Short-term sand arena

[wild_west]

I am planning on having a professional arena built on my property within the next few years after we fully rebuild our barn and shuffle things around. I have an excess of sand at disposal, and curious if anyone has been successful using just sand on a compacted and slightly sloped ground stripped of grass & the top layer of sod. This would just be short-term and light use that I would plan on converting into paddocks eventually. I have seen a few venues install an arena with no formal base for warm up rings, etc, and it seems to hold up somewhat. I am aware this is not a long-term solution for high use, however, I can guarantee minimal work was done to some of these other arenas I’ve ridden on. I am located in the Pacific Northwest where its wet, but the areas I’m considering have good drainage.

Anyone have experience or tips on doing something like this themselves?

[HeartsDesireEventing]

Our second farm we used an old garden area and dumped sand on top of it (after removing a truly ridiculous number of turnips). The space was roughly small dressage arena sized and worked well for me and my horses for the 10 or so years we lived there. It did of course get too slick to ride in if it was too wet - they’d basically punch through the sand and hit the slick clay beneath and slide. But the location was kind of the top of a small ridge, so it was pretty dry overall, and the sand was nice for extra cushion when the pastures were rock-hard in summer.

It will probably depend on what you have beneath it as to how well it works - I don’t think I’d have the same results on our current property, which has a tendency to be wetter and the horses can and will punch 6-inch holes through the deep topsoil after heavy rain (we had to remove 12 inches of topsoil to get down to a base for the arena).

Actually, I know I wouldn’t, because that’s basically what the first arena guy tried, and my horse was punching 6-inch holes in the arena at a walk . Long story, but second arena guy did it correctly with a proper base so it’s not usable. So maybe evaluate your soil type a bit?

[cardinale]

If the existing soil after your cleanup is loose, if you don’t have a mechanical way to compact it, perhaps you could put up some temporary (electric) fencing and turn horses out in there for a couple of weeks. The point is that if you can get a “base” of at least somewhat compacted native soil, the sand on top will work better. I inherited a “sand on native soil” arena from the previous owner. It actually works pretty well, in large part because years of use have compacted the soil underlayer. I’m in the PNW and the :“sand” actually looks like very finely crushed rock. I think it drains better and is less slippery when it rains than actual sand would be in this type of low-tech PNW arena.

[enjoytheride]

It depends entirely on your location and your weather. It either works well or it’s a disaster the first time it rains. I’d be more inclined to put down Aglime because they would hopefully compact and form a more solid base.

[mmeqcenter]

Depends highly on your compacted soil but, I knew many barns that did this Ohio and those arenas were perfectly usable for over a decade. General boarding barns, mix of western and English, no major jumping (max like 3’6” or so).

[LCDR]

What you describe sounds somewhat like a “native soil arena” and there are many of them in Aiken, with its sandy soil. They do need frequent irrigation to keep the sand surface just the right firmness. The topsoil is stripped off the surface, the area laser leveled and what remains is the native sand subsoil as the riding surface.

[PonyRiderMom]

I have an area like this that I used as a dry lot for two horses over the winter. The lot is sloped at the top and flat at the bottom. The guys who did the work leveled out the most obvious bumps.
They stripped the sod at the bottom, as it was very thick, and left the sod on the slopes. They dumped about three-four inches of sand on top. The area is maybe 100 x 100 feet and the horses were out on it full time from November to March, and they are still on it part time. They aren’t super crazy but they do run around a decent amount. It’s held up better than I expected. The low flat part tended to get soppy when we had a lot of rain. I don’t know if it might have actually been better to have left that sod. Or, asked them to make a bit of a slope. It may be that that ground got more compacted because it didn’t have the “pad” of the sod on top.

I’ve ridden in it too, and it’s been OK. The sand on the slopes is deeper and the sand on the flat part is shallower, and with the hill it’s not great for structured riding, but I can walk and trot in there.

If you have a decent slope, it could be “good enough.” But I’d be careful to try to make the sand all the same depth and not end up with deep patches and shallow patches like I have.

I’m near Seattle.

[DiamondJubilee]

This is what we did to our farm. The old sand ring (farm was not lived in for a few years) had grass growing over their old sand. We stripped the top layer off to the dirt and then brought in a few dump truck loads of sand. We have tried a few different types of ring groomers, but the best we found was a Reist ring groomer which is made for fibre footing but works really well on sand. We had some other kinds and they made a mess of our ring (as in created dips and valleys all over the place).

We live in Ontario and have clay dirt here. The ring can get “soupy” after a lot of rain, but dries out fairly quickly. I jump smaller jumps (under 3’) and we drive our ponies in the ring as well. We harrow to about 1.5" deep and this works well for us. We use this ring in the winter as well as a paddock and it has held up really well for the past 14 years. We did top up the sand and added a dump truck load a few years ago as the sand can blow away over time.