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Stall floor material for new barn

From: Parent

Dear Jessica:

Thanks for several years of good reading of the HORSE-SENSE pages. We encourage our Pony Club membership to subscribe!

We are about to build a new small 36x48 barn with one of the large commercial concerns, but haven't decided on the stall floor situation yet. We could use traditional layering of natural materials with or without rubber mats. We also could do a good drainage slope with concrete and mats.

Would you kindly let us know your current thinking on this matter? And can you share any current other [definitive?] sources on this issue?

Signed - As a non-horseperson paying bills I prefer to remain anonymous so as not to embarrass my daughter by displaying her parent's ignorance. [Note: I have "Complete plans for building horse barns big and small" by Ambrosiano, Nancy W. on hold at the library. I will read it to make sure I ask enough proper questions of the contractor we plan to use.]

Thanks!


Hi, anonymous parent! Your daughter should be proud of your desire to find good information before you build your new barn, and she should also be very happy that you are building the barn for her (since you're the "non-horseperson paying bills", I assume that the barn is for your daughter's horses).

You need stalls that drain well and maintain a flat, even surface, and I'm very much in favour of the traditional materials (medium rock, small rock, compacted gravel) for a base, with rubber mats over that. I feel that in most cases, this gives you the best value for money. This arrangement drains well and makes it easy for you to clean the stalls, whilst preventing the horses from pawing the flooring into hills and valleys. If you use concrete, you'll need a slope to a good, easy-access drain that doesn't clog quickly... it's much more complicated, especially when you consider that you will still need those rubber mats, because horses will quickly go lame if asked to stand on concrete for any length of time.

All that said, you DO need to consult with your local experts - a call to your extension specialist, for example, would be a good idea. You can also get useful advice about where and how to situate the barn itself. Much depends on the composition of the land on which you'll build the barn, on the typical weather conditions in your area, and on the direction of your prevailing winds at various times of year. Think of the worst-case weather scenario for your area, how it could affect your barn - something that's on my own mind at the moment because we've just been experiencing it - and how you would deal with it! Our local worst-case scenario, for example, involved flooding as the consequence of a winter buildup of ice and snow, followed by several days of heavy rain...

The book you have on hold is a very good source of information. But I recommend that on your way to the library, you stop by the bookstore, too. There's another book you should read before you build - and it's one you need to own and keep on your table at all times, as a perpetually and phenomenally helpful reference work. It will save you its purchase price many times over - not just once, but every year.

The book is HORSE HOUSING: How to Plan, Build, and Remodel Barns and Sheds, by Richard Klimesh and Cherry Hill. The writing and the illustrations are clear, and you'll get a huge amount of information and good advice for your money. I strongly recommend that anyone planning to build or modify a horse barn buy this book first. When it comes to horses and their housing, it's so much more fun, and so much less expensive in the long run, to plan and say "Oh, wow, what if we --?" than to say, after the fact, "Oh, wow, I wish we had --!"

Jessica

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