Building a woodchip turnout? ideas

[staceyn]

Want a place for the horses in winter when the weather is too boggy with mud.

We have a 25mx21m area fenced of with post and rail.

options

Chuck free woodchips or cheap woodchips on top of the boggy mud enough to cover the lot and go above it a good 6 inch

Make side boards to hold it all in

put a membrane straight onto the mud then place woodchip

dig out mud put membrane down then woodchip

or dig out put a layer of road planings let it compact then put woodchip down.

This is only for turnout anyone done something similar? only need it to last few years with it topped up when needed

Any other low cost ideas would be great when i say low cost under £1k! please thanks

 

[Tammytoo]

You need to dig out the mud, put down the planings roll them and then put plenty of woodchip on top. All the woodchip needs to be above the level of the surrounding ground or else it quickly turns to mush if it is sitting in water.

I know some people will recommend just using the planings, but I haven't used this method myself.

 

[staceyn]

I have a patch of the same mud outside the fenced area i might just order a tonne of planings and put it on top see if it will compact as the other half of the path compacted great it does get wet but there legs dont get stuck in 5 inch mud holes! lol. i will ask the owners of the house what they did with that half

 

[Aoibhin]

we had lots of old carpet put down & then a good 8-10 inches of woodchip put on top, it was a good turnout area in very bad weather & worked fine as it was a small space & they couldnt race about on it (was also big enough to lunge in up to a decent speed trot)
we topped it every couple of years with another tonne or so.

 

[*hic*]

I took the trees out(!) put down Terram and put woodchip (cushionride IIRC) on that. THe cost for an area your size would be about £1K I guess. At the same time I did an area for the chickens which was done with chipped wood from a landscape gardener. The chickens area is now in much worse condition than the area done with cushionride.

 

[staceyn]

Did you just put old carpet over the top of mud like you would a membrane or did you dig it out first. If that's to case I can get hold of lots of old carpet not chopped up though as a base then use wood chip ?

 

[staceyn]

With the terram also did you just put it straight onto field or dig out first ? If I can just put a membrane over the field then add a surface that would be much easier to do

 

[LittleBlackMule]

I have tried using woodchips to combat mud; they work for a while but will let mud through eventually and then start to rot down.

If you use them, definitely put down some sort of barrier first to keep the mud out.

 

[*hic*]

With the Terram I took the trees out first then put the membrane down then put on woodchip.

 

[staceyn]

Ah that's good . I can get a membrane to cover the whole arena for £150 so it would just be the case of finding woodchip, would love to get shredded carpet but nothing comes up on Google :-(

 

[horsemadelsie]

At a yard I used to work at the had a 'pen' for winter turnout- boards on the outside to hold it all in, and they dumped a good couple of feet of free wood chippings on top. This was thick enough to stop the horses feet getting through to the mud, and they just topped it up every year. It would be brilliant at first, like a platform, and as it rotted it would go quite deep, but not sticky, muddy deep- I don't think a horse ever pulled anything in there and they used to 'ping' quite a lot!

 

[Aoibhin]

carpet just laid onto topsoil although we did scrape the very soft top stuff back (couple of inches worth) laid the carpet in big sections overlapping & then filled.

 

[peaceandquiet1]

Depends on the type of soil you have but it is always going to be a better jod if you dig out the top layer and put a hard base down, then your membrane, then your top surface.