Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

  I'm currently paying many dollars to have cedar removed from my  
round pen.  The sub-base is clay, the base is packed rock, and the  
footing was cedar--recommended by our otherwise infallible arena- 
construction guy.  He gave and we took poor advice.  One horse or  
another falls once a week.  The stuff is terribly slippery when wet.   
We're replacing the cedar with sand, no fabric.  The bigger arena  
(yep, that's right, we're putting in a BIG arena--wahoo!!!! :-)  is  
clay, felt (not road fabric), packed crushed rock, then sand.  You  
might want to invest in the USDF's Arena Manual.  Best bucks ever  
even if they did staple the pamphlet together inside out.....  The  
thing is packed full of up-to-date information in layman's language.   
Bottom line--clay is bad, sand and gravel are good.
      Might be cheapest to throw quite a bit of gravel over the clay  
and call it good--as long as the use is only a paddock and it's  
picked clean consistently--the gravel is great for their feet-- 
rescues their hooves from constant sogginess and hardens 'em up at  
the same time.  I live up in N. Washington and have dreams of  
inheriting a gravel quarry.

Good luck,
Mary K.
p.s. the fabric is spendy and unnecessary for a paddock it seems to  
me.  We didn't even wait for the muck to dry, nor did we remove it-- 
just kept adding gravel.  It's clean and dry year-round now.  Hint:   
no leaving hay, manure, tree debris, or other organic material on the  
surface. 
 

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