RAMM has a sale on right now for these panels. Supposedly, you lay them on top of your mud. without excavating. We have a tractor and can do the excavation, if needed. Has anyone use these panels? What do you think the pros and cons were? I need to do something with my mud this year. TIA!
Sorry, no experience but I am very interested in hearing if anyone has had success with this product.
For the price, it would be wonderful to install a couple panels at my gates w/o having to excavate.
Hope somebody can attest to the usefulness.
Or not.
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I looked them up. They’re $199 for a 6 x 12 panel. There’s an old thread that someone bright back to life about a month ago. If I can find it I’ll link it here
If you do a google search for “geogrid”, you will find lots of different options for soil stabilization. Some more expensive then light foot and some less (minus the equine up pricing!).
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I wonder how this would work. It’s the same price for a 4’ x 25’ piece. Thoughts?
FYI, I put four of those Lighthoof panels in in October before fall and winter weather hit. I put them in gate areas that are extremely high traffic. I had used gravel fines there annually for years but kept having mud issues.
They are performing exceptionally well. We have had a HARD winter, super wet, and the gate areas are terrific. Zero mud and no hole like my one horse made (he loves to gallop to the gate and slide to a stop many times a day. I had to scrape down the hole he would make every month…it would be inches deep). I am extremely satisfied and plan to order more for another gate area. I did scrape all the nasty stuff back, level with fines and tamp, then Geotextile, the the grids, then fill the grids and tamp. After a few days of rain I did add a bucket of fines to one gate in early December because the grid was beginning to show in one place as it continued to settle. With that add, everything looked perfect last week when I could see ground. Now it is under 2 feet of snow so I can’t take pics.
great product. I compared to the prices of the non-horse products and they were roughly equivalent more or less to anything my very good landscaper said was high quality.
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Um no, per Lighthoof, you must excavate.
Sorry. Wish it was that easy.
We put in eight or 10 panels (I think eight) this fall before it got wet. We excavated down four or five inches, put down geocloth, laid the panels down, and filled with 5/8-. Per the instructions, it calls for 3/8 but I contacted the company and they said 5/8- was okay (which is good no 3/8 to be had). It was not cheap but it was definitely worth it. [ATTACH=JSON]{“data-align”:“none”,“data-size”:“medium”,“data-attachmentid”:10022626}[/ATTACH][ATTACH=JSON]{“data-align”:“none”,“data-size”:“medium”,“data-attachmentid”:10022627}[/ATTACH][ATTACH=JSON]{“data-align”:“none”,“data-size”:“medium”,“data-attachmentid”:10022628}[/ATTACH][ATTACH=JSON]{“data-align”:“none”,“data-size”:“medium”,“data-attachmentid”:10022629}[/ATTACH][ATTACH=JSON]{“data-align”:“none”,“data-size”:“medium”,“data-attachmentid”:10022630}[/ATTACH]
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The pics didn’t upload in order, sorry… But I think you can follow along. It has been AMAZING. Plus it is keeping them off my two current paddocks so they aren’t destroyed. The donkeys and one horse have in/out access to 1/3 acre, and the WB is by himself in the 24x48 foot run with in/out to his stall. The horse/donkey paddock is soupy and muddy but not where we put the Lighthoof, and it’s kept them from tearing the ground up right next to the concrete pad, which would eventually have undermined it. Again, not cheap but 100 percent worth it.
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I realize this thread is pretty old but I’m wondering if the panel area is safe (not icy) in the winter? I’m in NJ and would like to put them in 12x14 stone dust runs attached to my barn.
Yes, very safe! It is only as icy as the surrounding areas. Definitely not more icy…but if there is an ice issue they won’t prevent it.
I actually ended up building a new barn and have them in 12 by 20 runs attached to the stalls. They are terrific in eliminating holes, etc. 3 years in and still very happy with them. The original panels I had to remove and reinstall because I reconfigured the paddocks, but they are now quite old and still doing their job well at various gates.
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thank you so much! COTH is such a wonderful community 
Hi, me again can you tell me how you anchored the panels? RAMM is recommending 4x4’s around the perimeter and attaching the honeycomb to those… with what? I can’t imagine having any kind of bracket or screws buried in the runs. Even rebar driven down seems unsafe if an area gets eroded away and they were to step on it.
Great question! What we did was use rebar to pin the edges/stretch it while we worked on it, then it comes with giant cable ties to secure it to the frame. We took out the rebar once each section was done. You also use the cable ties to secure one piece to the next…you only need one big perimeter frame.
You can also use use the rebar without the frame and only remove when you are finished, but the frame is superior in longevity. Here is a before and after, but not very good pics sadly.
Another thing to think about with runs is access. I am very glad I used gates at the end of each run, because it is easy to get in there with a skid steer to add a bit more once a year. It gets a little thinner as little pieces of crusher run get picked up with poop. I also had a horse bend the latch on his fancy Euro door so I couldn’t open it, so it was nice to have an alternative way to get him out!
thank you, I too have gates at the outs, it is def convenient for the tractor and occasionally shuffling horses when the aisle is busy. Can I ask what do you mean by “frame” for the mesh? 4x4’s? did you zip tie to the 4x4’s before burying them? and did you do them just on the sides or top and bottom as well? I have very similar runs to yours, I will try to find a picture mine are 12x14 or so, I would make them bigger if I could do them again
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