I need some feedback on how people keep there ground watered in the winter during freezings temperatures in there indoor arenas for winter barrel races. Are you using anything in a water truck to mix with the the water. Do you have to keep your arena heated? What kind of ground do you have? Is there a high amount of sand mixed with dirt. Any info is helpful 

There are a couple of magnesium salt based products you can get to mix with the footing that will lower the freezing point and retain moisture so you can keep the dust knocked down.  You’ll be able to add water to a point, but if you’re talking single digit temps it’s only going to help so much. 

“MAG Flakes” is a local product that a lot of folks like.

We have an indoor, uninsulated and we can get into single digits if not negative temps.  We can water and keep ground decent into the 20's.  If we have someone on the hose and someone on the tractor at the same time, we can work the moisture in when it's in the upper teens.  Our footing is the natural dirt and we brought some sand in last summer.  During the summer/hot weather, we have to water AT LEAST every other day to keep the dust down.  The rest of the time we can get away with almost weekly.

We have looked into the stuff (Can't think of what it's called off top of my head) for dust control and freezing prevention but it'll cost us well over $1500 for our size arena and only last about 3 years, which was not feasable for us.

I guess I'm most surprised you'd have people willing to compete in temps where you'd be worried about prepping frozen ground.

We have sand in ours and use the Mag flakes, so far has worked well & is still dust free. It's just a 50x70' though so it's not expensive to use the Mag flakes 

I have no idea how expensive it is, or even how well it works, but someday when I am able to build my own indoor area, I want to look into the "synthetic" sand from IGK. It's not supposed to freeze and is very low maintenance. (I want to plan my forever home to be as little maintenance as possible, so I can spend more time riding the horses!!)

Thank you all for feed back! Very helpful

We're in central IL and in winter our plain sand in the outdoor hasn't ever frozen. It's just fill sand. It's what's in the indoor too. And it's entirely low maintence on its own, we've never had to drag or do anyhting except add some every few years. I'd just recomend plain sand with mag flakes, would be a lot cheaper.