Talk to me about sand schools

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GingerTrotter

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Oh help!
I am embarking on replacing my sand school... The current one is very old and was placed directly ontop of clay soil (previous owners)

So i am getting quotes to dig it up and put a proper one down.
I dont have a massive budget so my local farmer is doing it for me.

The current plan is extreme drainage! as many as he can put in, in a fish bone arrangement. Gravel on the top, then a 5 inch layer of hardcore over the whole area and then 4 inches of sand. with the addition of kick boards around the lower half of the fencing to act as a wind break.

My issue is sand! I live in the north east of scotland so silica sand is not an option - it needs to be transported up from England and is far too expensive.

My options are 6mm washed sand (£15 an tonne)
Sharp Sand, 80% silica and what most people use up here the supplier assured me (£13 a tonne)
Uniform Sand, similar to the sharp sand but slightly better drainage (£19 a tonne)

Also membranes.... what do I use between the hardcore and the sand?

Its such a mindfield! and I know you lot will have a wealth of experience to share.

Thank you
x
 
it is, indeed, a minefield.. but be very wary of sharp sand.
you need sand with subangular particles, that knit together when wet. if you grab a wet handful and grip it, it should lock together. the wrong sort of sand won't, you'll have to spend ££s on things to help it bind, and even then with sand with round particles rather than sub-angular, it prob won't be very good. when dry it'll be 100x worse, the round sand grains roll like tiny marbles.
tbh although the 'mega drainage' idea is great, there is another way to do it which is simpler... depends how far to your nearest quarry for stone though. if you can get enough stone cheaply, just put a bottom membrane down on the clay (a cheap one to prevent clay heave) and then do about 2' or more of stone (sides locked in by soil, is how i did it, a bank the whole way around, compacted) and then membrane on top and surface on top of that. this way the whole thing is the drainage, the water always drains downwards obv, and esp if you can have a run-away to a ditch etc it works, and no drainage pipes under the arena to clog, fracture etc. this is how we did my latest arena and it's great (6 yrs on now.) obv only works if not in lowest part of field too.
i'm not sure how much jumping you do over big stuff, that would make a difference, but if given the choice between sharp sand and wood fibre (the sort that doesn't rot for years), i think i'd go for the latter...
 
Can I jump in here and ask a q about membranes and hardcore? I have had all of my groundworks done and I have a good layer of mixed size hardcore down, think the very base layer is 4" and then 1" grading on the top 4 or so inches.

These stones are not smooth sided and so may have the odd sharp edge and I am worried that a membrane may get damaged. Am I best to roll the hardcore to flatten it as much as possible or have another inch of smooth sided stones put down all over.

OP sorry for hijacking your thread but hopefully this will help you too
 
roll it with a vibrating roller, you want it totally flat and compacted but with holes in for drainage obv. spent hours rolling my base.
membrane should overlap by about 50cm and ideally be fastened somehow. i used very long cable ties, and a thick screwdriver to poke the holes through, then kind of 'sewed' the 2 layers together. some can be heat sealed, glued, etc. i did it myself, only thing is that you need really strong gloves because the geotextile membrane is very abrasive and you end up with no knuckles left!
 
Great tips, thank you.

OP you mention you are going to go for 4 inches of sand but everybody tells me I need a 6 inch surface on top of the membrane, is the 4 inches enough?

I was going to go for 4 inches of sand then 2 inches of rubber but maybe I can get away with 3 and 2
 
I know 4" sounds a lot but it really isn't 😉.... But seriously, 1 hoof fall in canter will go straight through that depth of surface, esp in the early days before school settles and "knits". I too am in NE Scotland and our sand/rubber has bn down for about 4 years. Will check what sand we went for as its been great. But we have super dooper mega drainage which has been worth its weight in gold. My top tip would be that's where to spend your £!
 
What Kerilli described is very similar to what a friend of mine did. It works absolutely fantastically - also on clay. When she took her top soil off she put a 'fall' on her arena to a soak a way drainage ditch. The difference in height wasn't huge & when she put her drainage stone in obviously it flattened the surface back out, but this also gave another place for water to go.
Drainage pipes are fab when they are working but if they get blocked they can make your arena useless. I'm considering leaving them out of mine
 
I was thinking 4 inches of sand first - let it settle and then 2 inches of rubber in a few months or after the winter. That way it will be suitable for jumping too.

I love the drain suggestion Kerilli - i'm now in deep drainage discussions with my Dad! lol

Where did you buy the membrane from?

Spookypony you are more than welcome anytime and especially for the christening of the new school :) x
 
Not much to add - only that we dug diagonal ditches (x5) across the manege, which we put that holey blue poly pipe into and filled with pea shingle - all led to a drain on one side outside manege. We used crushed concrete on top then geotextile membrane (we duck taped ours) and then 'crag' and I have to say crag is the perfect surface for all activities - if you can get it local to you. It always retains some water and is like riding on the beach - everyone who has used it loves it. The ONLY drawback I see with it is it stains white legs orangey for the first couple of years -this s does subside, but if you have a white/light legged show horse you may not consider it :D

Never have any drainage problems at all which is pleasing considering lots of local maneges which were bespoke built by national suppliers flood regularly :D
 
it works, you build the arena up like a cake (instead of the old way of digging a hole and filling it, which of course keeps the sides in BUT can be a drainage nightmare).
i bought the membrane after doing loads of research online and looking on ebay etc. the bottom membrane i used is the black shiny-ish one, cheap, just looks like woven plastic (1 layer), all it needs to do is be strong enough to stop the stone going down and the clay coming up. the top membrane is the fancy one, i went for woven geotextile (looks like grey matted fabric, almost like felt), there are diff thicknesses etc. i went for the middly one.
 
I would echo building up not digging down...

A word of caution, ALL the membranes I know of except on the super expensive professionally done schools have come up through the surface. We put one down with a membrane once and ended up ripping it all up, and I must know of 10+ others like this.

If you can just build up using hard core and then surface straight on top I think this works best.

Re sand, I'm not a fan, it does go very deep using non silica sand, or when dry it's like the sahara and blows about. Investigate getting hold of washed quarry grit. It doesn't give any bounce so isn't good if you are a professional producer/ jumper etc, but if you want a good free draining and economical surface and are an amatuer I can't rate it highly enough!
 
I am looking into the Harpers surface - I've had a few good reveiws locally and I think that will go straight onto the hardcore.
I am also nervous about putting in a membrane incorrectly as i've heard such horror stories.
 
Interesting re membranes. I am still in two minds for the following reasons

My site is at the top of a hill and I worry about sand washing away in heavy rein no matter how good my retaining boards are.

I don't want the stones coming up and mixing with my surface.

At the same time I don't want my horse tripping up or getting stuck on a moving membrane
 
Wheels said:
Interesting re membranes. I am still in two minds for the following reasons

My site is at the top of a hill and I worry about sand washing away in heavy rein no matter how good my retaining boards are.

I don't want the stones coming up and mixing with my surface.

At the same time I don't want my horse tripping up or getting stuck on a moving membrane
Click to expand...

Yep! I am beginning to think everything to do with arena's is a mindfield and an dilemma :D
 
If in doubt about a membrane, don't. They come up through, make the horses trip, and you end up pulling it all up in my experience! The last school we built we built up a hardcore layer, compacted it, and laid the washed quarry grit straight on top. It's been topped up twice in 20 years and still rides beautifully. We've never had any stone come up through at all. We run the chain harrows round it perhaps every 3 months, but that's just for aesthetics, it doesn't need it as it doesn't shift about like sand does, and it's NEVER deep.

As a say, it doesn't have any bounce, but if you just want somewhere non slip and flat for your own riding, it's perfect. Ours gets used about 2 hours a day, more at weekends. It does freeze solid, but sand does that too ;0)
 
GingerTrotter said:
Do you jump on it at all? I'm not a show jumper but do train at home to up to 1m
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Yes. It would probably have 4 hours of jumping on it a week. It's a good surface to jump on because it's very still and never deep, but because it doesn't have much spring I wouldn't take a horse in there jumping hours every every day or anything for fear of concussion. Probably all these modern super bouncy surfaces have made me over cautious though!
 
GingerTrotter said:
whats crag?? possibly a daft question :)
Click to expand...

Crag is a layer of fossilised shells etc from the pilocean period (all ground down of course to a sand)- it comes from deep down under the sea bed. There are infrequent seams about the country - so it can be a rather localised surface. There are certainly a fair few crag surfaces in Essex as Suffolk (Wladringham had a seam).

The kids loved it as they found so many hematit fish teeth fossils in the manege when it first went down - fabulous :)
 
YasandCrystal said:
Crag is a layer of fossilised shells etc from the pilocean period (all ground down of course to a sand)- it comes from deep down under the sea bed. There are infrequent seams about the country - so it can be a rather localised surface. There are certainly a fair few crag surfaces in Essex as Suffolk (Wladringham had a seam).

The kids loved it as they found so many hematit fish teeth fossils in the manege when it first went down - fabulous :)
Click to expand...

That sounds similar to our grit - the coarser the better I think, stops it getting deep.
 
Building it up out of the ground is a great idea (if you talk to a non horsey builder call it French Drainage). I'm Lincolnshire and we specalise in wind/ rain mine's not lost any sand in 4 years. It's only 5/6 inches out of the ground at one end but probably 1.5 feet at the other end (field on a slope). If drainage is your main worry think logically about how difficult it is for water to defie gravity and sit at a level higher than the surrounding ground!
 
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