The ring at the barn I lease is fantastic in that it’s large (for a backyard arena), flat, and sand-based. What’s not-so-fantastic is that the footing is old (I’m guessing close to 10, 20 years?) and has worn down, so it gets VERY dusty when we haven’t had much rain. We could easily use at least another half inch to inch of more footing on top. It’s fine for flatwork, but I limit jumping in there since it doesn’t provide much cushion when it’s super dry.
I have the opportunity to purchase athletic field crumb rubber at a great price – the county is redoing a bunch of the fields in the area, so the company is selling the old rubber at a fraction of the price I’d pay for “riding arena” specific crumb rubber.
Question: does anyone have experience with using “recycled” crumb rubber like this? I’ve read it’s a much smaller size and mixes in more easily than the bigger pieces. Also, would adding it to “old” sand footing such as ours make it worse? I drag the ring frequently, so even if it does float to the top, it’d get mixed back in in no time.
