Repacking stall floors

[Manybees]

Hoping to pick some COTH brains. Our local riding club has some very nice shedrow type barns, but over the years, the dirt floors of the stalls have gotten dug out by the horses so the centre of the stalls are hollowed out, and there are gaps under the stall dividers. We would like to redo the stall floors to make them level and bring the ground level up so that horses can’t get their feet caught under them. There are different ideas about how to best accomplish that:

1. repacking with clay and use a vibrating packer to level and compact it
2. fill to level with sand, or ramping the sides with clay and filling the rest with sand
3. road pack/aggregate
   The stalls are only in use during the summer for clinics or shows. Rubber mats are not in the budget. Your advice is appreciated!

[MoonWitch]

We have an old 200+ yo bank barn that we have to repack every so often. My DH will take small rock from the fields to fill in the deepest parts, then he takes bags of cement (dry) and levels the floor by spraying with the hose. Once it dries, he puts fine milling over top and levels with a tamper.

If yours aren’t that bad, you can get away with just the stone dust/fine milling that you get at the quarry or have them deliver.

[Bluey]

We had clay floors in our old race horse training barn.
That was before mats and we bedded with straw.
Horses were there practically 24/7 while in serious training and made big craters in there.
It was a continuous battle to clean all well, lime and add more clay and tamp it down, very regularly.
Only way we could keep ahead of the craters and smelly dirt.

If you have those kinds of floors, regular maintenance just goes with the territory.
If you stay on top of it, you won’t have to do a big job of it every so often, but stalls will stay nicely flat all the time and the horses more comfortable on flat ground.

You may want to bring that up also with those in charge.
Once they fix the stall floors, do keep after it, don’t let them get so bad again.

[Simkie]

NOT sand. Not if you’re thinking beach sand. Angular sand could be okay, I guess. It will compact. It probably won’t be as durable as something else, though. Beach sand will never firm up and will just mix into the bedding.

Screenings are probably a better idea than clay. You’ll still need the plate tamper.

If you do mats now, and properly level the floor, you’ll never have to do anything with stall floors again. If you don’t do mats, you’ll be back here again in a few years, no matter what you do now.

[Bluey]

Mats are not that good at staying put with horses that may be in the stalls all day and some very active in there, uless they are on concrete or something about as hard as that.

We have 4’ x 8’ 3/4" mats over packed dirt.
Some stay ok, some still need to be reset regularly.
It depends on the horses that live on those.

Mats will definitely help with the craters.

[clanter]

@Manybees

3. road pack/aggregate

The stalls are only in use during the summer for clinics or shows. Rubber mats are not in the budget. Your advice is appreciated!

as a suggestion look at paver base material… I can get this locally at the big box things by the bag … not as cheap as getting dump truck load at a time but even by buying by the bag it is less than $100 a ton… I have been using this to put around water troughs and in gate ways …

if you go this route have a person who has the military discount purchase the material from Lowes (they get a no questions asked 10% discount if they have registered with Lowes)

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Oldcastle-K…ase/1000078423

As mention in earlier posts concrete the holes in the center then level with whatever base material you decide upon…then compact.

If you are looking a very hard surface investigate using some cement in with the material (technically called soil-cement). We used this in Asia as the base to make helicopter pads

https://www.cement.org/cement-concre…ng/soil-cement

another option would look into Rubberized Asphalt Concrete

https://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/tires/rac

[Simkie]

@Bluey

Mats are not that good at staying put with horses that may be in the stalls all day and some very active in there, uless they are on concrete or something about as hard as that.

We have 4’ x 8’ 3/4" mats over packed dirt.
Some stay ok, some still need to be reset regularly.
It depends on the horses that live on those.

Mats will definitely help with the craters.

Mats that are installed against a hard edge and tightly stay put. Mats that move aren’t installed properly.

[Bluey]

@Simkie

Mats that are installed against a hard edge and tightly stay put. Mats that move aren’t installed properly.

Sure, mats have to be installed properly.

Then, when all are installed exactly the same and some do fine, some move, I would say it is the use, the horses there, that possibly could be why some moved?

Mats would be a definite improvement for the OP’s situation, but she said is not in the budget, so …

[Simkie]

@Bluey

Then, when all are installed exactly the same and some do fine, some move, I would say it is the use, the horses there, that possibly could be why some moved?

Yep, as you say–some horses are a lot more forgiving of less than perfect install.

[gumtree]

I always used stone dust screenings. The stuff I could get was more on the course side of things then powder. My barn isle was big enough to run my tractor through it. Fill my loader and shovel into the stalls. Hand tamp with a tamper, which is pretty labor intensive. When doing a bunch of stalls better to rent a power tamper.

A lot of work if you can only use a wheelbarrow. Being able to drive a pickup truck to the stalls is far better than using a wheelbarrow. The stuff is heavy. There are calculators to be had, plug in your numbers. It will take 1.33 tons to fill 2 inches in a 12X12 stall. 26 wheelbarrow loads with 100 lbs in each per stall.

[Manybees]

Thanks for the input. I agree that redoing the floors then placing mats is the best way to reduce maintenance long term, but the cost of mats alone would be >$10,000 which is not possible in the foreseeable future. This is a small volunteer run community facility that had a few years of low membership/interest. Some maintenance, like the stalls, was not kept up due to lack of budget and volunteers. In the last two years, we have revitalized interest in the club and our membership has greatly increased. We now have a small but solid core of volunteers that are willing to tackle jobs like the stalls, and do top up maintenance once or twice a year. We also have a local supplier who has in the past given us a good deal on sand etc in the past, and a tractor to help with the heavy lifting.

Sand was brought up as an option as it is plentiful in our area (we are 300 km from the nearest big box store) and likely inexpensive. I guess my concern is that it won’t pack down well and could be dug out by the horses more quickly, and end up mixed in the bedding (wood shavings) or ingested. I like the idea of concrete in the centre to level, then adding stone dust etc on top. I’m wondering if paver base is the same thing as road pack? Any comments on dust levels with the various options brought up, or comfort for the horses (we have wood shavings available for bedding)?

Thanks again for the advice.

[Bluey]

I think you are right, sand just won’t pack enough.
Could you ask the one providing the sand for other material that would pack better?

You will have a mess anyway with most anything, like we did with our clay (caliche) floors, but it would be less with something that packs better than sand will.
I don’t think you can even pack sand where it will stay.

If sand is all you can get, well, why not try it in the worst stalls and see what happens?
I have heard of stables that used to keep horses in sand only stalls, no bedding.
Always wondered how that worked and what they had under the sand, if anything?

[NotoriousDesign]

I am another vote for screenings and vibration plate. Would a single mat in each stall be in the budget? At the front where presumably majority of the wear would quickly happen?

[Simkie]

If you’re talking about beach sand, you really don’t want that. Really. It won’t pack, it will mix with the bedding and hay, horses will wind up ingesting it. The way it constantly moves underfoot isn’t good, either. Think about how tiring it is to walk on the beach above the waterline.

When we bought this place, there was beach sand in the stalls. It was awful. Seriously, you don’t want to do that.

Your local quarry can deliver screenings. Suppose you could use road base for the deepest parts and cover with screening? Just road base is probably a no go–the bigger rocks will get packed into feet, and would probably be too rough on horses, causing hock and fetlock sores.

[MoonWitch]

Manybees, you’ll have the dust issue for the first week until everything settles and then it’s not an issue at all. We use sawdust/shavings and they mix in with the stone dust at first but then actually make a nice base once they compact.