Arena watering - water trailer?

[Critter]

I have an 80x200 indoor…and a 100x220 outdoor arena. I am getting sick and tired of dragging the hose and sprinkler around the indoor (takes all day too). Plus it never waters evenly (because of overlap)…and has now caused damage to some of the end kick boards which need replacing (from getting soaked by the sprinkler so much). The outdoor, I would like to use more, but it would take a lot to drag hoses to and from all summer…stone dust, so it gets hard if we don’t have the rain.

So…what are your best arena watering options? Does anyone have one of those water tanks/trailers? I have a tractor and gator, so I do have the equipment to pull one. Is it worth the investment? I see some with a pump and some that are gravity…any difference? Thanks!

[NancyM]

My indoor is the same size as yours. It takes me… usually four changes of position of my sprinkler to cover it, I leave it in each spot about 20 minutes. The sprinkler creates an 80 foot diameter circle of coverage. Then I harrow. I leave the hose running down the side of the wall on the outside of the wall with the sprinkler attached. And just pull it out and position it when needed, and turn it on. About once a week. Easy, and cheap and effective.

[Mosey_2003]

@Critter

So…what are your best arena watering options? Does anyone have one of those water tanks/trailers? I have a tractor and gator, so I do have the equipment to pull one. Is it worth the investment?

It might be worth it if you also would like to fertilize or apply herbicide out in the fields as well. They’re handy things to have. No idea on cost though.

[trubandloki]

@Mosey_2003

@Critter

So…what are your best arena watering options? Does anyone have one of those water tanks/trailers? I have a tractor and gator, so I do have the equipment to pull one. Is it worth the investment?

It might be worth it if you also would like to fertilize or apply herbicide out in the fields as well. They’re handy things to have. No idea on cost though.

Chemical application takes a more accurate water distribution system than what I have ever seen anyone use for watering the ring.

[Mosey_2003]

@trubandloki

Chemical application takes a more accurate water distribution system than what I have ever seen anyone use for watering the ring.

Ah, good to know. Whoops

[trubandloki]

@Mosey_2003

@trubandloki

Chemical application takes a more accurate water distribution system than what I have ever seen anyone use for watering the ring.

Ah, good to know. Whoops

That system is easily purchased at most of the farm type stores, economically. So, they are a good idea… not shooting the idea down.

[Bluey]

You could do what we do, use a water wagon like those used by construction companies to water roads and pads they are compacting and to fight fires, as we do here.
This is what we have, a Wylie sprayer with three nozzles on the back that spray a 20’ 30’ pattern. It takes one go of 500 gallon full tank to water our 120’ x 250’ arena, if done regularly.
They have smaller ones also and some that you fill and spray only, won’t draw from a water source.
You can fill it from the top or draw from a trough or pond directly into the sprayer, is what we do.
Wylie ranch sprayers, this is what ours looks like, we are having prairie fires every day and our neighbor is using it to fight them:

[FrittSkritt]

What about one of those traveling sprinkler things? I forget what they’re called, but you lay the hose down the center of the arena and the sprinkler crawls along it.

[endlessclimb]

Sprinkler tractor or something like that. These are unreliable even on perfectly mowed grass, I’d imagine it would get worse with sand-type footing.

[FrittSkritt]

No, these are way bigger than the little toy tractor ones. I want to say they’re called water wheels or something, they look like a cart with a coiled hose on it. They use huge ones for crop irrigation but come in smaller sizes.

There’s also the water guns if you want to try and set up something that’s only on one side and can shoot far enough to cover the other, but that would require some fairly advanced plumbing.

[Bluey]

Nelson sells the water guns, is what feedlots use to water pens to keep dust down:

https://nelsonirrigation.com/products/big-gun

They use water trucks to water alleys.

Those are also sold for arenas, but they don’t water as evenly as a designated spray tank you can add to the back of your pickup or gator or dragged in its own trailer.

One brand of traveling water reels is this:

https://www.kifco.com/OurProducts/Water-Reels/tabid/101/Default.aspx

Water reels, like sprinklers you move, tend to leave wet spots, not good in arenas, as those can get very slick.

[endlessclimb]

Got it. I’d guess that the barn water pressure wouldn’t be enough for a turbine drive one of those, so you’d have to go electric or gas powered?

[Bluey]

@endlessclimb

Got it. I’d guess that the barn water pressure wouldn’t be enough for a turbine drive one of those, so you’d have to go electric or gas powered?

Some smaller water reels we checked out ran on 60 psi and most wells and pressure tanks can do fine, yard sprinklers tend to run with that pressure, ours do.

Here is an internet picture of one in use:

[trubandloki]

@Bluey

Some smaller water reels we checked out ran on 60 psi and most wells and pressure tanks can do fine, yard sprinklers tend to run with that pressure, ours do.

If you (general you) are depending on 60PSI for something like this to work, please make sure you have 60PSI. In my experience 60PSI is not a really common available water pressure everywhere.

(Don’t post "we have 60PSI where I live. I know there are for sure places with that, that is why the code has a maximum PSI allowed before pressure reducing is required. I am simply saying that I know from experience that lots of places do not have this high pressure so please make sure you do before you depend on having it for something to work.)

[endlessclimb]

My city water supply is nowhere near 60 psi. I can’t even run two small sized yard sprinklers at the same time, let alone one of these beasts.

[QHEventer]

A barn I boarded at in the past rigged up a pretty cool system. Think of an above ground irrigation system. Piping was attached to the fence and sprinkler heads were attached to that. Turn on the water, and water came out of each sprinkler head which were placed at intervals along the fence.

You could get super fancy and add sprinkler wire so it’s wired to an irrigation control panel and then you could have set times it came on and off!

[Critter]

Thanks for all the input…I did a quick spray down by hand the other day and that took a little over 2 hours. I was looking at the smaller water tank/cart…which is 110 gallons. But Clanter’s numbers got me thinking…if a standard hose is putting out ~1000 gal/hr…and it took me 2hrs just to get enough water to take the dust layer down (not really a deeper watering, which is usually 6 hours of the sprinkler)…I would be doing lots of trips with the 110 gallon tank. The 500 might be more reasonable. But I also emailed a few companies for prices…$6-8k range (I found a 110 gallon for $1500). I also emailed one company about the overhead sprinkler system and that rough quote was 9k for parts…14k for fully installed. Guess I will be dragging around the hose and sprinkler for forever! LOL

We are on well water with very good pressure, though I don’t know the exact number (but even the hydrants all the way to the back fields are pretty powerful).

[Bluey]

Our well pressure control has generally been set at 40.
When we put in a yard sprinkler system, they had different nozzles for different pressures.
They said with more pressure they have more powerful nozzles and use less lines.
We decided thee 60 psi seemed doable.

When looking at Rain Maker self rolling/unrolling systems, those also come in different sizes, from very small ones to so large they are used in farms and nurseries to water by the acre.

If the OP was thinking of one of those, the smaller ones could fit and fit her budget better.

We used a sprinkler system at first, kept moving it around every so often, but it just kept leaving large wet spots where the sprinkler was set, not good to ride thru those slick surprises.
The fire fighting sprayer works great for us.

A neighbor ran lines over the arena and hung regular sprinklers off them.
When done he drains the lines every time, so they don’t freeze or leak.
They were happy with that last we talked to them, but they said it was not the best solution, hard to keep watering evenly and just keep working, maintenance was hard.

[findthedistance]

I used the smallest Rain Maker with a booster pump to water an 80’x200’ indoor arena for many years. The property had water issues (two 500’ hydrofracked wells tag-teamed to get us the glorious output of 4-5 gpm) but with the booster pump we were able to generate enough pressure to consistently run the system.

If you can generate the pressure and you’re okay with the ring being unavailable for an hour or two (we averaged about 90 min) while it runs, it was a pretty good system. Ours was old and required occasional repairs as parts wore out. The company is very easy to work with to buy replacement parts. If you’re in a freezing climate, you need to be able to store it indoors. It does not drain 100%.