Has anyone built an outdoor school up over rather than digging down?

[Gingernags]

We've had problems in our yard with flooding as we're at the base of a range of hills and some days no matter what the drainage, if theres a big thaw, or stupid amounts of rain, with the best will in the world the drains can't cope!

To an extent its been fixed as much as they can upgrading the drains we do have, but YO's idea for an outdoor school would be for it to be raised above the field level so if it did flood, it wouldn't wash the surface away.

Has anyone done this and how does it work with laying a membrane etc? YO has JCB's and all the building/digging skills and plenty of hardcore, but I think he'll still need a menbrane to stop the weeds coming through, just not sure how you'd do that if its not going in a hole to be filled in over the top.

Using sleepers as the edging to keep the surface in.

Also he's talking about 4 lights ie telegraph pole in each corner, but I think from past schools, 6 are better so you get less shadows for the nags to take exception to?

Any tips I can pass on would be great. As I say, they have the technical building skills, just not the horse sense to make it work in reality - and we don;t want a school thats unusable!

Cheers!

 

[wackyracer]

I havnt but my friend has. . .it works a treat!

 

[HayleyandBob]

Yep works fine, we put a membrane down and drainage ditches with memrane +drainage pipes+ gravel, then put the surface down, its never flooded even when the whole garden and surrounding fields were 1 foot under water!

 

[ironhorse]

Yes - ours is actually raised up on a bank above field level. Actually drains so well that it got a bit dry and deep in that hot weather we had, but we didn't lose a single day over the winter due to rain. Even when it snowed, as soon as it started to thaw we simply harrowed it in.
Well worth doing - we left our last yard mainly because the school used to flood so much.
If you're having lights, you might as well have six to cut down on the shadows.

 

[JanT]

From past experience, best not to put the lights in the corners as you lose too much light outside the school. They need to be placed in the centre at each end, then one in the centre or two evenly spaced along the sides.

 

[Gingernags]

Thanks all, I'll be taking notes and passing them on, can't wait to have a school, poor ponies won't know what hit them!