Eventually, we plan on building a small covered or indoor arena on our property. I recently found out the cost of the actual structure is going to be significantly less than what I had originally thought so it looks as if it is closer to our future than we thought.
But let’s talk about building it.
Do you still need to have a base, or for that matter, let it settle like you would in an outdoor? We have sandy soil. I can’t see how the base would settle if it was under a roof, and I recently heard the horror story of the contractors completely destroying a riding facilities footing when they covered a pre-existing arena.
Anyone built an indoor/covered? What did you do?
Do you want a covered or completely enclosed arena?
That will determine what foundation you need.
A covered arena needs less foundation, the more walls you add to it, the more weight you are putting on the foundation, the beefier the foundation needs to be.
What many do is build a pad, like for a commercial building.
Then build the arena, then add special finer sand for the footing.
That is the way convention centers around here build their arenas.
You could ask those where you are who built theirs and get bids for what you want.
I would recommend starting with a correct base depending on where you live. My horror story is that we assumed our indoor would be fine, because our outdoor was fine with no base. The soil was different though, and after adding our footing we ended up with deep spots and an unlevel arena. It’s not horrible, it causes no issues, but I so wish I would have done more research. The base and footing is as important as the structure you build around it.
Any arena, indoor or outdoor, is best served by being built properly, and that includes proper excavation and base before the footing goes in.
The way pads are built, they haul in loads of dirt, spread it with a laser to specs, water it and compact it, then bring more material, spread and compact and so on until they have the desired height.
Then an independent tester does a compaction test, to be sure it is built to at least 94% compaction, or whatever it needs.
Then you add whatever footing you want for your discipline, here they use a special sand, thin layers for most, except for cutting, then twice as deep.
Watering and working the footing just right is then an art and many go to some arenas, won’t go to others, according to what kind of footing their horses prefer or do their best in.
We have a cover and, yes, you need to properly do a base. Wind is going to blow in rain and if you don’t have a good base it will be very slow to dry (no Sun to help you out).
G.
Thanks for the advice. The arena would either be a wood covered or one of those tent like indoors, so weight is probably similar on both.
I was mainly worried that the base would never settle because of the lack of rain, but I guess if they do it by hand then it will be ready to ride in less time too which would make me happy!
The foundation may be a concrete border all around the base of the structure, maybe 12" wide by 2’ deep, pylons under each column may go to 6’ deep.
Or it may be 2’ x 4’ or 6’ pylons only, especially if you won’t have walls that would need to rest on the concrete edge.
The center of course won’t be concrete.
All that will come with the plans from the local civil engineer’s office, for the concrete contractor to build, with the proper anchors, J-bolts, for the columns, inserted in the pylons.
If you have to, you can work the ground later, after you have the building up, but it will be a nuisance, when you can do it right before and it would be easier and so cheaper up front, before building on it.
Even if you build it as a pole barn , it is best to install and stabilize the base first. You also can add footing ahead of time but be aware that if you use wood, you’ll be walking the area with magnets in hand hunting up nails.
Installing the footing first saves the headache of figuring out how to get the footing in, unless you have a very high space between floor and rafters.
