Do you have a tank, sprinkler system, what? With synthetic footing, you can’t just let nature take care of it, like I used to with sand. It has to be quite wet to stay firm enough. Do you have any great solutions?
There are arena drags that have water tanks right on them, so you can apply water at the same time.
Which synthetic footing do you have?
Is it a covered outdoor arena?
I just use a sprinkler that I move around. I don’t have to worry about getting my arena too wet because of my footing (M10 aka screenings aka rock dust) The wetter the better IMO with it. Does not puddle.
I like the looks of the big sprinkler that moves https://www.bigsprinkler.com/catalog/traveling-sprinklers/reelgreen-model-rg25-traveling-sprinkler but with that price I can buy a hole bunch of cheap sprinklers and move them myself. I do use a timer that shuts it off. That is very helpful.
I have been moving around the sprinklers, too, but that gets old! I have an 80’ x 220’, so that’s a lot of moving around, and GGT has to have a LOT of water. I’m looking for a let time consuming option.
If you are talented, maybe even crafty, you can find a commercial sprinkler head (like they have at nurseries) and plumb it to a 6-8’ PVC pipe—you would have to have some good stabilizing feet, but the taller the pipe the further the water will go. Maybe have two hoses running at the same time?
We do the sprinkler and hose thing too and it does get old. The quandary here is that we get rain 9 months or so out of the year, so don’t need to water year round, just a few months. So do you spend the $ to do an irrigation system? We want to get someone out to see how much it would cost and if it would work (being on a well) as the time savings might be worth it.
One of my friends uses the moving sprinkler with the retractable hose, Rapid Rain I think, and it does pretty well for them. Another barn had one and the only thing there was it got stuck sometimes or leaked and then you had a mess…I’m leery of doing that at my place for fear it will destroy my $$$ base. But the idea is great - water at night when cool, have the ring ready to go in the morning.
My arena is 80X200 I usually only have to move it 2-3 times. I have a cheapo sprinkler that covers almost half the arena at a time. Again the timer helps tremendously. Put it on after chores and move it around 10.
We use a liquid manure spreader pulled behind our tractor to water ours. In the summer we have to wet ours every day and drag it to keep the footing good for riding.
I wish I could. If mama nature doesn’t cooperate and it gets really hard and dusty, I ride in my grass paddocks.
Could you add some sand, incorporate it and see if that helps keep it from packing quite so much?
It’s already mostly sand, it just gets a track worn down and when it’s really dusty I don’t harrow because it too crazy dusty. So I have to wait for some rain and pull it back down into the track and harrow good. It’s fine, though, some of the shows I go to have trail classes outside of the ring, and I like to see how my horses go someplace other than the good old ring.
That makes sense.
We also do dry work out in the pastures.
We need arenas to do most training on cattle, so we don’t have to chase them all over the country.
We are testing a MicroRain system. Basically, it’s a unit that can attach to a water source and drive itself (by retracting a hose) until the entire arena is watered, at which time it shuts itself off. No moving sprinklers around etc. http://www.microrain.net/products/micro-rain-product-line/micro-rain-mr32
Bluey, can your 500 gallon tank water your arena with one pass, or do you need to refill it? how large is your arena?
We are in the SW and so extremely dry.
If you are where is more humid, then it may not take as much water.
If we were watering with a tank on the arena drag putting water out every trip, 300, maybe 200 gallon would be fine.
Our arena is 120’ x 250’ and has 2 1/2"-3" of fine sand over a packed dirt base.
That is considered a more fast than heavy footing, while still being grippy enough horses or cattle don’t slip around.
That is important for working cowhorse work on the fence, where they may go all out and then make sudden turns.
Horses really like it and work very forward and light on it, compared with other types of footing, where they are more tentative.
You can tell as you watch the flight pattern of front feet, if horses seem to push with a fast breakover, or if they have to work a little harder at pulling themselves forward.
Since we water mostly only once a week, we water heavily and use two 500g trips.
Then we let it soak for a few hours before dragging it.
We refill from a nearby water tank, which takes only 4-5 minutes.
Thanks so much for the info! I think my dressage horses would have a heart attack if cows joined them in my arena!
I think this is similar to what my friend has, that I mentioned earlier. I’ll be interested to hear how your test run does. In the midst of a heat wave, I find the idea very appealing, but then October and the rains roll around here and I lose interest fast.:lol: It is getting old, this move the sprinkler routine, when we had to start watering in May this year (much earlier than usual in my neck of the woods).
We first had one each of these first ones under sprinkler stands:
We have the tripod with the green legs and the black one with the wheels and both were leaving a wet spot where they stood when waiting to get enough on the outside areas of the circles.
We could not make them spray evenly, always had too much water right close to the sprinkler, lighter the further you were from it.
That is when we thought to try our fire fighting water tank and that worked so well.
The spray from the nozzles is very even.
We were surprised how well that worked.
