Arena size

[baysandgrays]

We just got sticker shock after getting a quote on a 100x200 ring. Basically, we will max our budget before footing and fencing if we go with that size. We have a very unlevel piece of property so there will be extensive expense in grading.

I would like to make the ring smaller in order to work within our budget. My husband thinks building a small ring is not worth the money. This will be an at-home schooling ring to work in a couple of times per week in between lessons (dressage and hunter jumper). I don’t need to be able to have a full course of jumps, but a couple of schooling jumps would be great.

Is there a point at which a ring becomes too small to be useful? What are the minimum dimensions you’d be satisfied with for your personal day to day schooling ring? Thanks for your thoughts.

[Hilary]

I have a ring that is 20m x50m. is it ideal? No - it’s very narrow. If you have a horse who needs more space than 20m circle then it’s hard.

But is it better than nothing? It sure is. I can set a nice gymnastic line, and I can do 4 fences that I can use to make a really wide variety of options to school.

If i had my druthers i would have made it 30m wide at least. But I had to go with what the land and the bank account would support.

[showidaho]

I’ve had all sizes of arenas and trust me - build the biggest one you can. Maybe you can forgo fencing for a while? If you are going to do it, do it right. At a minimum you would want a 100x150 to jump and really a 100x200 would be better. We just did a 150x250 and it is worth every penny.

[Bluey]

[QUOTE=baysandgrays;8191896]
We just got sticker shock after getting a quote on a 100x200 ring. Basically, we will max our budget before footing and fencing if we go with that size. We have a very unlevel piece of property so there will be extensive expense in grading.

I would like to make the ring smaller in order to work within our budget. My husband thinks building a small ring is not worth the money. This will be an at-home schooling ring to work in a couple of times per week in between lessons (dressage and hunter jumper). I don’t need to be able to have a full course of jumps, but a couple of schooling jumps would be great.

Is there a point at which a ring becomes too small to be useful? What are the minimum dimensions you’d be satisfied with for your personal day to day schooling ring? Thanks for your thoughts.[/QUOTE]

If you could build the arena you want later, after you save more, maybe for now thinking out of the box would be good enough.
For your current use, you should be able to make do with most any patch of ground to ride in, not even necessarily a flat piece or fenced.
Even trail riding you can arrange for a bit of schooling here and there.
Scout the land around you for such opportunities.

When we were wintering in Southern Pines, we didn’t have a designated riding arena and still did most of our training and riding thru the forest and open fields.
We then went to schooling shows for practice in the arena and in a show environment.

If you just have to build something now, think expansion, maybe make the long side 60’, 80’, 100’, 120’, whatever fits the budget, sited to be expanded later to 200’ and keeping the short side of 100’ for measure.

[ElementFarm]

our ring is 20m x 60m and it’s much better than nothing, but not really big enough. I can set up maybe 4-5 jumps in it (a line and 3 singles) and the corners come up fast. I would love a 100’ x 200’ but that won’t be in the budget for at least 10 years. There’s no room to expand our current one, so we would need to put a new one in, in what now is close to swamp, so it would be horrendously expensive. The small ring is enough to ride in and do basic schooling. I only do course work when I trailer out to lessons or at shows. Luckily I’m not trying to prep for the top levels shows, and my horses are all pretty easy, so it works for us.

I do not have a fence around the ring, and agree that’s something you can live without, at least initially. Make the ring as large as you can, and you can add fencing and upgrade footing in the future.

[PeanutButterPony]

What is the arena’s purpose?
I have a 66’ x 100’- it’s small. You cannot cruise down a long side and have the horse find and keep his balance and stride before you’re immediately prepping for a corner. I use it, but it’s hard to ride in, honestly. I think my horse gets to feeling a little trapped in there. I don’t jump, only LL dressage and tuning on my own horses.

[SouthernYankee]

I’m in the planning beginning stages of my arena and will be putting in a 66 x 150? arena. The 66 is set because that’s as wide as we can make it in the space we have. The 150 is approximate, it may be closer to 180 actually.

Would I love a 100x200? sure. But the only place I have that could fit that size of an arena is in front of the house and I don’t want to look at a dirt patch when I’m drinking my coffee in the mornings. The smaller arena will fit perfectly in a ‘dead’ space and it already has water/lights run to it. It’s just going to me be riding in it and unfortunately I don’t get the chance to ride as much as I’d like so it doesn’t make sense to put in a bigger arena just because.

[Jumper_girl221]

Can you skip the fencing? Or skip the footing for half and do that half later?

That’s what I had to do at first…I just finished a 140 x 220, we couldn’t swing all the sand at once, so we put sand in half and I had jumps set up on just that half, then we put footing in the rest as we could. Finally have sand over the entire thing, but the one side is still on the light side. Granted we prepped the base before starting the whole thing.

Half ring

Whole thing (finally)

I actually agree with your husband.

[SmartAlex]

My arena is 75’x180’ which sounds like enough but it’s tight. My horse is big strided and the corners can come up fast. I can set up a little course in there, but the problem is the width. If I want to leave an outside track to work the rail around my jumps (between the jump and the rail) I have now reduced my jumping track (center of jump to center of jump) to 50 feet or so. I get around this by setting diagonal lines so my jumps are in the center, and my route uses as much width on the turns as possible.

[gumtree]

Our ring is 100 X 200 its not as big as it sounds. More than 2 horses and it gets crowded. Barely big enough for our needs. Enlarging a ring at a later date is not as easy as it sound. Nor will it save that much money.

[Gloria]

What do you need to do for your arena? If it is just grading/compacting, smaller sizes won’t save you much in cost. It becomes expensive when you have to truck in the base and footing materials.

One option is do it by stages, but not by different sizes.

Stage 1: Grade and compact the full size now. With a proper groomer like TR3 to create footing, temporarily this will serve as your arena. You can also use this stage to wait for the ground to settle.

Stage 2: Fix the area that has settled and bring in your base material. Depending on your soil, and what you need of your arena, you may or may not need this step. If you do, again, use a proper groomer to create your footing.

Stage 3: Bring in angular sand for your footing.

Stage 4: Fencing. I will put fence work “after” all your dirt work. You probably need several loads of 18 wheeler to bring in materials, and they require a big radiance. You don’t want them to run over your fence. And if you use smaller trucks, you will need more loads, which mean more transportation cost.

As to the proper size: bigger the better. You need at least 20 meter wide for flat work, and wider for jumping. You probably need at least 40 meter long for flat work, preferably 60 meter (197’) for flat work, and probably longer for jumping.

[horsepoor]

@baysandgrays;8191896

We just got sticker shock after getting a quote on a 100x200 ring. Basically, we will max our budget before footing and fencing if we go with that size. We have a very unlevel piece of property so there will be extensive expense in grading.

I could have written this when we first explored putting in an arena at my house – I wanted the same size but the price was crazy expensive since we are on a slope. What I ended up with is 80’x160’ and it works fine for me. I ride alone and have both big and small horses and do not find it too small to do basic flat work and jump a little (no big courses, just maybe 5 jumps at most and no more than 3’ high – and honestly, if it was bigger, I’d probably still not do much more than that as I get tired of shlepping jumps back and forth). If I was hauling out to lessons elsewhere a couple times a week like OP plans to, that would make it even less critical that the ring be huge.

I’ve ridden in plenty of small rings, being in the rainy NW where there are a lot of small indoors – for a little jumping and flat, I have found that 75x150 is my minimum. Yes, we all love a larger ring, but for my own personal use, I just couldn’t justify the expense. In the end, I’m really happy with mine and don’t regret at all that it ended up smaller than I felt I “needed.”

[saultgirl]

[QUOTE=Gloria;8192124]
What do you need to do for your arena? If it is just grading/compacting, smaller sizes won’t save you much in cost. It becomes expensive when you have to truck in the base and footing materials.

One option is do it by stages, but not by different sizes.

Stage 1: Grade and compact the full size now. With a proper groomer like TR3 to create footing, temporarily this will serve as your arena. You can also use this stage to wait for the ground to settle.

Stage 2: Fix the area that has settled and bring in your base material. Depending on your soil, and what you need of your arena, you may or may not need this step. If you do, again, use a proper groomer to create your footing.

Stage 3: Bring in angular sand for your footing.

Stage 4: Fencing. I will put fence work “after” all your dirt work. You probably need several loads of 18 wheeler to bring in materials, and they require a big radiance. You don’t want them to run over your fence. And if you use smaller trucks, you will need more loads, which mean more transportation cost.

As to the proper size: bigger the better. You need at least 20 meter wide for flat work, and wider for jumping. You probably need at least 40 meter long for flat work, preferably 60 meter (197’) for flat work, and probably longer for jumping.[/QUOTE]

In your Stage 2, you would just ride on the base without footing for a period of time?

[Gloria]

[QUOTE=saultgirl;8192175]
In your Stage 2, you would just ride on the base without footing for a period of time?[/QUOTE]

Yes and no. Essentially you use the groomer to create about 1.5" of footing from existing material. This isn’t optimal, as the footing will compact, and you will need to groom more frequently to get your footing back, but it does give you a serviceable arena to ride in. When you are ready to do stage 3, it’s a simple matter of compacting the tiny footing you have created, and spread sand.

[Jumper_girl221]

[QUOTE=Gloria;8192191]
Yes and no. Essentially you use the groomer to create about 1.5" of footing from existing material. This isn’t optimal, as the footing will compact, and you will need to groom more frequently to get your footing back, but it does give you a serviceable arena to ride in. When you are ready to do stage 3, it’s a simple matter of compacting the tiny footing you have created, and spread sand.[/QUOTE]

We flatted on the base of the ring, but kept the jumping to the finished half when I was doing my ring in stages.

[normandy_shores]

My ring is 100 x 180 (roughly 30 x 55m) and it’s a nice size for personal use. It’s wide enough to have room to canter sweeping turns and set jumps away from the track. I don’t jump big or have elaborate courses, but I have enough room to set up a grid line or a small course. I wouldn’t sacrifice too much on the width!

[netg]

[QUOTE=Jumper_girl221;8192327]
We flatted on the base of the ring, but kept the jumping to the finished half when I was doing my ring in stages.[/QUOTE]

I think this is an excellent idea.

I agree that you want to go as large as possible, and I’d look at the base/footing before worrying about fencing, personally. That’s assuming you have somewhere else for the horses to go out.

We made our arena as large as possible withing the property features (basically 180’ x 200’, but a corner cut off due to the driveway) and it’s only fenced on two sides right now. Sometime I will get it fenced all the way around, but for now having the arena is more important to me.

[baysandgrays]

Thanks for the replies. Let me give a bit more info. I can’t skip fencing because it is going to reside inside our pasture. I have one horse who doesn’t respect anything but solid fences, so I will have to fence in some way to keep them out.

We live out in the middle of nowhere, and the cost of trucking in the machinery and materials is crazy high. I’m looking at 18k for the grading and dirt fill alone. Granted, that’s just one quote, but I don’t have many options as few people are willing to come this far for work.

We can expand over time, but I’m wondering just how feasible it is at the end of the day, especially given how much work it will require. I was thinking I’d ask the contractor to give me an estimate at 80x150. I don’t know how much it will save, but it might give us fencing. Yes, it’s smaller than I want, but right now I have nothing but pasture and yard, and nowhere even moderately flat to do any decent flat work. Jumping is secondary to the flat work, and I don’t need to set up anything more than a few schooling jumps.

[CHT]

Talk to the contractor about options. It could be there is a low spot that will cost $$ to fill, so if you changed your size a little, the price might go down more than you think. We built our arena 80’ by 200’ as that was the size that made the most sense given the highs and lows of the land.

Had I wanted wider, we would have had to take down a hill AND filled in a low spot. That extra 20 feet would have more than doubled the ground work.

for fencing, we just have posts and one rail. The horse that gets turned out around the arena in the summer has no reason to want into the arena, so that is plenty to keep him out.

[Alagirl]

[QUOTE=Hilary;8191910]
I have a ring that is 20m x50m. is it ideal? No - it’s very narrow. If you have a horse who needs more space than 20m circle then it’s hard.

But is it better than nothing? It sure is. I can set a nice gymnastic line, and I can do 4 fences that I can use to make a really wide variety of options to school.

If i had my druthers i would have made it 30m wide at least. But I had to go with what the land and the bank account would support.[/QUOTE]

20 meters is the width of a dressage ring, 50 meters puts it smack dab between a small arena and a long (international) one.

That size arena has been used for a long time to hold indoor shows in the old world.
Of course, one has to ‘flat’ properly to get the horse sublte to be able to handle tight turns.

I mean, how much serious jumping does one do at home?
With some creative course building much can be achieved in a small space.