SoCal here- yes we seal the arenas when the NOAA weather service has a 50% chance of rain or greater in our zip code. Sprinkles don’t count: we’re looking for real measurable rain of, say, 1/2" or more. Which can come down in a hurry here and really saturate things in a way that some parts of the US are probably not used to.
We try to seal arenas in the evening after almost everyone has ridden. We drag them smooth with various combinations of rollers and other tricky tractor stuff- always in search of the perfect drag and the perfect sealing tool!
Our arenas are professionally built with about 1% fall the long direction to help guide the water off. If we seal them well, we usually lose about a day of riding for each inch of rain, with a max of about 3 days closed for a really heavy downpour that lasts hours and hours or days.
Sealing the arenas helps all that water sheet off faster and go away, instead of filling hoof prints and sitting there, little cups of water all over the place that would have to dry/evaporate before the arena is safe for tractors and horses to be on top of.
I check the arena by walking out and doing the toe-tap test: I tap-tap-tap a little area about the size of the ball of my foot, and if it doesn’t ooze and fill back up with water (like wringing a sponge) then I’ll check a few other areas. If I don’t get noticeable fill, the sand on top of the compacted arena base is probably firm enough to support the weight of the tractor.
There will always be more fill in the shade- sometimes I leave the shady side of the arena one more day but let people ride on the sunny side of poles or dressage cones that are protecting the wetter shady side.
Note that running a tractor with deeply-grooved ag tires (not smooth turf tires) on a very wet arena can quickly chew through the top sand and into the compacted base, especially on tight turns. A tractor weighs a lot more than a horse so both are possibly damaging to a water-logged arena. Once a shod horse hoof or a gnarly tractor tire start chewing into the base, you’re starting to damage your arena in an expensive way.
If my arena seems to be about evenly damp, and the toe-taps aren’t filling, I will drag that arena with the drag teeth set about an inch to two inches into the surface sand. I pick up my drag bar or chain that drags behind the tines: I want the furrows from the teeth to be as open and expose as much surface area to the air as possible without the chain or bar flattening them back down. It’s all about maximum air on maximum footing surface area.
If I can rip open the arena (described above) late at night, on a clear, cool night, or a night with a little breeze, the arena is usually ready to use the next morning. It makes a huge difference to rip it open and leave it exposed to night breezes for 8 hours or so.
My barn staff start at 6 am and end their busy day at 3 pm- a full 8 hour day. I would need to pay them overtime and interrupt their their families in the evening to come back and seal/rip the arenas, so I often do it myself or one of the trainers often helps out. Most barns wouldn’t have the luxury of a second shift of workers to deal with arenas after their regular shifts… this is one of the BO perks of owning a barn… night-shift tractor work! : )
It doesn’t rain very often here; this is a matter of losing maybe 10 days a winter to rain and sealed arenas, usually in little batches of a couple days at a time. I realize that’s inconvenient to our riders, and trust me, as a barn owner, I sure want the horses to get out as soon as it’s safe- high horses are a hazard in their stalls to themselves and to my help trying to work around them. But I also need to preserve my arenas as much as possible too and I sure don’t want a horse to be exposed to more slip hazard on a sloppy arena than is prudent, either.
We have three arena plus a large round pen. The smallest of the arenas happens to be the one that usually dries fastest (no shade trees on it) and it’s a sacrifice arena- I’ll rip it open earlier, and take a chance in dinging the base before the bigger arenas, as it is the smallest and therefore cheapest one to repair if it is damaged.
My arena/footing expert recommends I budget $1,000 a month for maintenance, material, and occasional repairs to our three arenas, and that has been a little bit more than we’ve actually spent. The figure does not include regular grooming time each morning but does include adding material (all the dust in my house was once arena footing) and occasionally exposing the base to check for damage and then re-lelvel the footing.
My last repairs with him were approximately $7,500, but we had not had extensive re-working and re-leveling of footing material in several years.
Our arenas are good not great. We use natural river sand, not synthetic footings. I have seen any number of neighbors invest in synthetics then find out there is something they don’t do well- hold up to our seasonal deluges without the material floating away, perform without huge amounts of water from time to time, not deteriorate in the relentless sun, not require prohibitively expensive sub-floor work, etc. There doesn’t seem to be any clearly superior material: just a lot of different things we do, with different grooming tools and techniques, to try to keep things as nice and safe as possible.
When it’s raining, or looks like it’s going to, I just post arena conditions on Facebook. It only takes a moment and lets anyone interested know what to expect when they get to the barn.
It’s interesting how many regional differences there are in horse care; arena maintenance is nothing different. Best thing to do is ask about how things like this are handled in advance of boarding someplace, and you’ll know what to expect after you move in. Ideally, weather procedures should be outlined in your boarding contract- then everyone has clear expectations of how a particular barn handles things.
