Ideas for DIY Jumper jump fill, walls, Liverpool/open water

[Snaffle17]

Hi everyone!

I am looking for ideas to add some spice to some schooling jumps. Would love to see and hear about what others have done for fill/walls/liverpools etc.

Has anyone built a wall jump with the stackable blocks or an open water jump? I am debating if it’s worth trying to make or just buy them already made. With the open water jump- I was thinking of using a tarp with either foam rolled into the edges or possibly rubber strips on the edges. Safety is of course a priority- hence asking if it’s just better to buy these.

Can’t wait to hear some ideas, thanks in advance!

[ParadoxFarm]

I’ve used cheap (5 Below store) yoga mats for my “water” under jumps.

[lcw579]

@ParadoxFarm that’s brilliant! I’ve seen people make liverpools out of tarps and pool noodles before. I thought that seemed like something even those of us who aren’t too crafty could handle.

[PNWjumper]

We took apart my kids’ play set from my back yard and turned the wavy blue slide into a liverpool. It’s great, you can have it sitting flat on the ground and it holds water, or you can turn it on its side and make a wavy blue wall.

[Janet]

Every barn accumulates a collection of no longer useable buckets. If you take the handles off they make good fill. Also empty supplement buckets.

Bags of shavings make good fill, or even freestanding jumps.

Same with uneatable-for-some-reason bales of hay.

Tarps

Astroturf

[ParadoxFarm]

My above-mentioned yoga mats also work to drape over poles to add some solidness/color. $5.00 well spent. Or in my case, $20.00, since I bought four.

[licketysplit]

My neighbor ran our local jail and their detergent came in plastic barrels. He would bring me a bunch of them and I use them as fillers. They always give a pretty good spook.

[LCDR]

Spend the money and buy an actual liverpool. Nothing I have ever tried DIY looks anywhere close, and the vinyl premade liverpools actually hold water and are easy to keep clean and move and store.

[MHM]

Very clever!!

[MHM]

The other thing that’s very handy about the yoga mats is that they are extremely light and portable if you want to take them to a show to put under a jump in the schooling area.

[Mander]

Go look for things at the end of holiday seasons - Christmas wreaths/garland on sale is a good thing. Walk through home decor stores for on sale things too - my last trainer found some decorative wooden barrels on clearance at a Home Goods (or somewhere similar) for cheap cheap! She tipped them on their side with some old garland she had at the base and they made adorable rustic fillers.

You could make a plank/gate out of a piece of plywood and paint it differently every few months to keep things fresh - turn it into a fun barn activity if you’ve got any barn rats hanging around. A friend of mine had a horse spook at a white gate at a show once, and the first thing she did when she got home was paint a board bright white with the word “BOO!!” written on it

[JenEM]

I’ve done some for my barn, and they’ve been fun to paint. Flower boxes are super easy to make (put a few feet on a 4x4, drill holes every 3"-6") and you can swap out flowers/fill very easily.

If you go to the Dollar Tree, they have pool noodles for $1.25, which are great to cut up and use as fill–we stuffed a bunch in brush boxes.

Also, astroturf. You can cover older/ugly things with it. I found a 6’x8’ rug at Home Depot for $20 and we’ve made quite a few things with it. And given the amount of astroturfed stuff I saw in the show ring last weekend, I was REALLY glad the green horse had seen several pieces of it at home before we had to jump a line of it!

[NancyM]

With my rather limited carpentry skills, and poking around in thrift stores… I made TWO “brush jumps” with artificial flowers instead of brush. I had to make two, because I found so many flowers that I couldn’t fit them in to only one brush jump. I’ve really lucked out with finding fake flowers like this, if you look around, you can find them for cheap $$$$$. Each one still had a price tag on it, in all, the flowers were “worth” hundreds of dollars. I got the whole lot for $10. The brush jumps are both colourful, and inviting. My only problem is that the deer come into the ring in summer, and try to eat the flowers… well, they DO eat the flowers, have damaged them. But I go around and pick up the pieces, and cram them back onto the stems to resurrect them. Dam deer. So my green horses do jump “colour”.
The frames of the jumps are just made out of 2 X 4s, and 1 X 4s, with some chicken wire between the horizontal slats to support the flowers crammed in there. It works well. Make them any size you like, mine are small fillers, about 2’ high, and in one piece.

[sherian]

easiest way I found to make fill is to get some heavy duty skids, cut them in half and add feet. Paint and decorate with flowers or christmas tree bits

[pony_grandma]

Solid old doors, but not hollowed thin veneer ones that a horse can put a foot thru. And paintable!

[MHM]

@JenEM

Also, astroturf. You can cover older/ugly things with it. I found a 6’x8’ rug at Home Depot for $20 and we’ve made quite a few things with it. And given the amount of astroturfed stuff I saw in the show ring last weekend, I was REALLY glad the green horse had seen several pieces of it at home before we had to jump a line of it!

It’s sort of bizarre how Astroturf suddenly became such a prevalent material for jumps a few years back. I can remember an occasional piece of it over a roll top back in the day.

But now suddenly it is all over the place at some venues, including wrapped around the rails. Very odd.

[JenEM]

This was a line, where both fences consisted of an astroturf’ed top rail, an astroturf’ed plank, and astroturf wedges in front of it all. All I could think was how much more inviting the whole thing would have looked if they’d replaced even just the wedges with a darn flower box.

I’ve taken maybe a two year break from much showing while bringing along this youngster, and I do not remember this much astroturf even just a couple years ago.

[Pennywell_Bay]

Those big plastic barrels, put astroturf on them and it was a coop. Until my friend cut it in half and it was then a perfect coop and not a rolling ball of green death.

[Snaffle17]

Loving the ideas!

[LCDR]

Another easy fill material is culvert pipe.