Thanks to lots of great advice, we are in the final stretches of the “big stuff” in finishing our pole barn. It’s a large barn, with half serving as a shop (separated by wall/end doors). Electric and walls are done in the shop. By end of next month, we’ll have the electric in the barn side and floors down throughout. Floor for shop and feed room & tack room will be brushed concrete. Stalls are already done (rubber mats over level base). I had intended to pour concrete in the aisles, but the bid is coming back pretty high. Sound like special regulations for the electrical and concrete for wherever horses may walk… So, I’m now back to rubber mats. The aisles are 12x12. Assuming we’ve got a well packed base, do we need to put the rubber mats all the way to the sides/stalls? Or can we just run them down the middle? Horses will spend very little time there (stalls + grooming area accessed via dutch doors). Thoughts?
The way that sounds, you may not even need mats, when you are not going to have much traffic or horses standing in the aisles.
Bare aisles, kept raked/sweept, even with pretty herringbone patterns, are fine.
At many tracks and in our race training barn, that is how all were, even with much traffic and were really as easy to keep as with any other, concrete and/or mats and if when in use you decide you want other, maybe then you will know what and how much to cover.
One more option to consider.
Mats that don’t run wall to wall will shift away from each other, and collect stuff in the crack between. Options are to sweep that out regularly and shift them back, or shrug and accept that’s just the way it’s going to go 
Or, actually, you could use stall mat klips to hold them in place.
I ran mats wall to wall in my (concrete) aisle, and it looks SHARP. Really improved the look over having them just down the middle. It was a whole lot of cutting and fitting, though.
actually I am confused as normally if a minimum of 2 inches of concrete is in place over an electrical conduit the burial depth is usually decreased by at least 25%
here is what I am referring to using Calif regs which usually are more stringent
https://ci.carmel.ca.us/sites/main/f…pdf?1527866687
so what you are being told having softer covering of the conduits is better than a hard surface?
My bad – aisle is 12 X 60. Thanks for the regs – I’m in Oregon, which I’m told is pretty strict, as well. My electrician and various contractors doing bids on concrete are all over the place on the aisles. We know that we’ll run conduit underground from the shop into the barn and up in between the stalls for outlets. I don’t fully understand the issue with concrete over electrical on the horse side… For a variety of reasons, the consensus seems to be to skip the concrete in the aisles and either leave as is or install rubber mats. I don’t love the gravel dust, but rubber mats sounds like backbreaking work. Any tips for making laying mats easier?
Raking that pattern was one of my favorite jobs when I worked the tracks and farms!
I’m in Oregon & have concrete in my entire barn- 40x48’. While expensive (about $8k) it wasn’t difficult, and my concrete guy knew exactly what to do. This was about 3yrs ago when we built everything.
That is what concrete runs here, about $4 a square foot, 4" with reinforcing, for us rebar, some use heavier wire.
Our aisleway is concrete, 14x200 with 17 stalls on both sides at one end. There is a double row of mats and they do shift and the cracks fill up. The other end is concrete with the office, bathroom, grain room etc. There is a therapy program. We had a small group of adults with TBIs who came every Monday as volunteers. They swept and cleaned up the entire area. They pulled the mats every few weeks. Their staff person had a method worked out that saved a lot of energy. Everything was straight and centered with no gaps when they left. They haven’t been around lately. I hope they come back because we enjoyed having them come every week.
most likely their doctors have not released them from care for back problems
if shifting is a major problem the mats (or every other one) could be screwed to the concrete
I have boarded at barns with stone dust aisles. They seemed to hold up well with just daily raking even with quite a few horses in and out. Mats would seem to be more trouble than they are worth. They also did wet them with a water/disinfectant mixture when it was dry.
We raked the aisleway before the concrete went in. It’s more work than sweeping. If the barn is busy with lessons and boarders it has to be done a couple of times a day.
The group that was sweeping is from a long-term neurorehab program. Over the years we’ve had many adults with disabilities who really enjoy coming to the farm for a few hours. Too often they have lost their funding or transportation. I suspect that Covid is the challenge for this group. There are a few facilities that will not allow a resident to return if they leave the property.
I have a pole barn with concrete down one side (under feed room, tack room, and hay storage). Stalls are on the opposite wall. I did not want a concrete aisle so I did gravel with rubber mats over the top. I did run the mats full width of the aisle and initially laid them out side-by-side and still had some shifting. I pulled them all out and placed them back in a subway type pattern so none of the mats were aligned with their neighbor and now the only time I see any shifting is when the hay delivery truck drives thru the aisle and even then it is minimal.
So my suggested would be to place them full width and make sure the seams don’t align with the neighboring mat.
Thanks, all, for great advice. As a first-time barn owner, these decisions are HARD… We’ve got electric and concrete going in during Sept/Oct – before (I hope) winter hits too hard. The concrete guys will level the entire pole barn, then we’ll leave the aisles as is in crashed gravel for now. Over the winter, we’ll focus on the tack room – best project of all! 
