What has/ has not worked under your stall mats?
I’m looking to put stall mats in my stalls but am undecided about what to put under the mats.
Google provides plenty of opinions but I was looking for some real people’s experiences.
We have mats in stalls we don’t use, but also in our sheds we use and there, horses are not standing on the mats all day, but eat and move on them on and off all day.
For our uses under the sheds, we packed the dirt right there down good, pure regular topsoil with some clay, added a very little sand, maybe 1/2" to help level and set the mats and placed them there.
That has lasted now 9 years and there are a few spots that feel uneven, but most are still like the day we put them in.
In a stall situation, where horses have to go to the bathroom there all day long, maybe would be best to have some inches of some kind of more porous material under them, like a small gravel base?
The base of my stalls(barn) is 6" or 7" of packed limestone screening. The mats are on top. If one area gets a little low I peel back the mat over the affected area and add a couple shovelfuls of limestone screening to even it back out.
Compacted dirt. Then 3" of compacted limestone.
I have my mats over concrete, with a drain in each stall.
At a previous barn I had them over bluestone.
I like the concrete MUCH better.
Ours are over packed bluestone
our mats are over pavestone pavers which are on sand base over bluestone… drain in center of first stalls we put in but after never using the drains we didn’t put drains in added stalls
Over packed rock. I believe it is 5/8" minus, so that would be angular (not round) gravel that is 5/8" or less with the fines as well. Makes a nice flat surface that would drain if necessary (but really, bedding soaks up anything before it ever gets a chance to dribble down). Never had an issue with critters tunneling as the rock is pretty sharp and packed well. Now, I do have a certain horse that likes to remove the mats and dig up the rock underneath, but he’s pretty darn unique. He mostly does this on his matted overhang where the mats are visible and not covered with bedding. He’s speshul!
Concrete.
5/8 minus gravel here too. It’s leveled and packed. It has held up to 4 years of use with just a few funny spots. When we get around to pulling and leveling again, I think I’ll use an actual compactor rather than just a tamper pole.
I have red clay dirt under my stall mats in my stalls. For big holes or to even it out, I put a bit of bagged sand, or fine gravel, then drag a 2x4x8 to level it. Toss the mat down and instant matted stall.
uneven dirt with 3-6" of crushed limestone screenings to even everything out. So far, so good.
Hard pack red clay
4" of Crushed Bluestone - compacted.
Stone as a base (don’t ask what, I have no idea, but I do know it was an angular stone, not round, and is probably ~1 inch in size)
On top of that, we have sand, nothing special sand, compacted in, and then stall mats on top. Been that way for three years now, with no need to fix up yet. Everything is still even and where we put it. My horses are not on them very often either; 24/7 turnout, maybe in for the night 15 nights in a 365 day period.
I have evenly tamped bluestone under my mats. Stalls are level and mats stay in place.
I’ve quit with stall mats. Had them in the last two barns built in past decades, with crushed gravel/limestone under them. But got tired of having them come up on the edges. They always do, eventually.
NOW, gone back to using rough cut planks for stall flooring. Very happy with these. Braced with 4X4s underneath, and supported between those with gravel, so the planks are not suspended. Also, half the cost for me than mats.
3-4 feet of packed process.
Yeah it sounds like overkill, but my barn is on a 4’ frost wall foundation so after the foundation was set I had the interior of the foundation filled with it instead of using any of the dirt that came out of the hole. Then since the barn wasn’t on the foundation yet, a dozer was able to drive over it half the day and pack it hard. It’s pretty solid, almost 10 years now and it’s still even and hard. No waves.
Nice bonus is that I can clean the mats on the surface by spraying them with the hose or dumping buckets of water on them and the water runs between the mat seams and drains away in short time. It’s like having a 24 x 40 foot dry well.
The only other thing under my floor mats: a few different piles of assorted nuts and seeds under 1 aisle mat.
And a chipmunk.
Apparently that floor also makes an excellent winter pantry for a certain chipmunk. The chippie lives in the side of the bank behind the barn, but for some reason likes to store stuff in my barn. S/he is cute, so I don’t have any problems with that. 
I do like the packed stonedust, I think flooring under mats can be difference depending on location and the base under it too. Mine is so deep that it sits on subsoil under the frost line in my area of the country. So I don’t have issues with heave due to it sitting on ground that doesn’t freeze and the bounded on the sides by solid foundation that doesn’t shift or heave. Also my foundation sits up 4-6" above the natural ground line and the entire area around the barn has curtain drains and is graded for drainage. (barn sits in a low area) So I have zero issues with flooding no matter what’s going on with the weather. That also helps keep it exactly like it was the day it was finished. I was lucky that way.
[QUOTE=MistyBlue;7236746]
3-4 feet of packed process.
Yeah it sounds like overkill, but my barn is on a 4’ frost wall foundation so after the foundation was set I had the interior of the foundation filled with it instead of using any of the dirt that came out of the hole. Then since the barn wasn’t on the foundation yet, a dozer was able to drive over it half the day and pack it hard. It’s pretty solid, almost 10 years now and it’s still even and hard. No waves.
Nice bonus is that I can clean the mats on the surface by spraying them with the hose or dumping buckets of water on them and the water runs between the mat seams and drains away in short time. It’s like having a 24 x 40 foot dry well.
The only other thing under my floor mats: a few different piles of assorted nuts and seeds under 1 aisle mat.
And a chipmunk.
Apparently that floor also makes an excellent winter pantry for a certain chipmunk. The chippie lives in the side of the bank behind the barn, but for some reason likes to store stuff in my barn. S/he is cute, so I don’t have any problems with that.
I do like the packed stonedust, I think flooring under mats can be difference depending on location and the base under it too. Mine is so deep that it sits on subsoil under the frost line in my area of the country. So I don’t have issues with heave due to it sitting on ground that doesn’t freeze and the bounded on the sides by solid foundation that doesn’t shift or heave. Also my foundation sits up 4-6" above the natural ground line and the entire area around the barn has curtain drains and is graded for drainage. (barn sits in a low area) So I have zero issues with flooding no matter what’s going on with the weather. That also helps keep it exactly like it was the day it was finished. I was lucky that way.[/QUOTE]
Hmmm, here, our foundation is supported by being below the ground.
I don’t think the engineers that made our barn plans would be happy if we made a dry well out of the inside of the barn, not without reinforcing everything, foundation, pylons for the columns, that are 6’ x 2’ and the structure itself for then very different wind loads.
Then, we live in part of a wind farm, that makes our engineering, well, interesting.
[QUOTE=MistyBlue;7236746]
3-4 feet of packed process.
Yeah it sounds like overkill, but my barn is on a 4’ frost wall foundation so after the foundation was set I had the interior of the foundation filled with it instead of using any of the dirt that came out of the hole. Then since the barn wasn’t on the foundation yet, a dozer was able to drive over it half the day and pack it hard. It’s pretty solid, almost 10 years now and it’s still even and hard. No waves.
Nice bonus is that I can clean the mats on the surface by spraying them with the hose or dumping buckets of water on them and the water runs between the mat seams and drains away in short time. It’s like having a 24 x 40 foot dry well.
The only other thing under my floor mats: a few different piles of assorted nuts and seeds under 1 aisle mat.
And a chipmunk.
Apparently that floor also makes an excellent winter pantry for a certain chipmunk. The chippie lives in the side of the bank behind the barn, but for some reason likes to store stuff in my barn. S/he is cute, so I don’t have any problems with that.
I do like the packed stonedust, I think flooring under mats can be difference depending on location and the base under it too. Mine is so deep that it sits on subsoil under the frost line in my area of the country. So I don’t have issues with heave due to it sitting on ground that doesn’t freeze and the bounded on the sides by solid foundation that doesn’t shift or heave. Also my foundation sits up 4-6" above the natural ground line and the entire area around the barn has curtain drains and is graded for drainage. (barn sits in a low area) So I have zero issues with flooding no matter what’s going on with the weather. That also helps keep it exactly like it was the day it was finished. I was lucky that way.[/QUOTE]
Hmmm, here, our foundation is supported by being below the ground.
I don’t think the engineers that made our barn plans would be happy if we made a dry well out of the inside of the barn, not without reinforcing everything, foundation, pylons for the columns and the structure itself for then very different wind loads.
Then, we live in part of a wind farm, that makes our engineering, well, interesting.
Ours use dirt,limestone, mats, then sawdust.
