Talk to me about arena lights! Also in NL

[martlin]

Talk to me about arena lights!
I'm about to put some lights in my school and would love your experiences.
Can't put standard floodlights on poles up due to planning restrictions, which means that they can be no higher than 8-9 foot from the surface, I also need to minimise light leakage. I'm not looking at competition spec lighting, I'm not even intending to jump under them at all, just need something to do some flatwork and lunge. The school is 65x45, with 10 foot banks on 3 sides and 7 foot tall fence on the fourth.
So, in your experience, what works and what doesn't? how many lights and what strength would you put up in my position? what works out value for money? and generally all pitfalls and advantages of arena lighting, pretty please.

I can share some coke and a mozzarella and pesto panini

 

[Mystified]

Hi I am currently facing exactly the same problem.

We only need light for literally a few weeks a year when daughter needs to ride after school so just 3-4 weeks before she breaks up for xmas hols and again a 3-4 weeks in January before the nights start to draw out again.

We have just this week invested in two portable lighting units on stands, they extend up to 2m high approx 6' and are 500 watt each. Cost me £57.00 including postage from Clarks Tools for the pair. I am hoping that as they are portable and will be put away each night that we won't need planning for these. The light itself is adjustable so we will hopefully be able to angle them to obtain the best effect.

We are going to connect them up tomorrow and if necessary we have a couple of 2'6" wall jumps that we can stand them on to give us extra height if needs be.

We have an arena 45m x 25m and as long as we have sufficient light that she can school him that will be sufficient. We are not expecting it to light up the whole school but at least half would be great.

I will let you know how effective these are. We are quite lucky with her horse as he is very good at being exercised in near darkness but a little extra light would be useful.

 

[martlin]

Oh, please, do let me know how you get on! My problem is, I can have lights, just not high enough for standard floodlights... they can be permanent and I'm hoping for something better than my current solution of two 4x4s at the ends of the arena

 

[Mystified]

Well the results are in, we managed to get the portable lights up over the weekend and daughter tried them out tonight for the first time.

2 x single portable 500w lights extend to 1.8m (240v) Clarks Tools £57.00 for the pair.

We have them fully extended 6ft and at the narrowest end of the arena (25m). They are set approx 5ft from the arena fence and one at either end, although they are not right at the very end probably about 3 metres from the end of the fencing. If you stand and look down the arena (45m) they practically light up the whole arena.

For schooling or lunging they are absolutely fine and probably my daughter could pop over a few small jumps if she wanted to quite happily.

She or the horse don't seem affected by the height of the lights (ie blinding them). As I mentioned before if we wanted to gain extra height I could place them on top our our wall jumps which are 2ft6" high to make them just over 8ft but from what we experienced tonight they will certainly serve us fine as they are.

So overall I am really pleased with a fairly quick and inexpensive form of lighting for our arena. Beats riding in the dark and trying to cope with car headlights (nightmare!).

Hope this helps.

 

[martlin]

Thanks! That's interesting that she doesn't get blinded with the lights at 6'. I went to have a look at some last night and I have to say - I got terribly dazzled I have nearly decided to go with yellow sodiums , I think, probably, maybe... arghhh

 

[Polotash]

I have a 20 x 40 arena with lights and it's fantastic. They are standard outdoor domestic type flood lights, not proper floodlights, so they give a yellow-ish glow (I guess they might be sold as security lights). Like you I just ride and lunge under mine and don't jump, as I think it would be a bit shadowy.

We were lucky mounting ours as we have a 50 foot barn along one long side of the school, so we put one up at the far end of the barn which lights the top third of the school, and then two at the other end of the barn, one angled at the middle third of the school and one angled at the bottom third of the school. This covers the whole area with no dark patches apart from shadier bits right in the corners. They are prob 12 feet up, not hugely high - you could get a similar height using hefty poles I'd have thought.

They've been up about 15 years and apart from new bulbs have been hassle free.