I am considering putting lights around my outdoor arena so we can ride when it gets darker earlier. Most of the contractors I’ve talked to really don’t seem to know what this involves. I’m looking at doing wooden telephone poles (the local electric company sells them cheap). Other than that, I really have no idea as to what is best. Can anyone give me things I should consider when putting up lights? What kind of lights? How far into the ground should the poles be drilled? Anything I haven’t thought of? Thanks for your input!
The poles are a great choice so once they make mounting lights and boxes easy. The cost of the lights and the electric they use will vary greatly. High Pressure Sodium lights give good light and are cheap to run. They do give off more of a yellow light and are expensive to buy. Metal-halide lamps give good light as well and are still cheap to run. They give off more of a white light but aren’t as cheap to run. Honestly I have no idea what LED lights are like. What I do know is the higher you can get the light the better. It’ll help keep it out of your eyes. You’ll also want at least one long side lit. If you can run lights down both sides you’ll help with shadows and dark turns. This is one place where I’d highly recommend using commercial quality light fixtures. Not knowing the exact lengths of the runs, number of lights, etc I’d suggest using 12/2 wiring at a bare minimum 10/2 or better is preferable. If you have voltage drop you’ll burn out your lights quickly and risk shorting out the circuit. Hope this helps a little
Yeah higher the better. Minimum is probably 20’ above the ground, but higher the better. Less glare, less shadow. You will cause less grievance to neighbors too. Nobody wants gigantic lights shining into their houses. We use 35’ wood poles, buried five feet below the ground, so the lights are 30’ in the air. For this part of the project, please hire folks who are accustomed to this kind of work. I have seen some scary Youtube videos where people try to do it themselves. Please, just don’t…
In general, you want opposing lights to reduce shadows, so generally the recommended minimum is four poles, each at one corner of the arena. For our 100x200 arena, we put four light poles on each long side (so 8 poles total).
Since the lights will be so high up in the air, the power becomes a consideration. We install one 1000 walts Metal-halide on each of the 8 poles, each generating 100,000 lumens of lights. Metal-halide generates bright white light, which we like, but takes some time to “warm up.” We also considered LED, which does not require any warm up, but at the time of the project about six months ago, LED lights of equivalent lumens output were way too cost prohibitive. All of these are commercial rated. I didn’t consider anything else. It is very expensive to install the poles, do trench, run $$$ wires, then install light fixture. The last thing I want is to have some cheapo lights to fail on me in a few years.
This gives us ground lights of somewhere between parking garage and tennis court.
Talk to your light fixture companies and ask them to generate schematic of light output and pattern. This service is generally free. They will over engineer everything so you just need to tell them adjust, over and over and over until you are pleased with the result. We went through about 8 iterations of regenerating schematics.
Once you have your lights determined (type, power output, number of the lights, etc), you can go to your electrician. He/she needs to know how much electricity the lights will draw. Most likely you will need a new panel.
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This is not an ad at alI, but I work for a company that does materials for landscaping, and there is a great lighting company that we supply that does low voltage LED lights. There are different accent lights of different beam spreads that you could use to down light an arena pretty efficiently. I’m thinking about adding a few around the arena at my barn and think I can light a large dressage arena in about 4 lights of the right configuration. Those are small and could be mounted to a tree, the edge of the barn, etc. and just run off a transformer plugged into a standard outdoor outlet and you’d bury wire to it. Pretty simple, doesn’t require an electrician though they could do it, usually landscapers do it themselves or even some homeowners.
If I end up doing it this winter I’ll certainly weigh back in-but in talking to my coworkers and going to training it seems like it would be a really easy option, and also not be a big draw on the electric. If you have questions feel free to message me and I can send you the link to the manufacturer.
I too would investigate LED lighting, we changed All of lighting in our 24,000 sq/ft warehouse to LEDs … major reduction in electric bill and much better lighting
The problem with LED lights is, to have one that generate equivalent of 1000W Metal Halide, it is incredibly expensive. You need that kind of large light output for outdoor arena because you cannot hang the lights directly above the area. You are then limited to installing them along the side, then try to make sure that light input reach the middle. In warehouse, you don’t have this kind of limitation. You are free to hang rows upon rows of LED from the ceiling. By then, of course, that mean, more light fixtures, so more initial capital outlay. This may or may not be cost effective depending on how much you use the lights.
In warehouse that have lights on all night long, it is probably a good investment despite the huge initial capital outlay. For private arena where the lights are used maybe a few hours a night in certain months of the year, probably not. Maybe in a few years the cost of LED lights can drop sufficiently enough that it becomes a viable solution.
Last year, I installed LED lights for my outdoor arena. I have 4 old telephone posts to mount lights on. Because my arena is so far a way from my power source and due to what was available in the circuit breaker box when we ran the wiring, I was limited in what I could install.
Originally, I had four very cheap fluorescent lights that I purchased from my local Home Depot. They were enough to ride on the flat by (and this is my own private arena not a commercial arena). I could maybe set a jump or two if they were directly under the floodlight. I had to replace one of those lights nearly every year and it was just time for an upgrade.
I purchased 4 LE 150 W Super Bright Outdoor LED Flood Lights. I have two on one long side of the arena and one each on the short sides. This is enough to light my arena up quite well. If I had two more lights on the opposite long side, it would be more than enough to jump a full course by. As it is, I can still jump, I just don’t set any on the far long side.
If you do a search on the boards, there was a post about a year or two ago where someone installed 6-8 LED lights and shared pictures - their arena is lit up like daylight.
We did ours this past fall. We did 3 25’ metal poles set on concrete with LED lights for my 100x120 arena. My dad is an electrical contractor, and he did them for us.
We have ours set on a timer since I have boarders-they can only be turned on during certain hours and only for so long.
I think the lights and poles were about $1200 a piece, plus materials, concrete and the lift rental. I can find out exactly what type of lights we used if you want.
You can see how we put them up and how bright they are:
https://falllinefarmblog.wordpress.com/2017/01/10/barn-building-part-3-final-touches/
here’s a thread on lights that I started a while back. See post #3 for my breakdown of costs
https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/forum/discussion-forums/around-the-farm/305452-update-arena-lights
The bottom line: I used 35’ utility poles that are sunk 5’ in ground so lights are at ~30 high. I got LEDs from Amazon, and they are great. Lights were ~$300 each, and I got 6. They are very bright and I have no problems jumping in the ring. Cost to run is fairly minimal and there’s no warm up time. The ‘peripheral’ light is great too, as it lights up the area between the ring and barn, and two of my main turnout areas as well, so I’ll actually turn them on to help during winter chores in the dark (bringing in, turnout, etc).
In fact, I’ve used the lights a few times during the summer months as well, to do dawn-rides to beat the summer heat. I love my lights and they were well worth it.
ElementFarm certainly has a nice lighted arena, and I am sure she is very happy with it. I don’t want to take it away from her, but I just want to caution that pictures can be misleading. Attached is a picture of my lighting arena. It looks like a damn football field, isn’t it? I got friends teasing me about it. I can guarantee you that it is NOT. Far from it. As I mentioned earlier, the light is somewhere between parking lot and tennis court.
What you see is uniformity of light pattern, which was one of major considerations I was pursuing. Another goal is direct light to the ground, and not spraying all over the place, which is produced by having the light fixtures up high (in thsi case, 30’ above.) Light pollution is a major consideration when you have neighbors.
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This is the thread I was thinking of when I posted earlier. https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/forum/discussion-forums/around-the-farm/313499-led-lights-for-outdoor-arenas Page 2 contains a link to the picture I was remembering.
I think you can contact lighting manufacturers for much info as they are quite professional in lighting design for horse arena. As for the types of light, you can consider LED because it is much energy saving and last longer (at least work for 10 to 20 years). We need to consider the power required for LED lights, which depends on the size and height of your poles. It is strongly recommended to consult the engineers.
