Best Method for Spreading Sand in Horse Riding Rings?

[Lil Foot]

I used to have a piece of steel bar, 5' x 4" x 1 1/4", with eyebolts in each end. Used to drag it behind a Ford 9N and or my quad & it did a great job leveling gravel & hard packed dirt, but I think it would have been too heavy for sand.
I have seen a bare piece of chain link work very well on sand & decomposed granite; they use chain link here for finishing baseball infields. I have no specific need for it now, but it's on my wish list.

 

[North Idaho Wolfman]

When you said gypsum, would old gypsum drywall work or is that gypsum too fine? I have a lot of old drywall piled up. Would love to work that into the soil if I knew it would work.

Old drywall will work fine, except 2 factors the, the paper on the front and back, and if it's the fire rated type it will have fiberglass in the mix, and you really don't want that in your soil.

 

[mikes1165]

I just added 22 tons of sand to our horse club arena and in the past year have added over 100 tons to it. Used a box blade to spread it after driver spread it with tailgate then worked it in with a groundhog arena drag. Sand cuts down on dust and keeps clay from getting as hard.

 

[skeets]

All pretty good ideas,,back in the day for the girls arena I used an old steel bed box spring. Chained and drag it around,, works well levels the sand out and wont pile it up in any one area, A box blade will work well too. And if you happen to have a landscape rake for the 3pt that works super as well and makes it look really purddy

 

[Billdog350]

I would think a box blade would help level the piles fast and lay out the material nicely, and then the float would help "grade" it nicely.

Lots of times if you use a york rake or similar and there is a good base of sand, you can rip up the weeds and grass, put it off to the side, and then groom the remaining base.

 

[zzsparky]

Old drywall will work fine, except 2 factors the, the paper on the front and back, and if it's the fire rated type it will have fiberglass in the mix, and you really don't want that in your soil.

None of the drywall was fire rated, so went ahead and broke up the drywall and mixed it in the soil. Contacted my local Farm Bureau organization and they also recommended lots of compost.

As for the best way to spread out a horse rink, I would think it would fall into something similar as to how the grounds crew levels off the infield? I've seen them use what looks like a very long plank of some kind. When I leveled off my property before planting grass, I simply used my FEL, going forward with a level blade to get the basic leveling process, then back dragged back and forth in different directions. That seemed to work well for me, after enough experience with the bucket angle.

My neighbor owns a landscape company; and he told me to bolt a long straight 2 X 10 to the loader bucket for a final grooming. Got to say, the 2 by really finished things up nicely. With just the right angle on the bucket, it would probably work good with sand as well. You could always drive some heavy nails along the board to give the final results even a more "finished" combed look. I had to use rebar with my board, as the nails kept wanting to bend.