Muddy gateways and carpet. HELP

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poodle20

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Hi, I don't post on here very often, but would really like some advice please.
Last winter our gateway and a good way into the field was very, very deep thick mud, we hated it and so did the horses. We have been looking at putting down some hard standing of some sort but of course it is expensive. Someone on here a while ago mentioned something about putting carpet down in gateways, I just wondered what way you go about it. Do you have to put a membrane underneath or just lay carpet down when the mud has dried and is compacted. Won't the carpet just sink when the ground is wet and the horses walk over it? Any help greatly appreciated. Many thanks.
 
I've mentioned carpet before. It really depends on how far down the ground gets soft. I've upgraded to rubber honeycomb mats for around £10 for a mat 2m x 1m. I'm very pleased with them.
 
Hi,thanks Jemima. I looked at the mats and spoke to a company about them, but he said, you have to dig down a bit, put membrane down, then hardcore, then mats on top of that. Again would be mega expensive. Think the mud was probably about 2' deep, but obviously now it is very compacted and has been rolled, in fact looking at it now it is hard to believe it was so bad. How did you lay the mats ???
 
We had mud that went down to our knees last winter! Think its a case of grin and bear it, keep off for as long as possible, let them rest alot. It is a pain though!
 
If you ask around and look hard enough you can get road scalpings delivered for between £7 - £14 pt. Phone round recycling places in your area and skip hire places do not just go to your local building merchant as they sell the higher end stuff.
 
We had success with using straw, and also hay that the horses hadn't eaten, in the gateways last winter. We are on heavy clay and this worked a treat for us.
 
poodle20 said:
Hi,thanks Jemima. I looked at the mats and spoke to a company about them, but he said, you have to dig down a bit, put membrane down, then hardcore, then mats on top of that. Again would be mega expensive. Think the mud was probably about 2' deep, but obviously now it is very compacted and has been rolled, in fact looking at it now it is hard to believe it was so bad. How did you lay the mats ???
Click to expand...

Mmm - my experience is that provided you put the mats on when the ground is hard and make very certain that you connect the mats together (cable ties) at every hole the mats will stand up to quite a lot of depth of mud underneath as the area covered makes it difficult for horse hooves to sink in far. You will still get mud coming through though.
 
Thanks everyone

We have thought of road planings or something similar, but other people have said that you need to dig down and put a membrane down. Again expensive. Can we just put road planings or something similar straight onto the compacted hard mud, before it becomes wet ?? Will this work, or when it rains will it just turn to mud again. Sorry for all the questions, but keep getting different stories, has anyone had any success with planings or rubber matting just laid down. Hope that makes sense.
 
I'd not heard of having to dig down, lay memberanes etc. We just put honeycomb mats down as soon as it got soft enought that they would sink a little bit and that was fine. Mind you we've only done one winter with them. They are pretty well embedded now but I can see no reason for them not to work OK come next winter. I suppose eventually they will sink too far to be useful - but I would have thought that would take quite a long time.

I'm open to being wrong though....
 
I did just use a big piece of carpet that lasted really well in my gateway but I only had 2 horses using it and the gateway was always open as it led into yard and field shelter so no hanging around gate area. It didnt sink and the only downside was that some time the corners came up and caused a bit of tripping hazard. It was a good quality carpet though ;-) from my in laws - with a kind of threaded or matted back (bit like sisal) rather than foam backed.

If you ask on freecycle or something like that and can collect yourself you might be able to get some for free...
 
We've just got road planings straight onto soil. They've been down two years and might need a bit of topping up this winter, but they make a huge difference - we're on really wet ground.

They make fantastic tracks out to the fields as well - we were able to carry on turning out two sensible mares all through the snow and ice last winter as the approaches to their fields never got slippy.
 
Hi all, just had a look at the Fieldguard Mats they do look O.K. might think of putting a small amount of planings down underneath just level the ground off then put mats on top. Fingers crossed it works.

Really don't want the amount of mud we had last winter it was an absolute nightmare getting the horses in and out and also put haylage/hay out.
 
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