BO and her awesome farm guy have not decided that they want to build a real (outdoor) wash rack.
What designs do you like and dislike?
How about materials and sinking posts into the ground so that no horse ever takes 'em out?
Anything else?
So I have been researching ideas for outdoor wash racks for the last few months and pinterest has actually been my favorite place to look for ideas…
I plan to do something similar to these, but haven’t really decided exactly on what. I have a lot of leftover crushed stone that I put as a base in my stalls, so I plan to use that and maybe put rubber mats on top, or just use the stone.
I plan to sink 4 posts, one for each corner, and then do a simple board or two around three sides.
In Oregon? Don’t you just tie to a tree and wait for rain?:lol:
Seriously, for an outdoor wash rack in Oregon’s rains, I’d be most concerned about drainage. Not just the wash area itself, but around it as well. You don’t want to slog through mud coming and going as that kind if negates the whole washing! I’m not much help on how to do that as we’ve never had a dedicated outside wash rack…just the occasional wash off with a hose in the field, moving often so you don’t create a mud pit.
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I asked for a wash rack for my birthday a couple of years ago. I ask for the strangest things! Anyway, it was very economical as we did not pour concrete and reused some free metal for the roof, just painted it to match the barn. Four posts and a roof, on top of crush and run gravel (framed to hold in gravel), topped off with mats. I love it and have not had any issues with drainage but it is just for our personal use. http://www.flickr.com/photos/47214250@N02/8600437022/. It’s not fancy but it gets the job done without standing in a puddle. One thing I might would change is to get the mats with holes in them for drainage but we just used what we had on hand to save moola. It still drains through the cracks between the mats though and is probably easier to clean off the manuer, so I suppose its a trade off. The rack also comes in handy for hosing off just about anything. We have even given the golf cart a bath in it. ha! If money was no limit it would be concrete, complete with a drain to divert the water.
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I had one when we were busy. It was 4 5" posts sunk into concrete, a crush and run base, with mats on top. Along the sides and back I had 3 and 4 board fence. It worked really well, but once we ended the boarding/training business, I never use it.
Here is mine - the horse in it is 18hh
http://www.prospectequinefarms.com/images/strom/0612.JPG
http://www.prospectequinefarms.com/images/strom/0614.JPG
Touché on that Oregon rain (and mud) thing.
If the BO really loved us, she’d build it under the roof of her enormously awesome straw barn-now-horse barn. Oh, and add a hot water heater.
The old wash rack (just some mats on a sand pad) is outside and raised enough to do the drainage job. I think putting rock on that pad, or even just putting the pads back down on that raised island would do it.
The big deal is building the right wash rack for the recalcitrant horse.
My favorite design was a hunter barn in CT. Cement bottom, stout wood fencing and two sided. Think of something a tad wider than a 12 x 12 stall.
It had a fence down the center with gap in the back. You could back a horse into either side or you could walk through one side and come out the other. The gap also gave a human an escape hatch in a way that a 3-sided enclosure would not. But the horse appreciated that there was fence on three sides of him.
The horse was cross tied to poles in front. They were tall and stout. Also, the cement in front extended beyond the front of the poles so that when you are spraying the face of a horse who pushed out against the cross ties, you still were leaving water on the pad and not creating a mud patch in front.
I wish I had a picture. Anyone have a picture of something like this?
Whatever you do, don’t build the sides out of concrete blocks/bricks and attach cross ties to it. A very nice hunter barn I rode at growing up had this arrangement. It was lovely for keeping water in the wash stall and not all over the place, but one day (after, I don’t know…20+ years of working out just fine), one of the walls collapsed on a horse and person that were in the wash stall, very seriously injuring the person.
@ FineAlready
Thanks for the cautionary tale. Those are some of what I’m looking for. I want a wash rack that people can use and trust-- even for horses that are unschooled in the art of, say, bathing or clipping, or are bad because they hurt a little bit while having a wound cleaned.
- Sloped so it drains - no drain in the middle, it gets clogged too easily.
- rather than fullly fencing three sides, consider this - (follow along!!)
Assume 10x10 for this example. Open in the front, and fully closed across the back - but sides (or one side) only goes 7 feet from back fence towards the front. This provides a “side door” - the corner of the wash area still has a post for tying, but the open area behind the post gives you a great deal of freedom. Nice if the horse is a character in the wash rack.
l l
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. . these dots are posts for tying.
(Well, it won’t let me move those side walls over to line up with the back wall…)
3. DEFINITELY some sort of hanging hose boom!!
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Here is mine… open in back and front. Drain is in rear left corner. The stones around it have landscaping fabric under it to prevent mud around it. I have now added the rubber mats with all the holes in them to the front on top of the stones so that the horses don’t track the stones into the wash rack. It works great… had it for 4-5 years now.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=222474827876019&set=pb.222458417877660.-2207520000.1379719152.&type=3&theater
it is normally warm here, our wash rack is a 24 by 24 concrete pad… ALL of our horses are taught to ground tie… there is no need for a restraint other than dropping the lead to the ground
I saw a lovely one once that, while maybe off putting to the horse initially, once in it was probably okay. It only SEEMED fully enclosed; the wall/door on the front was offset enough that there was no direct exit path for the horse to fixate on if it wanted out. I believe, if memory serves, it was set up so that there was a large grooming stall that you initially passed through, but just across the front in such a way you could still get to the wash stall if someone was using the grooming stall. And, added bonus, the water stayed in the stall very, very nicely 
They also had an overhead hose hook up, which was GENIUS, as the horse couldn’t get tripped up on it even if they wanted to.
So, even if the BO goes with an outside wash stall, I think having an overhead option is wunderbar. I’m seriously terrified my horses will get caught in the hose one day when they decide to act stupid.
Hmm…outdoor. I have an indoor and two outdoors (that are still standing and lovely after 25 years, unlike the one a previous poster described…:lol:).
What I didn’t discern is whether you want this outdoor wash stall covered ovehread or not.
Also, will it be free standing or nest to the barn (using one a side of the barn as 1 wall)?
Do you want to use it for farrier service? Also an important tidbit.
Just for washing or tacking up?
Those decisions will have an impact on what you do and where you put it and how you construct it.
Mine is free standing, outdoors. It is about 12’ square, 4 posts sunk down about 2’ each (they may actually be deeper, can’t quite remember) It has one 2x8" plank along each of 3 sides, the front is open. It has a gentle slope toward the front. The base is 2" crushed stone with rubber mats on top. A cross tie on each front post. It has been perfect for my use. The whole thing was made using old fencing, old mats no longer in stalls, the only cost being 4 wheel barrows’ worth of stone, which I already had on the property from some past project. It took less than a day to build and has been perfect for 7 years. Oh, at the back I have a couple of saw horses with a board across to use for ‘equipment’ storage. Shampoos, curries, sponges, etc. Easy Peasy and cheap.
The lady that had the barn apartment had built it over the combo wash stall/grooming stall/tack room. OMG was that a nice wash stall! Only issue for me was the ceiling height, I think it was 8 and a half or 9 feet so they could have reared up and clobbered themselves. 3 sided bay with overhead boom and H/C water, ringed mats over concrete, and dead ahead of it across the aisle was the grooming bay.
Outdoors, the three sided fence with a broomed concrete floor and cross ties with an arch from which the hose was suspended was nice. The thing was laid on grade so the water flowed to the back, and in front was a gravel +sand area that was an extension of the barn and outbuilding access. Two bays, not truly fancy but easy to use.
Thanking about it, the outdoor one was set up so that there wasn’t any drainage into it really. They had a water bar of some sort to divert any rainwater and keep the sand from getting washed all over the concrete. Being two bays, they’d put posts down the middle and two fence boards on either side with a board on the bottom for a storage area for tools etc. at the top that you could reach from either side. The arch in front was from the extra tall posts they used for the front, then they put a cross member on top of that and ran some pvc pipe on the side of it so the hose came from up there.
What would work really well, but be expensive, would be using a grid floor for the actual wash area and around it to stabilize the ground yet allow drainage. I was thinking of this as I watched my gravel paddocks, which have hoof-grid under the rock, during a huge downpour yesterday. We got over 1/2" in less than 30 minutes, which had water ponding and running everywhere. But it drained off soon as the rain let up, and my paddocks remained high and dry. If I were doi g an outdoor wash rack in our climate, that’s what I would put down.
I love my wash rack.p in Colorado. It sits just outside my barn next to my hose, in a wrap around paddock. (Great views). The floor is concrete with rubber mats on top, surrounded by gravel - so i dont get muddy and slip when walking around it. French drains are installed in the surrounding gravel. At the front, i have two 6" wide 7 ft tall metal posts set in concrete for cross tying. I have no walls so horses can see everything around them. I have a propane on-demand heater for hot and cold water. The hose, when not in use, sits in a bucket next to the spigot, suspended from the ground, attached to the barn. Since the horses use the paddock, we ibstalled a small stall swinging gate in front of the water faucet and they cannot mess with it. I use the rack to saddle up, trim, wash and everything else. My vet says he wishes he could make all of his clients come to my barn for vet exams!
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You could take a spade bit and drill some drainage holes in the mats you’ve got.
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