Hi! Was looking for anyone who has experience in building their own outdoor arena…any tips? Suggestions on things to avoid or you would do differently? Footing you like? Located in central Kentucky. Our land unfortunately is very compacted and hard. We were thinking of building a 20x40m arena, digging down about 3 inches, grading and leveling the area, placing geotextile paper down, then starting with 2-2.5 inches of coarse sand. Railroad ties for the perimeter. Trying to do this DIY. The ground is so hard, we don’t feel we need to have a gravel or stone base.
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IMO, make it as large as you can. As large as you have room for, or can afford. 20 x 40 is small, and limiting. If you can’t get more width, get length.
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There are lots of previous threads on building arenas that might help you, though the “search” function isn’t too clever on this site.
There are so many variables in building one I think it is worth asking for professional advice. Spending your money and then finding the drainage doesn’t work or the membrane comes up through the surface or the surface is quite impossible without constant care… Well, advice is relatively cheap and may save you falling into a money pit.
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Make sure you have a management plan in place to prevent weed growth. Something to tow a harrow. It’s amazing how quickly weeds can take hold in a sand ring.
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A skilled grading operator can level, laser, and install proper drainage to the area you’ve designated for your arena. That’s the easy part of the process.
Simple things like the quality of arena sand will differ between sand pits located in the same town; particles too coarse or too fine. Arena sand is cheap, it’s the trucking that can be expensive. You need to decide your budget for dragging and watering the surface - some footing surfaces are lot more tolerant than others for less than daily/weekly care.
I strongly urge you to seek footing advice for your specific location. Footing is a lot like plants - they have their preferred environment. A popular footing service that requires a lot of water is not suitable for a dessert or drought prone location or high elevation (too much sun exposure). The rubber footing mix blew away at a nearby facility because we live where there is a lot of wind. Their mix was too much light weight rubber pieces, not enough washed sand. Another private arena used the same rubber and loved it because they were out of the wind so it stayed put. It also absorbed the sun in the winter time and a few inches of snow melted quickly making the ring usable a snow storm. The owner would plow the snow off the ring leaving the bottom 2" which would melt quickly once the sun came out. As mentioned above, weed management is important.
I would discuss w someone in your area. I know a few people that way and they just remove sod and toss on sand. Here I had to scrape down to the topsoil, add stone, ag lime, then sand.
I have currently gone with just sand as I can’t afford a special drag or constant watering. It can get dusty but it’s just me so not worried.
Regarding size, go as big as you can afford but when the weather sucks anything is better than not riding at all so don’t let a smaller arena upset you.
Regarding weeds I find regular dragging takes care of weeds and I spray anything the drag can’t reach.
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Ours is 70 X 140 ft a few feet more than the small dressage arena. It’s okay for jump lines - will help teach your horse to collect and balance (bc it’s fenced). Can do some diagonal lines and circle. I wish I had made it slightly wider. Once you get the equipment there and the cost of material I’d do as much as you can. Same cost to get the equipment and manpower. Why I also don’t recommend the expense of a too small house addition.
A base doesn’t just provide stability, it also to assists with drainage. I would strongly reconsider forgoing a proper base.
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Sand over straight geofabric will have hooves punching through to the fabric in no time. Depending on the type of sand & type of riding, 2.5” can also feel very deep- especially without a firm base.
There’s a group on Facebook which has members all over the country (and different parts of the world) and is definitely worth checking out for hired & DIY projects- Horse Barns: Plans, Designs & Ideas
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A local farm graded but didn’t do a true base. Instead they put all of their money into $$$ footing. Two years later and it holds water like I’ve never seen and if it isn’t perfectly dry you punch straight through. The expensive euro felt is now probably 10% clay so when it finnnally dries it compacts rock solid. If I ever needed proof of the importance of a good base I got to see it first hand.
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My experience arena building near Lexington KY: the base is sooo important. KY, due to the limestone content has so many different variables in the soil strata that if you don’t do it properly you will end up with sections sinking over time. It’ll cost you more in the long run
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I am also in central Kentucky. How long have you been on your property? Is your arena site at the top of a hill? Does any water flow into your site? Drainage is very very important when considering building an arena.
The ground is rock hard right now because it’s been very dry. If you want an arena that is useable after any rain, you need a base - non negotiable. Most people in this area do anywhere from 3" - 8" of class i sand that has been leveled and compacted with a vibrating compactor. When I say leveled, it’s not actually level - the arena should have about a 1% grade, with a crown in the center on the long axis.
There are a bunch of really good arena contractors in this area that do great work for various price points.
USDF prepared a book called Underfoot that is an excellent reference for arena construction.
Good luck!
In rocky New England, the leveling is the HARD part. Because it is mostly digging up giant rocks. We have a pile of rocks left over from our (small dressage size) arena that our neighbors refer to as Bob’s Quarry. What we did was:
- remove and relocate the topsoil
- level the subsoil (see: rocks, above) with a laser level
- Bring in a million tons of granite drain rock (amounts are approximate). This comes in gigantic trucks you need to take forty feet of fencing down for.
- Level that
- Bring in a million tons of road base (whatever they make roads out of where you are).
- Level that and compact it.
- Finally, the footing – we used 3" of washed sand. You’d need more for jumping.
- Perimeter of railroad ties.
Essentially you are building a commercial parking lot and putting sand on top of it. It MUST drain perfectly. We built on top of a hill on silty well-drained soil so we did not need drain pipe.
It is now three years old and all the maintenance it’s needed is to be dragged (piece of weighted cyclone fence). There’s not enough water pressure out there to keep it watered but it is a rainy climate and so far that’s only been a problem a few times. It only puddles briefly in big storms.
Compared to most private arenas I’ve ridden in, it is splendid. My husband is a retired engineer with a compact tractor. He did everything himself as always and it took a long time – mostly because of the rocks. We spent about $12K on materials and equipment (compactor, rake, box blade, laser). Commercial arena companies’ bids were in the $42,000 range. Maybe they knew about the rock challenges.
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Sorry for the late bump - can I ask how large your arena is?
Small dressage size: 20m x 40m (or approximately 66 ft. x 132 ft).
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Hey thanks! Much appreciated.
We have ours fenced so we made it 70×140 so the track is dressage sized. There’s enough room for setting schooling gymnastics straight line, and diagonal jumps.
