New Arena Update

All the rain this fall & early winter made it rather challenging getting the last few loads of base material in for the arena.  The truck didn't have any problems because the earlier loads of the 8x material was compacted really well and the truck barely made a dent.  However spreading out the last few loads was a different story.  The last loads went on the south end of the ring which was the lower end which was built up with fill dirt.  Although it had been compacted, it still wasn't as solid as we would have liked it to be. Dave was able to get it spread but because it was several inches deep and saturated from the rains he couldn't compact it at that time.

Water has been flowing out of the drain tile

All the rain was actually a 'blessing in disguise'.  It let us know that we had a problem, a big problem.  As the rain seeped into the ground on the hill above the ring the water flowed out of the hillside where we cut into it for the fill dirt and made the whole ring wet, really wet!  So that's when Dave ordered drain tile, dug a shallow trench & covered it with large rounded gravel  to trap the water coming out of the hill and direct it to a nearby pond.  The tile is doing a great job of keeping the hillside water off the ring and has been running continuously since it was set.  Thank goodness we discovered that before the final grading, compacting and adding the top footing.

Because the south end of the ring needed to be built up and basically slopes off quite a bit; Dave was afraid that a lot of the base footing was going to get washed away before he would be able to compact it.  He wanted a barrier that would help to hold the 8x while allowing the water to run off.  He decided on snow fence rolled in a coil and staked in place.  So far it seems to be working fairly well although he hasn't gotten right up to the edge with a tractor yet.

Basically the project has been put on hold until spring when it will get the final laser grading and compacting with a vibrating roller.  But Dave periodically went down to check on how things were settling and seeing if he needed to tweak anything.  Since the whole arena wasn't grading we had some 'pooling' problems and a few small diversion ditches needed to be dug to get the water to run off.   With the ring drying out and settling a little Dave was able to get on some of the areas with the tractor and rough grade more of the area which had not been compacted yet.  He knew the one corner was going to need more fill to get the correct final right grade but as things settled it looked like it was going to need to be built up more than originally thought. After checking it out with the transit it we knew that just putting more 8 x wasn't going to do the job.

The 'bigger' stone to bring up the low corner

We had a stretch of dry weather and that's when Dave decided to take the base material off that corner piece and bring in 'bigger' material to bring up the corner and then put the 8 x back on top of it.  I don't know what I would do if I didn't have Dave and his 'big toys'!  Now I think it will just be left to settle until spring.

I'm looking forward to having the ring completed and being able to ride on it.

Looking at the stone waiting to be covered with the 8 x