Arena building · indoor rings · outdoor footing · Fallowmere & Dunlin County
A riding arena is a drainage project wearing sand.
Truefoot Arena Works builds the part of an arena nobody applauds — the subgrade cut to fall, the geotextile, six inches of compacted stone in two lifts, footing laid to depth on laser — so the part horses and riders do applaud stays rideable in April and August alike. Forty-two rings since 2009, every one of them dry the morning after a storm.
Indoor floors run June to September · outdoor rings price all season · footing screenings hauled from the Dunlin pit · (555) 073-2146 · ring@truefootarena.example
What we build
Everything below the sand
Indoor floors, outdoor rings and bare building pads — three products, one discipline, and the same laser under all of them. Each card is a package we have built enough times to put a number on.
The outdoor ring
from $21,400turnkey
- Subgrade cut to fall on laser machine control
- Geotextile plus six inches of stone, two lifts
- Perimeter drain to daylight, stone-blinded
- Footing to depth, laser-finished
Fencing, gates and footing tonnage are quoted from the walk — the card never moves without your say-so.
The indoor floor
from $16,800inside your barn
- Pad cut inside the building envelope
- Base and drainage tied to the door threshold
- Footing spread, worked and dust-graded
- Staged through a standing building, if it comes to that
Built to your barn builder’s drawing, or ahead of it — we have done both, in that order and reversed.
The pad only
from $9,200builder-ready
- Building pad cut and filled to spec
- Compacted at 95 percent standard Proctor
- Swales and daylight, pinned for your builder
- As-built grades on paper, not memory
The barn goes up whenever you are ready; the part under it only gets one chance to be right.
The indoor floor
The barn is yours. The floor under it decides how it rides.
An indoor arena is a drainage problem with a roof on it: no rain falls on the ring, but wash stalls, door tracks and sixty horses a week still send water looking for somewhere to go. We cut the pad inside the envelope, tie the base to the threshold so the door never heaves, and stage the whole build through a standing building when the walls are already up — conveyor, compact iron and dust control included. Your builder gets pins and a drawing; your trainer gets a floor that rides the same in February as it did in September.
Services & rates
The ring sheet, printed
The same sheet every estimate is written from, whether the ring is a birthday present or a board facility. Sand is priced by the ton because it is bought by the ton; drainage by the foot because water travels by the foot. Nothing on it is a range, and nothing on it survives contact with your site without saying so out loud.
The 2026 sheet
Footing sand, delivered & spread$46 / ton
Screened, washed, angular — laid to your depth, not a guess
Ring regrade, existing footingfrom $2,850
Footing lifted, base repaired, relaid to depth — no new sand unless you need it
Perimeter drain, ring package$9.20 / lin ft
4-in perforated tile, stone-blinded, outlets to daylight
Geotextile separation layer$1.15 / sq yd
Woven, six-ounce — stone stays stone, mud stays mud
Laser survey & as-built$480
Cut, fill and finished grades — the drawing the next contractor will want
Dust-control grading pass$640 / visit
Footing worked, fines managed, moisture set for the season
Day 0
Stringline & soil
The site walked, the ring strung to your dimensions, and a test pit dug where the heavy end will sit — because the base is designed for the soil that is actually there, not the soil the map promises.
The cut
Subgrade to fall
Topsoil stripped to its own pile, the subgrade cut on laser to a half-percent fall with a crown the water can believe in, and every soft spot proof-rolled and stone-wrapped before anything rides on it.
Lift one
Stone, compacted
Geotextile unrolled, then three inches of crushed stone spread and compacted at 95 percent standard Proctor — moisture-corrected, rolled, and checked with the gauge, not the throttle.
Lift two
Stone, finished
The second three-inch lift brings the base to design depth, crowned and laser-verified to a quarter of an inch, with the perimeter drain tied in so the base never holds water it was never asked to.
Handover
Footing & the wet test
Footing spread to your chosen depth, worked level, and the whole ring left to meet one honest rain before we call it done — a ring that ponds on handover day is a conversation; after that it is a claim.
The sequence
Two weeks, five stages, one rain
The same sequence on a backyard round pen as on a board-facility outdoor — the only variables are your soil and your calendar. We book the build window against your clinic schedule, not ours, and the horses stay in work somewhere every day of it.
2025 — 2026
Rings we signed
Six builds from the last two seasons, photographed at footing or at the first clinic held on them. Every one drains to daylight by design, and the as-built is in the file with the invoice.
Who shows up
The crew the horse tolerates
Marisol Verane — stringline & laser
Runs the machine control and the rover, rode dressage provincially for a decade, and can read a ring’s drainage from the saddle at a canter. If the crown is off, she takes it personally, measurably.
Bram Ketterling — stone & compaction
Thirty years of base work, a gauge certificate in the truck, and a standing refusal to place a second lift before the first passes. His bases are the reason our guarantees are short.
Petra Yancy — drains & footing
Lays the perimeter tile, spreads and works the footing to depth, and has opinions about sand angularity she will share at the gate whether you asked or not. Riders ask.
Seventeen seasons under saddle
The footing clause
If a ring we built ponds inside two years and the drainage we designed is at fault, the regrade is ours — machine, stone and laser. Written on every contract since 2009; needed four times, all four on jobs where somebody else’s landscaper had capped our outlets. The clause pays for the argument so you never have to.
Our old outdoor was a lake with ambitions every May — lessons cancelled, boarders leaving, the whole barn in rubber boots. Truefoot cut the subgrade to fall, put six inches of proper stone down in two lifts, and tied the ring to a drain that daylights behind the jump shed. Three springs since, and I have cancelled for heat, for wind and once for a tornado warning — never once for water.
What actually drives the cost of a ring?
Four things, in order: the base depth your soil demands, the distance stone and sand travel to reach you, the fencing, and the tonnage of footing you choose to ride on. The cards price the build; the sheet prices the materials; and the walk tells us which of the four your site is going to argue about. A ring on good ground two miles from the pit and a ring on twelve inches of clay forty minutes out are different products, honestly priced as different products.
Is an indoor floor really different from an outdoor base?
Yes, and the difference is water. An outdoor ring has to shed what falls on it — crown, fall, perimeter drain. An indoor floor never sees rain, but it takes wash stalls, door tracks and sixty horses a week, so it is tied to the threshold and the building drains instead, and compacted to a tolerance that keeps the door heave out of your warranty conversation with the barn builder. Same laser, same two lifts, different argument.
Our existing ring ponds. Can you fix it without starting over?
Often, yes — the rescue regrade is its own line on the sheet. We lift your footing and keep it, diagnose whether the failure is crown, outlet or base, and fix what is actually broken. Eleven of the last eleven rescues drained the season they were done; two of them needed nothing but an outlet somebody’s landscaper had buried. Send us a photo of the ring the morning after a rain — it tells us most of the story.
How long does it take, and can the horses stay in work?
Two weeks, pad to footing, on a ready site — and yes, the horses ride every day of it: we stage the build so your arena stays usable until the day the footing comes up, and your trainer’s schedule is booked into the window before the machines roll. The one rain we wait for at handover is the exception, and it is the cheapest inspection anybody will ever run on your ring.
The four regulars
Questions from the barn aisle
The four every ring conversation arrives at by the second coffee. If yours is not here, the yard answers six days a week, and the voice on it has built the kind of ring you are asking about.
Bring the field, even before it is a field
The site, the discipline you ride, and the ring in your head. The walk and the laser flight are free inside Dunlin County, the sheet is the quote, and the as-built rides home with the invoice. ring@truefootarena.example
Build windows book a season ahead for indoors · rescues slot between builds