We’ve always made our cavalettis with pressure-treated wood and now unfortunately I have a bad elbow and unable to drag them around. How do I go about finding out if there’s a local company that makes them or a good place to buy PVC ones? Are they easy to build? If so, anyone have instructions?
Thanks,
I hate to say it but I hate plastic poles for cavalettis - is there any way you can buy the super light blocks and use those with wooden poles?
IMHO cavalettis need to be kind of heavy because it is common for horses to clip them. Hope your elbow feels better.
I have both wooden and PVC poles left over from septic jobs at our house. The PVC poles are okay but they are a PITA and roll every which way unless stapled to the block, which I wont do. I prefer the wood poles because they tend to stay in one place and kind of serve as a sharp reminder to mind your feet for the lazy horses.
If you know of any contractor/septic friends I’d ask them if they have any spares lying around. That’s how I got all of mine - they’re all pretty old too, at least 5-10 years on most of them and still going pretty strong.
We’ve made our own with attached ends, both old ones from all wood, and our current set, with wooden ends and PVC poles. The latter are considerably lighter and easier for me to manage, but the horses don’t respect them nearly as much.
Since ours have wooden ends, rolling is not really an issue. However, once I was at a place that had the PVC poles with the plastic unattached ends (poles stacked on top of riser ends). I felt they were a hazard, as a knocked pole would roll off the ends and then be underfoot.
It’s not a good idea to use PVC pipe for ground pole, caveletti and even jump poles as the material tends to shatter when cold or when it gets damaged by UV. If you stick with wood poles (the safest and most effective since horses can “feel” them when they hit them with a hoof) you can learn to lift just one end at a time and drag. You do not have to “carry” a pole…drag it…and when putting on a jump or caveletti support, just do one end at a time.
Could you get an old lead rope and tie one end of the pole and drag it into place?
Ours have held up to moderate use outdoors for almost 20 years without damage, but we don’t live in a cold climate, our horses are barefoot (so no shod hooves to impact the PVC), and we used good quality, thick-walled pipes.
Two suggestions. Get a hand truck, the two wheeled moving device used by
folks who are moving packages around or other large heavy things. If you
get one with fairly big wheels, it will roll pretty well over grass as well as on smoother footing. I use ours to move rails, jump standards and our cavaletti
around.
Second, see if you can find 3 1/2" rails rather than 4" rails; they are considerably lighter. Also consider using only 8’ long rails for the cavaletti if that is suitable for your situation.
Also, take a look at the plastic child’s potty that IKEA sells; some of my friends are using those for cavaletti ends with some success. I am pretty sure there was a discussion here about them somewhere.
Second the 8’ landscape timbers, but I do have some PVC poles, but I only use the 4" diameter - lighter than the long wood poles but still heavy and they are a decent compromise.
Third the 8’ landscape timbers. They take up less space as well as being lighter.
This probably seems really weird, but we’re going with the wooden poles and making them 4’ long. Our arena has footing and is used by lots of different riders (western, jumping, dressage, obstacle type stuff), so the cavalettis get moved around a lot. Plus the owner doesn’t really like a lot of stuff in the arena that he has to move before he rakes it. Unfortunately, I’m unable to use my left arm at all, so the 8’ long ones are really heavy for me to drag through the footing. Plus lots of people throw them over the fence and it’s hard for me to put them back in. I appreciate all the ideas about the PVC pipe and input. Thanks!
