Would you bother? Re: Arena surface

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Gypley

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My self and a friend rent a small private yard. We have a small woodchip school aprox 20x30 which just about does us.
It's unuseable for the majority of winter and in the hot weather can get pretty dry and hard.
Given the yard is rented, myself and friend will not finance a nice shiny new school to be built and its not in the owners interest to put one in (perfectly understandable)
However I have been offered a 2nd hand surface for free which is a silica/ rubber mix which was taken from an indoor school. All we would have to pay for is the collection of it.
I haven't yet got a quote from a company to move it but would you bother ?
My thoughts are that it won't make the school any worse than it already is, and it we may get more use out of it if we can use it in the dryer summer months. I know it will no drain very well in winter, but it doesn't drain well anyway!
Would you bite their arm off? Or is it more hard work than its worth?
 
Personally I would go ahead and do it, fair enough it won't drain properly due to the drainage not being done but rubber schools tend to not freeze as much and even if they do you can harrow it or even fork it up if it's not to big of a space. Wood chip can possibly cause grazes/splinters on the horse anyway. If it can't make it worse and could possibly make it better then I'd do it. It's not often that you get offered a surface for free!
 
You will have to remove the woodchip because if you throw the sand on top the whole thing will become lethaly slippery.

What is under the woodchip? If there is some kind of hardcore base then the whole thing may well work. If there is nothing you risk losing all the sand in the soil during the first winter.
 
If you currently have woodchip be aware that you may not have planning for another surface. Planners do sometimes write into clauses on schools that it has to be a natural (ie woodchip not sand or rubber) surface.
 
Those were my thoughts. But I didn't know if I was missing something. Or wether there was a very valid reason for not doing it. Very tempting though. Might get a few quotes from some grabber trucks :)
 
The school was originally 20x20 (built by the person before us) they put sand down with woodchip on top. When the goings good it actually rides rather nicely. They then extended by about 10m but did not put sand under the extended part. They just woodchipped it. The only difference between the two is we get weeds growing in the part without sand :/
 
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