Raking Pine Needles and Leaves in Sand Ring

[Rara Avis]

These are the basics of a good dressage arena...
Arenas and Footing

These are the guys that build first class arenas with excellent footing...
e=mc Equestrian Project Management

Planning our second 20 meter x 60 meter dressage arena, actual surface area will be 100 ft by 250 ft, because we need an area to surround the competition surface...

 

[6sunset6]

If you think vaccum would work and the drawback is that the impellors get damaged, there was a post somwhere else yesterday about a vaccum system that drew through the box first and then the impellor. Had a screen over the impellor opening to keep the big junk out of it. I did the same thing once for a chip collector on a plannar. The cross section of the box is so much bigger than the cross section of the pipe and the face velocity drops so much the debris falls out of the stream . Let me see if I can find it
http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/build-yourself/111066-years-leaf-vacuum.html

 

[KennK]

I can visualize a drag-like device that would be pulled from behind. It would have two bars - front and back - suspended from a frame, and there would be a heavy wire mesh hanging between them - attached (welded?) to the length of the front and rear bar. The front bar would be positioned on the frame such that when lowered it would bury itself under the sand, and the rear bar would be positioned higher so that it would be just above the sand. You might need a lot of weight on the front of the frame in order to force the front bar down under the sand. As you'd pull it through the sand it would act just like a net, sifting through the sand leaving the larger chunks on top of the mesh net.

Now I just have to visualize how you'd dump/clean the mesh netting. Maybe the front bar would disconnect from the frame and you'd manually have to flip the netting backward, pivoting the rear bar, so that the mesh would now be upside-down behind the implement where the sifted contents would be dumped.

 

[AlanB]

Maybee too simpilistic, but what about one of those lawn sweeper deals with the flippy round brushes on the front that would pick up a fair amount of stuff and throw it back into the hopper.

Then take something like a 1/4" drill, and drill a gazillion holes in the floor, or maybe take the floor out and put in hardware cloth or the like. Then the sand that gets thrown in with the needles would just fall back out, but the vast majority of the needles would lay there sideways I would think.

Agri-Fab