poles for $30 each and the yard delivered them to us for $100. The lights are 1000W metal halide. LED are not suitable at this point. as they are super expensive and do not produce enough output. Metal Halide are more expensive to operate but for our purpose, a couple of hours a day in certain months, it is still cheaper overall.
We got our metal halide form Econolight for a deep discount. They are getting rid of all the metal halide and transition to LED exclusively. They also generated light pattern analysis for us so we can be relatively sure of the result. This service is free. They WILL over engineer so you will need to adjust. Based on their design, we will have arena of 30fc throughout, which is what you see in show ground. Their recommendation was 36 1000W lights total. :lol:
check out post #3 for my ring light project, including cost breakdown.
https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/forum/discussion-forums/around-the-farm/305452-update-arena-lights?470448-Update-arena-lights=
I am VERY happy with the result, and my ring is so bright, I think you could get by with 4 lights or maybe even 3, and still have it light enough to hack, but not jump. I got my LEDs off of Amazon, and they are crazy bright, and very inexpensive to run.
three lights for $5000? it is quite expensive in my point of view. i know led lights may be more expensive than metal halide or halogen. i always wonder how many power of horse arena lighting do i need
That’s the LED lights plus the 25’ steel poles that they were mounted on. We only have 3 but you can pretty much play a high school football game under our lights so it was well worth it (plus we were able to do our lights at cost as my dad is an electrical contractor).
Pretty cheap compared to the quotes we got from other contractors.
