Riding Arena

[2kpsd]

Just thought I would share my most recent project that is 95% complete. Been working on it the past 2 weekends. I rented a PHD from my local JD Dealer for $75 to drill the holes for the wood posts. The dimensions are 119' x 70' with a 14' gate for an entrance to get the tractor + disc to fit. The wood posts are 17' apart with t-posts in between. The only thing we have left is to add a border around the top. My wife is thinking white pvc pipe since it would be cheap and highly visible to the horses and fairly strong as well in case a horse or rider crashed into it. Any other suggestions?? I got to ride in it this past Sunday for the first time and that was when all the hard work payed off.

 

[LAXPatrick]

Wow - some good work there.

Just one thought - I'm not trying to be critical of your efforts - for the safety of the riders and your horses - consider using something other than T-posts. If a horse were to get spooked and plow into the fence, you may find yourself and your horse in a potentially deadly situation. Friends have lost horses due to exposed T-posts in pastures, let alone in an arena.

At a bare immediate minimum, I'd put those t-post caps (biggest you can find and not just the little vinyl ones at valley vet) that you can use with electric tape fencing or the full vinyl sleeves to cover the t-posts.

I just finished our arena fence and considered a bunch of options. Went with RAMM HTP (High Tension Polymer) 5.25" fence. Corners/ends are 8" posts with braces, line posts are 4x4's at 12' spacing. The idea with this material is that it looks like a board fence, but horses can plow right into it without injury or damage. Their website shows trees falling on this fence material and when they remove the tree, the fence bounces back to the original state.

It was a moderately cost effective option - easy to cost justify versus an injured person/horse...

Just a thought.

LAXPatrick

 

[LAXPatrick]

Here's a pic of the finished project. We set up a round pen in one corner. Dimensions are 195x95 or so - footing is just soil that I prep with a c-tine cultivator pulling a section of spike harrow with my 4310.

 

[2kpsd]

Yes, I have seen that tape before and watched that exact same video on their website. Really neat stuff. Looks good too. Thanks for the info on the t-posts - never really thought of it that way before. The t-posts are 7-ft tall though so it would fairly hard for a horse to get high enough to injure itself. That is also why we are putting up a border around the top and middle so they can't even get to the t-posts if they did crash. The caps are still a good idea though - will definetly look into that. Thanks!

 

[LAXPatrick]

Here's the t-post sleeves from Valley Vet:
http://www.valleyvet.com/ct_detail.html?pgguid=30e0735b-7b6a-11d5-a192-00b0d0204ae5

 

[RobJ]

Do you plan on bringing in some sand or loam to mix in? That ground looks really hard. BIL's son has one with soft loam, hard to walk in there but nice for the horses and bucking bulls.

 

[2kpsd]

We would like to get some sand to mix in eventually yes. In those pictures it hasn't been disked for a while. After you run the disk over it a few passes it gets to be 3-5 inches deep and soft. I'm not familiar with loam....where can I get info on it?

 

[Dex]

It is a sand and clay mix. Here is the arena I built for a client. It is a 5" plastic tape fence. 8x8 corners.

 

[wroughtn_harv]

It is a sand and clay mix. Here is the arena I built for a client. It is a 5" plastic tape fence. 8x8 corners.

I'm building a riding arena approximately the same size. It'll be one hundred by two fifty.

I'll use two and three eighths inch schedule forty galvanized pipe with each post bent to form a gooseneck. The goosenecks will all face inside and there will be welded a two and three eighths galvanized pipe rail welded all the way around with one twelve foot gate. It will be four foot high.

 

[Fireman_dcb]

We did our ring about 3.5 years ago, escavator scraped off the top 6" of clay/ weeds, then had 6 tri-axle truckloads of stone dust dropped off - then spent the next two weekends leveling/ backblading/ drag harrowing the pasture. I havent' fenced it it yet, but we'll go the same route as we did for the pasture; RAMM fencing with 4x4s every 8 feet and 8" round with diagonal bracing into the ground for the corners and at the gates. I will attest to its strength and ability to bounce back - our two chunky, lazy, pampered horses use it for scratching their necks, backs, rumps and it stretches out then comes back. It does need a yearly tightening, but the ratchets that are included work very well.