Spreading Sand Evenly for Arena

[SGStriglos]

I am helping a freind redo a horse arena surface area. i am not a horse person but my daughter keeps a horse at a nice couples barn and they house 12 horses and have by my guess a 200x50 indoor riding arena. The owner decided to replace the sawdust base on the surface with a mixture of clay and sand. I guess the logic was to keep dust down and provide a safe footing for the horses.

Recipe for surface...
3":1/2" clay and sand...I might be off on the ratio but you get the idea.

There is a very hard surface under all this with no rock at all. We have after alot of trial and error got the entire arena covered within tolerance with 3" of nice clay and now need to lay sand on top and then till it. We now realize how hard it is going to be to distibute the sand in any kind of uniform way. Any suggestions are appreciated...doesn't have to be perfect and I know we can't do it with buckets or any 3pt attachment we have...blade or box scraper...ect. Someone suggested two options a gravel spreading tandem like they use to lay out rock when chipping roads or a lime casting trailer that you pull behind tractor.....Any thoughts are appreciated.

 

[Jimbrown]

Well I have spread sand in two arenas and I used my bucket and a drag.

I slowy drop the sand from the bucket while backing up and then back drag it to take the big humps out. After I have done the whole arena I back drag in long strokes the entire distance of the arena. I then take my drag and drag the whole thing untill it is smooth

 

[maybar]

Drive some temporary grade stakes as references to work from and it'll make life alot easier.

 

[SGStriglos]

Well I have spread sand in two arenas and I used my bucket and a drag.

I slowy drop the sand from the bucket while backing up and then back drag it to take the big humps out. After I have done the whole arena I back drag in long strokes the entire distance of the arena. I then take my drag and drag the whole thing untill it is smooth

JimBrown, I assume by "back drag" you mean with the bucket and I understand that but then you say you "take my drag and drag"....I am not familar with a drag...do you mean a harrow drag. This will work even on top of the 3" of very soft clay?

Thank you for your thoughts.

 

[jml755]

The "drag" used by a lot of horse places in our area is a TR3 rake (google it for info). Does the barn have a rake similar to this? Or even some old cyclone fence that they can pull behind a tractor to smooth the surface? What do they do now? And even with the sand/clay mix, you'll get dust. Water wagon gets used frequently during show season when the arenas get too dusty.

 

[SGStriglos]

The "drag" used by a lot of horse places in our area is a TR3 rake (google it for info). Does the barn have a rake similar to this? Or even some old cyclone fence that they can pull behind a tractor to smooth the surface? What do they do now? And even with the sand/clay mix, you'll get dust. Water wagon gets used frequently during show season when the arenas get too dusty.

They have a very simple 3x4' harrow rake that appears to have maybe 3" steel spikes every 4" across and maybe 6" between the rows and is pulled by a 4 wheeler. Doesn't quite cover the 4 wheelers tracks and did a decent job on the very lose and worked over clay. It appears not nearly as aggresive as the chain link looking rakes.

I looked at the TR3 and they defintily do not have one of those and can't imagine it being in the buget for the near future.

And she is planning on laying out some type of chemical that attracts moisture out of the air, forget the name.

 

[Verticaltrx]

When I do an arena or round pen I use a laser level on my scrape blade. I set the blade down on a spot that I want the rest to be equal to, then set the laser level to that height. I use the largest margin of error setting which is about 3/4" on mine, and it works great. I very slowly creep along raising or lowering the blade to maintain a beep on the level, and can get each pass perfectly level. With a setup like this you can get the entire arena level within an inch with very little work. Once that's done I just drag the entire area with the blade backwards to smooth everything up nice. You should look into renting a laser level setup for a weekend, it will make this job very simple.

 

[jml755]

Calcium chloride. We use that too a couple of times in the summer on the outdoor arenas. Couple of comments on that.
-Try to spread it evenly. But haven't found an effective method to do it mechanically. Tried spreaders and just seems to clog them up. I think the County Road commissions use auger and salt spreaders, but I'm not sure. (Boy, I can remember when they used to OIL the roads. Seemed like that worked better and longer.) Anyway, we just rip open a bag and walk backwards throwing it around. Then we drag the arena to spread it better. Anybody got a better way to do it?
- WEAR LATEX GLOVES WHEN SPREADING IT! It will shrink leather like you won't believe. Boots, gloves, etc. and don't get it on your skin.
- Right after chloriding, make sure horses feet/legs get hosed off if they ride in those arenas that day.

VERTICALTRX:
Nice setup. Would be great for an indoor arena. But for outdoors, I'd like to get some slope (about 1/8" to 1/4" per foot, not level) to keep the water from pooling. Our arenas used to pool very badly before the owner had the big one completely rebuilt (including buried drain tile running to a creek) and 2 smaller ones get sand added and regraded periodically. Now, after a downpour which ALWAYS seems to happen during a show, the horses don't have to wear water wings.

 

[Verticaltrx]

Calcium chloride. We use that too a couple of times in the summer on the outdoor arenas. Couple of comments on that.
-Try to spread it evenly. But haven't found an effective method to do it mechanically. Tried spreaders and just seems to clog them up. I think the County Road commissions use auger and salt spreaders, but I'm not sure. (Boy, I can remember when they used to OIL the roads. Seemed like that worked better and longer.) Anyway, we just rip open a bag and walk backwards throwing it around. Then we drag the arena to spread it better. Anybody got a better way to do it?
- WEAR LATEX GLOVES WHEN SPREADING IT! It will shrink leather like you won't believe. Boots, gloves, etc. and don't get it on your skin.
- Right after chloriding, make sure horses feet/legs get hosed off if they ride in those arenas that day.

VERTICALTRX:
Nice setup. Would be great for an indoor arena. But for outdoors, I'd like to get some slope (about 1/8" to 1/4" per foot, not level) to keep the water from pooling. Our arenas used to pool very badly before the owner had the big one completely rebuilt (including buried drain tile running to a creek) and 2 smaller ones get sand added and regraded periodically. Now, after a downpour which ALWAYS seems to happen during a show, the horses don't have to wear water wings.

I was just using that as an illustration as how you could lay a perfect grade, and mentioned perfectly level because it was an indoor arena in question. What I'm working on in the picture is a round pen 55' in diameter, it slopes about 10" from top to bottom. I was working it east to west and each pass I would move the laser level up a certain amount (can't recall exactly how much). They have had several torrential rains and the footing stays good in any weather according to my customers.

 

[SGStriglos]

I was just using that as an illustration as how you could lay a perfect grade, and mentioned perfectly level because it was an indoor arena in question. What I'm working on in the picture is a round pen 55' in diameter, it slopes about 10" from top to bottom. I was working it east to west and each pass I would move the laser level up a certain amount (can't recall exactly how much). They have had several torrential rains and the footing stays good in any weather according to my customers.

Thank you for pointing that out because I love the idea of the laser and I think we have access to one at no charge, but the arena does have a slope of approx 6" across the long side meaning the 2 long sides are uneven and the short one are level. I thought of mentioning this after your post as a reason why the level wouldn't work....and am now glad I didn't.