Tall Oaks Farm is a private, 14-stall dressage facility in Millis, MA. Water for the farm is supplied by a well. Therefore, watering the outdoor dressage arena for dust control is not possible. The footing in our arena is concrete sand. It used to get very “deep” and dusty within 1 day of being completely saturated by rain. In fact, within a few hours of rain, the top layer of sand would dry quickly and start to generate dust even though the under-layer was still damp. The quick-drying nature of the sand made any form of watering futile as a means of dust control. We considered adding other footing materials to our arena to help retain moisture, but we knew that no matter what we added, the dust would still be an issue.

During the most beautiful months of summer, we were driven indoors by the choking dust and poor consistency of the footing. I am a hard contact lens wearer so I am bothered more than most people by the swirling clouds of abrasive dust (even when I’m not the one riding). I have suffered corneal abrasions from the arena dust. Tired of hearing “there’s nothing we can do about dust, it’s just a fact of life with outdoor arenas”, I made it my personal mission to find a solution to this enormous problem. After doing a lot of research, I found references to the ArenaKleen product. It sounded like a truly unique material that worked regardless of the amount of moisture in the footing. I knew I would have to convince a lot of skeptics in order to spend any money at all on a dust control product. Being a Ph.D. scientist, I decided to conduct an unbiased, controlled “experiment” to evaluate the product’s efficacy.

 

The following report and video details the ArenaKleen experience of Dr. Diane Williams of Tall Oaks Farm in Millis, Massachusetts.

The Experiment
First, I constructed a 4 ft x 4 ft “test frame” adjacent to the dressage arena using 1” x 6” lumber. I positioned the frame so that it would receive full sunlight and the same rain, snow, wind conditions as the main arena. I transferred footing from the main arena into the test frame and filled it to the same depth as the arena (4”). Then, I ordered a 5 gallon sample of ArenaKleen from DirtGlue and followed the application instructions precisely. Using a garden sprayer, I applied 0.8 gallons of ArenaKleen to the footing in the test frame, allowed it to soak in, and then turned the material over every day with a garden shovel. The date of application was April 19, 2008. I invited my riding colleagues to walk around in the treated footing, kick it up, handle it, turn it over, etc. As expected, during the first couple of months there was very little interest in my experiment. But, as summer pressed on and the dust began to choke us out of the arena, I noticed people quietly inspecting the test footing. The ArenaKleen product was beginning to win over the skeptics. I churned up the test footing with a shovel several times per week to simulate some of the wear and tear imparted by riding and dragging. Even more impressive than the absolute dust control was the much improved consistency of the arena footing. It had life and springiness to it when the adjacent footing in the main arena was loose and dead. “Ahhh…” said the skeptics, “but what will happen to it over the winter?”

Fast forward to Spring ’09. Once the snow and ice from one of the worst winters on record had melted and the footing was completely dry, I churned it up and it was as dust –free and springy as it had been at the end of the summer. Approximately one year after ArenaKleen was applied to the test frame, the skeptics agreed that the product worked as advertised and they enthusiastically supported making the investment to apply the product to our dressage arena.

 

The Results
Our outdoor sand arena was treated with ArenaKleen on June 1, 2009. ArenaKleen has completely transformed the footing in the arena. The performance of the product has far exceeded our expectations. The consistency of the footing is much improved and our older, slightly arthritic horses now are working happily in the sand. As of October, 2009, 4 months post-application, the dust control and footing consistency are much as they were 2 weeks post-application, despite this summer’s torrential rains in July and August. ArenaKleen is a remarkable product!