A hot in the dark - a makeshift infoor school?

[william1901]

I keep my horse on a farm with lots of barns. If I can convince my farmer to let me have one is there a surface that I could put down to make a school which would not cost the earth and which would stay put. I cant afford to go for a full blown school. If so, what surface woudl I need and how much of it?

 

[cazza]

we converted one of the old cattle barns at our place, the floor wasn't completely level so we had chalk put in and levelled off, and then we had silica sand put in on top. we have had it for over a year now and it doesn't move and rolls flat really well. The only thing I would say is with an indoor you do have to keep on top of keeping it wet otherwise it gets deep really quickly.

 

[YorkshireLass]

My indoor school is a barn. It is my husbands grain store. Every year he takes the loadall in and removes the surface just before harvest.

The surface was FREE! It is compost. Get in touch with your local green waste processing site. The compost I got is a fab springy surface. The waste site makes garden waste and wood chippings in to compost. The lead content on my school surface/compost was slightly too high for it to be sold as compost, that is why it was free. They quite often get a batch of compost that doesn't quite make the mark and they are grateful if someone takes it away.

 

[henryhorn]

We used our barn for around 10 years before turning it into stabling.
We had sand and wood chippings, which we topped up every now and then.
It eventually got unusable as the surface deepened on the corners, and the biggest problem was keeping it wet, as otherwise it won't stay down still enough under their hooves.
We tried adding rubber chips but after a very short time it went deep again. The problem is without a membrane the surface mixes in from their feet with the soil underneath.
We gave up and built a lovely outdoor in the end.