I’m redoing my outdoor arena. 100x200 in south Texas. Mainly jumping. Nothing over 4’. There are so many options and I’ve seen people happy & unhappy. What are everyone’s experiences?
I can’t speak to fiber arenas, except that I enjoy riding on them a lot.
Currently I’m renting a farm with a rubber arena. The horses seem to like the footing. My picky gelding happily goes on it. But it certainly has pros and cons.
Pros:
- less dragging required. I can get away with one drag a week with an average of 25 rides a week.
- Easy to drag. A chain drag will do a good job. No need for a really expensive special drag. About once every 3 months you have to pull the rubber from the edges back into the middle with a rake, but that takes very little time.
- Very little dust. Of course this depends on what sand you combine with it, but even in the worst dry spells it’s not so dusty that you feel like you need to go shower your lungs out.
- horses seem to like it.
Cons:
- the rubber floats. Every hard rain, it piles up in little rivulets and I have to drag it all back together. Luckily it doesn’t seem to float out, just clump.
- If you wait too long between dragging it becomes rock hard. The rubber all comes to the top and it’s terrible. Like, make your horse look a little lame terrible.
- It has about a 15-20 year lifespan. Eventually the rubber gets brittle and hard from being in the sun. Which means about every 15 years you will need to replace your rubber. It’s not particularly difficult to do ( since it floats, you just wait a few weeks without using the arena and scrape the top off) but it leads me to my last point
- it can be really difficult to dispose of. Some states have very strict laws on rubber disposal. You take the gamble on if in 15-20 years your state will have those same regulations.
I don’t know if the fiber arenas degrade or not. It would be interesting to see if anyone has an older fiber arena and how the fiber is doing.
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Can I revive this thread? To see if there’s any other input? I was going to make a thread about fiber versus rubber, then ran across this one. I was wondering about how to scrape out and dispose of the rubber when it needs to be replaced. Anyone have to dispose of their fiber footing and how long it lasts? The fiber I’ve ridden in seems to hold moisture nicely so I can imagine being in an arid environment that might be nice.
I would assume that underneath the horses pounding on it every day the rubber would eventually break down not necessarily like biodegradable but break down enough to where you can’t really scrape it up unless you scrape the entire area down to dirt?
What area are you in my friend has an arena with a sand and what is called manufactured sand at the quaries, if you ask for dust it has bits of gravel in it you have to ask for manufactured sand ,but her ring is amazing.
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I’d love to know about how long the fiber footing lasts but I think it’s just not been in use long enough to know yet.
In regards to rubber footing. The rubber doesn’t break down into dust (yay). But have you ever touched a really old tire? It’s not squishy anymore. It’s hard, like a rock. That’s what the rubber particles do after 10-15ish years in the sun. And then it’s not very nice for riding on. So the easiest way to help that is just let the arena sit for a bit during some good hard rains. The rubber will float to the top of the arena. Scoop it up with your bucket, and do something with it. (At the farm I’m at now, they used it in their dry lot area). You don’t need to worry about removing every single rubber piece, you just get the majority. Then, just add back in your new rubber and maybe a little bit of new sand to freshen up your arena.
The problem is that in some states they have really strict laws on what you can do with the rubber. Some treat it as hazardous and make you pay a huge amount of money to dispose of it. Some states don’t care, and you can do with it as you please.
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I’m in the western plains. Arid and windy. I would worry about rubber blowing out/away some. I will put up wind screens and kick boards at a minimum to keep footing where it belongs. But I still worry about rubber getting away. Sand? It’ll just get carried to Nebraska and continue adding to The Sand Hills (I kid, but not really…) Rubber? Likely some of it will blow out and lodge in nearby grass or in my dry lots. That doesn’t thrill me. So as I type through more of this, the more I would lean towards fiber…
My SIL has rubber in her outdoor ring in the Columbia River Gorge, home to incessant, strong wind (gusts over 75mph are common during wind events lasting days). Her rubber never blows out…it’ll wash out during heavy rains but even that is minimal and gets tossed back in easily.
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We routinely have 25-50 MPH winds here in the winter. I’ve never seen the rubber blow away. The sand does blow if it’s dry.
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I just ordered a 1/2 inch rubber from Best Rubber Mulch Company and they were great to work with. I’ll blend that into 2" sand and already had a 1/2" of limestone screenings. A bit of rubber like that helps prevent compaction as well as offering a tiny bit of spring.
A local arena purchased rubber from them 5 yrs ago and have been very happy. This product is non toxic and has no metal in it. She used mag chloride to prevent dust.
Mine will be used indoor and my research found the fiber option is tricky. People were either super happy or hated it. And it’s an arm and a leg. Needs lots of water. And didn’t think you could use mag chloride with it but do see Trutex footing saying that can be done?
Or you go the waxed sand/fiber route and hopefully have a trust fund because that’s even bigger dollar.
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I have never had my own arena to have to resurface, but where I am (various barns in California), I see fibre. I’ve never seen a rubber arena.
I don’t know the reason for that.
The barn I’m at (basically a private barn, just a couple of horses) is brand new, along with the arena (outdoor). Building the ring took a lot of excavation work - it’s kind of carved into the side of a hill. It was well done with a good base, topped with bluestone. There’s a raised berm all the way around the ring so no concerns about footing washing out.
We rode on the bluestone for a couple of months, but it obviously doesn’t provide much cushion, and unless it was dragged constantly, got hard and crunchy. Through a fancy footing company, barn owner got one dump truck load of rubber (very very fine shreds) to mix into the bluestone. The rubber mixed in great and was definitely the right idea, but the single load cost $6,500 and wasn’t nearly enough material. And another $13k for two more loads wasn’t really in the cards.
She came across a company that installs new, and uninstalls old, astroturf sports fields. What’s under the astroturf is a blend of screened and washed angular silica sand and fine rubber. These fields are redone every couple of years and this company has made a side biz of selling the sand/rubber under the astroturf to horse people for arenas. Got two dump truck loads of the sand/rubber for $700 per load and mixed it into the existing bluestone/rubber. It’s only been a couple of weeks, but so far, the footing has been very nice to ride on.
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There was a post a few months ago where someone said they got recycled tennis balls for their ring. I can’t remember the name of the company, but you get the rubber and the felt all at once that way 
I’m curious about it myself!
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In my part of SC the arena contractors seem to be installing a lot of GGT, and digging out and hauling away and replacing a bunch of rubber arenas from the days when rubber was the fad.
Ballpark figures in my SC location for approximately 100x200 foot arenas starting with native soil are GGT $55,000 and sand $35,000. This includes laser grading, removal of topsoil and preparation of base, and about 4 inches of base topped with 4 inches sand or GGT.
These prices vary depending on location. The nearest arena sand source to me is a 130 mile round trip for a dump truck, so hauling cost is high. Particularly with sand arenas an irrigation system is critical - maybe another $5,000. And don’t forget about buying an arena drag or groomer to maintain it.
my Golden Retriever would be in heaven
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I just built an outdoor and have Master Surfaces TexStride fiber footing. It is amazing and much less expensive than the other fiber options I considered. I installed it in the middle of a drought but after the first rain, I haven’t had to water the ring a single time because it holds the moisture so well.
No personal experience with longevity, of course, but I was told it should last about 15 years in an outdoor.
As a parent of a kid in highschool sports, I have to admit I hate the rubber that is on the astroturf sports fields. It ends up everywhere. We call it turf dirt, and I will be glad of the day we are done with it!
When we moved in to this property earlier this summer, there was a playground with recycled tire mulch right where I wanted to put my run-in shed. I scraped it all up, and have been hauling it to the tire recycling center as I have time one pickup truck load at a time, having to pay to dispose of it properly. From what I understand, recycled rubber from non tires doesn’t have to be disposed of the same way, but I could be wrong.
Following this thread though, as I am hoping to put in an outdoor arena next year.
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Yeah our barn owner has a high schooler too - she calls the rubber "turf turds’ 
. And she said he tracks them in the house constantly from the school field.
Interestingly we don’t seem to have that issue with the little rubber pieces in the ring. I don’t know if it’s because they’re mixed with sand and bluestone or if there’s some other reason. We did notice when we had a hard rain that some of the rubber bits floated up to the top of the footing - but they mixed right back in when dragged.
