Constructing an arena at home (Suffolk)

[sarahp]

Hello all,

We moved to a new house in Suffolk a couple of months ago with eight acres and what we were assured by the vendors was a manege that had been disused for five years, and had had the surface removed, but had proper drainage. Despite being an adult and a lawyer I took this on faith, and now discover that the 60x40 site may be level but all that's under the ground is about 40mm of hardcore, if that, and no drainage at all.

We are therefore faced with building an arena more or less from scratch. The ground where we are (Hadleigh/Boxford) is pretty well drained - in the recent rain the manege area drained away well apart from two big puddles at one end. We have been quoted £27k by one contractor and £34k by another to put in drainage, hardcore, membrane, sand and rubber, and fence it. We cannot possibly afford to go above £20k and would like if at all possible to keep it 20x40 as the hacking isn't the best around here.

Does anyone have any suggestions for how we might be able to achieve this? My husband is pretty handy on an excavator and a tractor so I wonder how much we might be able to do ourselves, and also whether anyone on decent ground has managed to cut corners with drainage etc without ending up with a totally unusable result.

I would be really grateful for any tips!

Sarah

 

[lamlyn2012]

We had one at our previous place which was just laid on top of hardcore. The land, though, was exceptionally well draining.
It did start to pond in one area over time and we dug out a soakaway in that area which worked.
If OH is handy with machinery you could try a couple of trial holes.
You could also try doing the drainage yourselves, it's not that difficult if you have the machinery(which you can hire) and someone who can operate it.
Drainage is very important so I wouldn't compromise.