I don’t ever plan on breeding or having giant horses, so a 14x14 doesn’t appeal to me, but honestly… I like @jawa 's idea the best so far. I imagine with some/most barns, you can do this?
FWIW, I’ve found it difficult to properly tension mats across a long span. It’s FAR easier to get them in tightly across a stall vs across 30+ feet.
You’re also pretty well screwed if you have them under your stall partitions and need to replace or reset them for any reason.
I cut mine with a jigsaw. Just lift up the side you need to cut, but a board under it, and go to town. Loud, smells like burning rubber, but a heck of a lot easier than cutting by hand!
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We just got finished putting our stall mats in last night and we also cut ours with a jigsaw. Like DoodlesMom said it smells like burning rubber but it made the job quick! And make sure to put a board under it close to where you are cutting.
Is that the barn with shifting mats you’ve talked about?
If you secure that leading edge–stall mat clips work well, or you could build out a frame–and reinstall those mats to fit tight, they’ll stop moving and coming up.
I had this same problem with my barn in MN. Mats slid under the Priefert stall panels. Asked here and people said it would be okay and they wouldn’t move, but they did. No surprise, really. They did much better when I reset them and pinned down the leading edge with clips. Mats need to be secured at every edge and fit tight or they’ll creep and then come up.
Sorry, don’t remember talking about any shifting mats we have?
Ours are staying very much in place after several years.
On one edge we had some build up.
We lifted them and cleaned under there to re-level last spring.
We added a whole new row of them in front of the old ones, we like them so well.
We have not had any shift under the stall panels.
I’d have a look at the SoftStall mats if it’s in the budget. We have them and I’d honestly never go back to conventional mats. They are installed directly in the stalls and attach to the walls. No shifting, corners lifting, no pulling out heavy mats to clean under, plus we end up using way less bedding.
You said you had mats that routinely came up in another thread. Shrug. Must not be these.
