What is the BEST stall flooring option?

[beau159]

Assuming money is of no concern, what flooring is the best for a stall based on ease of cleaning AND comfort for the horse?

I’m in a “dreamer” state. Just bought 130 acres for our future home and future home for the horses! Of course, will be a few years until we build but I’m already brainstorming all sorts of ideas for the barn. Because of course, that’s more important than the house, haha. :yes:

My horses normally live outdoors 24/7. However, I do want stalls in the barn to use when I need them. I want something that is somewhat easy to clean, yet easy on a horse.

I like concrete because it is easy to sweep or hose down if needed, but then of course you’d need mats on top for good cushion, and I’d also want shavings on top of that so that it can prevent urine from splattering all over the place.

Dirt floors are nice because they are easier on the horse’s legs, but you can’t exactly hose a dirt floor, and horses can dig holes in it. Yes, you could still use mats so they don’t dig, but then I might as well do concrete.

So just looking for thoughts!! I obviously have plenty of time to think about it.

[Garythesquirrel]

I recently installed Stall Savers in one of my stalls and so far absolutely love it! I plan on doing the other stall this summer. It’s so easy to clean and the bedding is staying much drier. The shavings I put in over a month ago still look brand new!

[poltroon]

I wouldn’t do dirt as in just plopping the stalls over the existing grade. What you need to do is raise the barn floor up at least a foot above the surrounding terrain and engineer it as appropriate for your area with coarse rock and then some sort of finer rock that will lock together and make a solid surface.

Some people stop there. As you say, the horses can dig; you can protect them with bedding and to some extent there will be times when they have to be repaired.

You can add rubber matting above that, or other kinds of rubber designed to lock in a layer of gravel and prevent digging.

If I had plenty of money and horses that were in most of the time, I’d probably go with ComfortStall: http://comfortstall.com

I have no experience with concrete in stalls, in all the places I’ve boarded over the years.

As you are in the dreamer stage, I’ll caution that your money isn’t going to go as far as you think. I suggest setting your priorities to safety and efficiency - making it easy to take care of the horses in freezing weather, in mud, by someone inexperienced, etc. Things that are hard to do will not get done. If you aren’t keeping your horses in much, a simple flooring will do fine - and they won’t dig because they won’t be confined in there so much to create a problem. And having money left over (as if! :D) is great for making adjustments to what you need after you’ve had experience using your new digs.

Congrats, enjoy, and good luck!

[Garythesquirrel]

I forgot to add that we put 5" of crushed rock down under the Stall Saver.

[beau159]

[QUOTE=Garythesquirrel;8449872]
I recently installed Stall Savers in one of my stalls and so far absolutely love it! I plan on doing the other stall this summer. It’s so easy to clean and the bedding is staying much drier. The shavings I put in over a month ago still look brand new![/QUOTE]

I looked up the StallSavers and it looks like you’d want to put those over dirt or gravel or some sort of base, for the fluids to drain through?

@poltroon;8449876

I wouldn’t do dirt as in just plopping the stalls over the existing grade. What you need to do is raise the barn floor up at least a foot above the surrounding terrain and engineer it as appropriate for your area with coarse rock and then some sort of finer rock that will lock together and make a solid surface.

Oh yes, we will be consulting with professionals to get all the “base” things done right. That’s paramount.

@poltroon;8449876

If I had plenty of money and horses that were in most of the time, I’d probably go with ComfortStall: http://comfortstall.com

Looking at the website, those do look fantastic, but they say they are waterproof. So it appears as if you must use some sort of shaving or absorption material because liquid is not going to drain through it. I’m curious on the additional logistics behind it.

[QUOTE=poltroon;8449876]
As you are in the dreamer stage, I’ll caution that your money isn’t going to go as far as you think. I suggest setting your priorities to safety and efficiency - making it easy to take care of the horses [/QUOTE]

Which is why I phrased my original question with “ease of cleaning”.

Money is really indifferent for me. I consider this to be a one-time deal. This is going to be a forever home for us, so I’m going to put in whatever is the best option for our situation. I’m going to build my dream barn the way I want! I want something the horses are going to love (with any luck … or unluck rather … my accident prone Red will probably need stall rest in the future …) but something that’s relatively easy for me to clean.

One place I used to board, she had a certain mixture of sand in her stalls. Makes clean up super easy but it is so DUSTY. And the horse’s legs get rather dirty, which is not ideal for me if I put a horse in a stall to keep them clean for a show.

[Highflyer]

If you’re bringing horses in for more than an hour here or there you’re going to need some kind of bedding regardless of whether you have dirt/ mats/ concrete. My personal preference would be mats over really, really level gravel (unless you were somewhere likely to flood in which case concrete).

[ToTheNines]

Lay stall grids over nice base. Rake granite sand over that to get level surface. Then lay interlocking stall mats, the heavy ones from Tractor Supply.

[showidaho]

We just built our ‘dream’ barn and did stall mattresses over prepared gravel bases and then did brushed concrete everywhere else.

[Lucassb]

[QUOTE=ToTheNines;8450156]
Lay stall grids over nice base. Rake granite sand over that to get level surface. Then lay interlocking stall mats, the heavy ones from Tractor Supply.[/QUOTE]

This.

[gypsymare]

[QUOTE=Garythesquirrel;8449872]
I recently installed Stall Savers in one of my stalls and so far absolutely love it! I plan on doing the other stall this summer. It’s so easy to clean and the bedding is staying much drier. The shavings I put in over a month ago still look brand new![/QUOTE]
I used stall savers over crushed gravel as well and have been very happy so far. It has been less than a year and The horses aren’t in for very long so I can’t speak to longevity yet.

[Calvincrowe]

We have packed, leveled gravel bases with carefully installed 1" rubber mats in our stalls, bedded with pelleted wood bedding, fluffed. This has worked beautifully for 12 years. Do it right from the beginning and those stalls should be good for years. There’s no smell and those mats have shifted very little even with a big, active warmblood in one. I stall overnight, every night.

I’m not a fan of concrete for stalls, but if you aren’t using them regularly and plan to mat, then they’d be great. I love stall grid stalls, but my experience with them didn’t make me want to clean them regularly, as the tines of your fork gets stuck in the grids as you get down to them under the bedding. With mats over the grid? That would be overkill, but nice.

[Bluey]

Here, concrete is running $4 a square foot.

How much does digging, hauling gravel in and packing cost?

Someone tried that here years ago, did it as indicated, packing and all, said the cost at that time ended up more than concrete would have been.

One problem she also had, mice and rats and other assorted critters kept trying to dig under the mats and make tunnels and nests in there.
Now, that can happen under concrete also, but not as much and easier to prevent if it starts happening.

I still think concrete beats all other, with mats and proper bedding, at least until and when someone comes with definite studies of what is truly best.

If there is no harm with concrete floors, properly managed, of course, that I think could be, for most barns, the ideal flooring to manage.

Now, we just need to be sure it is also the best in general for horses, which we don’t know quite yet.
Anecdotes truly don’t count here, not mine that we didn’t have any problems, not that of some that say they did.

We need some firm, well thought out studies to make that determination.

[NoSuchPerson]

My dream barn has concrete flooring throughout. Then, interlocking rubber mats in stalls. Bedding on top goes without saying. And I’m old school, so I still prefer straw, but reality would dictate shavings instead, given where I live.

For me, the advantages of concrete outweigh the disadvantages. However, my equines would not, under normal circumstances, be spending extended periods of time inside the stalls. If they were, I would probably do a little more research on the comfort aspects before making a final decision.

[beau159]

Let me also add that if anyone has PICTURES they want to share, by all means! I’m a visual person, so visuals are good.

Has anyone seen a wood floor in a stall before? I was watching an episode of Property Brothers and they were redoing a barn. I noticed they put wood planks down in the stalls, but you could not quite see the finished product when it was done.

We’re going to be pouring a “base” for the barn, like you would for a house. Structurally, it makes sense for longetivity. So concrete will be poured no matter what; just depends on if it will be poured where the stalls go, or not. Logically, it makes sense that some sort of dirt or “natural” footing would be easier on the horses … unless you DO have the concrete heavily padded.

[QUOTE=ToTheNines;8450156]
Lay stall grids over nice base. Rake granite sand over that to get level surface. Then lay interlocking stall mats, the heavy ones from Tractor Supply.[/QUOTE]

Okay, dumb question. What are stall grids?

[Bluey]

When you build a house, at least here, they build a pad and compact and test it to code, generally to test to at least 95% compaction.
An independent company conducts several tests over the whole pad.
Mine tested 98%, which he said was very good.

Here those pads are built from clay soils, wetted and compacted layer by layer.
Clay is what we have here that works well for that, but there are other types of soils used in other places.

Then you can pour the concrete pad for the house on that “dirt” pad and there are also different types of those, most here “floating” concrete pads with footings.

For a barn, you can do something similar and leave parts of the pad open if you don’t want concrete for stalls, then add screenings and whatever you want on top of that for the stall spaces.

In Europe, some stalls had wood planks over the concrete.
The idea was so at no time horses were in contact with any wet stuff, it went thru the boards to the concrete.
The problem was, wood became very stinky and the urine below it really made the barn smell, even after we washed thru the boards regularly into the concrete channels in front of the stalls, that were draining outside.
We only had straw, don’t know how boards would work with shavings or pellets getting between them, if hold more smell yet, or keep from draining below them, or … ?

When you bed with straw, horses walk the pretty straw into little bitty pieces, that sift to the bottom and absorb urine and that is what you take out when you clean stalls.
Then you add fresh straw on top of the straw screenings that are still clean and dry.
So, while you are bedding with straw, it is two kinds you have there.
Straw is not near as absorbent as sawdust or pellets.

If you build a multi-purpose building and then add stalls in there and remodel as your needs later determine, then you really need the whole to be concrete.
If it is a single purpose horse barn, then you can pick and choose what you think will work for your needs, like leaving some areas dirt for stalls.

[NoSuchPerson]

[QUOTE=beau159;8451000]
Has anyone seen a wood floor in a stall before? I was watching an episode of Property Brothers and they were redoing a barn. I noticed they put wood planks down in the stalls, but you could not quite see the finished product when it was done.[/QUOTE]

I saw that, too. I said, “Wood floors? In the stalls? Really?”

Back in the Dark Ages when I was a kid, if you lived in a hilly area, it was not uncommon to build a barn into the side of a hill, making it a 2 story building. You entered the top floor from the uphill side and the bottom floor from the downhill side. The floor of the upper level of the barn was wood. But, I don’t remember having large animals housed up there, mostly just machinery, hay/bedding, tack room, and stuff like that.

However, that was many years ago and my memory is a bit foggy.

[Gloria]

If money were no objection, and if I were to redo my barn, I would have recessed concrete stall floor with gigantic rubber mats on top. The concrete should be recessed so once rubber mat is applied and bedding added, it will flush with concrete aisle. That way, the bedding wouldn’t get migrated to aisle. I didn’t do the recess because it added cost, but we have concrete stall floor and liner rubber mat on that, and I wouldn’t change that. I love my European style stall fronts so wouldn’t change that either.

[Guilherme]

Clear the site, level it, and ensure proper drainage.

Then when the barn is built the stall base is a concrete slab with a French Drain and proper drainage. Then lay 4-6" of crushed limestone on top of the slab. Then lay treated 2x6 boards over the limestone.* Secure on the ends with angle iron bolted into the walls.

When first installed these can have a slightly “smooth” finish. Over time it will roughen. Don’t put any injured horses on a new flooring like this.

For cleaning, follow the standard practice of picking out and putting used but clean bedding up to the sides. Dump water buckets onto the wood floor and then allow to dry before replacing the bedding. The water will seep through the cracks between the boards, washing away any urine or other substances that might cause odors. When the floor is dry re spread the bedding. The stall is now ready for re-use.

We put this flooring in our barn more than 20 years ago. I replaced it at 21 years. It would have lasted longer but I foolishly allowed a tenant to place rubber mats over the wood and moisture accumulated between the mats and the wood, accelerating the “rotting” process. If standard cleaning practices are followed there will be no noxious odors as a result of equine waste.

G.

*Note that these are butted, not tongue and groove.

[PlanB]

There are wood floors in a few barns around here.

i would still plan on putting mats on top.

Horses can dig and weave into wood just like gravel, but then you are looking at replacing the whole plank if you want to fix it. And if you don’t fix it, the holes get bigger and bigger, flaking off little chunks and splinters the whole time, not to mention bedding getting stuck in the hole. And not to mention your shavings fork catching the edge of the hole and sending everything flying (I HATE THAT!!).

Over all, not a bad flooring, but I would still choose concrete in the whole barn so you can move stalls where-ever and you can still use it as a functional building withtout the stalls in it.

And I wouldn’t put much money into it if the horses are just going to live out most of the time anyways. Put your money and effort into a nice turnout all weather paddock/footing/shelter if that’s where they are going to spend their time.

[PlanB]

Guilherme do you dump water even in freezing conditions or when the stalls won’t dry before the bedding goes down? I’ve never heard of a set-up like that.

Have you not run into problems with a horse that paws, digs or weaves?