Clanter, do you have a sand or dirt base, or do they require a sub-floor?
Used Techo-bloc concrete pavers in mine, tamped stone base, screed masonry sand, lay the pavers, tamp pavers, grout with polymeric sand(sweep it in the cracks, wet it down and it hardens). Not slippery when wet, easy to sweep or blow, looks great. have it in wash rack and in the hay storage, never had a moldy bale.
[QUOTE=Her then four inches loose coarse sand then the 2.5 inch pavers which are then compacted into place… photo is of the floor about twenty years ago, looks the same today
[IMG]http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b386/clanter/barnstallsHovenknamp.jpg)
barn is just 24 by 36 but has 100,000 pounds of material in the floor
In our school stables we had unglazed quarry tile floors throughout the stalls and aisles. No problems. They were only a few hundred years old !
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At one of my old yards, we had a gorgeous brick-paved centre courtyard. It was stunning, and gave the yard a very noble air. BUT having had a horse go down very hard after slipping on it, I would be very cautious and extremely picky about the type of brick that is laid. Those rubber bricks look fantastic!
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[QUOTE=FalseImpression;8171425]
I love what Mike Holmes did to this stable.
http://www.hgtv.ca/video/hoofed-roof/video.html?v=352053315804#holmesmakesitright/video/season2
Look around the 37 minute mark where he reveals the barn and the flooring![/QUOTE]
Mike Holmes in a stable?! Be still my heart!!! :love-struck:
:lol:
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Visited a barn once that had the base of the aisleways done in concrete. Down the middle was a strip of mats, and there was a row of bricks going down each side, probably a couple of feet wide. So you wound up with about at 14-16 foot aisleway, which is what we have at our barn, but it’s not quite a fancy. It looked very nice and gave you the advantage of rubber mats on the aisleway with the classy look of brick.
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[QUOTE=clanter;8172016]
we have had concrete pavers in our barn for twenty-five years, I should ask our horses why they don’t fall down as they haven’t yet
we used Pavestone interlocking pavers (factory 3rds due to off color, bought them for little to nothing, the haul charge was about equal to the cost) but since our horses only have dichromatic vision they never noticed the off color problem (nor has anyone else).[/QUOTE]
“I should ask our horses why they don’t fall down as they haven’t yet”
lol, I think they would answer. “for the same reasons you don’t fall down”.
We have asphalt in our barn isles. It can get slick at times but have yet to have a horse slip and fall down. But it is not the type of smooth surface found on roads.
It is called a “popcorn mix” and or a “cold mix”. It is made/mixed with a larger aggregate than would be used on most roads. It is not rolled “tight and smooth” so the surface is a bit rougher. But still very easy to sweep clean.
OP if you have the budget for brick pavers I would definitely go with the rubber version. I don’t think the cost would be much different. The “site prep” would be basically the same.
I know lots of barn owners that installed them years ago and love them. They have stood the test of time. But it is really important that the sub base is done correctly. A friend went with a “cut rate” installation and ended up with “cut rate” problems not long after.
A good friend of mine’s company makes them in Lancaster PA. When the “big horse wins” I definitely will have them installed.
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Do you know where you got the pavers from and the name/color/manufacturer? Thank you
Hello. Hey, this thread is almost ten years old. Go ahead and post a new thread to get updated info. Welcome.
What’s the problem in re-opening an older thread? There could be useful info there. And welcome Sarahfr.
In a former life, I was a landscape designer in Boston. For walkways, as an example, I often used pavers from this company:
https://www.morinbrick.com/products.
Scroll down to the pavers at the bottom of the page. These are suitable for outdoors as they are fired at a higher temp and do not absorb water. Ordinary bricks do and can split in freezing weather. I understand that bricks from an old chimney can be suitable and was told one indicator of the correct type is that if broken in half, there is a bit of a ring or oval of a slightly different color inside. True pavers would certainly be suitable for an aisle in a barn and their somewhat rough texture would give good traction.
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I have a brick walkway-- old bricks, set in sand. So freaking slick when wet!! Based on that, I’d not want them as an aisle way in a barn. They make great brick lookalike rubber pavers which are much safer and low maintenance for barn aisles. A quick Google search will bring up a few purveyors. They aren’t cheap, but sure are pretty!
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The link to the Holmes on Homes barn episode is not working for me.
I recall watching it many years ago, and would like to see it again. Anyone have a working link?
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Thanks for the link! So heartwarming! That kid Xavier seems like a good egg, and the site manager with the broken arm is kind of a meathead, but still pretty hot. I wish we could see Arnie’s reaction to the transformation.
My husband and I put brick pavers down in my aisle. We got all the appropriate base stuff and then did the pavers. They are thicker than most brick pavers. I put mats over them in the center of the aisle where the cross ties are. Haven’t had one problem with them and they look great.
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Because their weight makes them so prohibitively expensive to ship, bricks and pavers are usually a local product. You just need to find a local(ish) brickyard/mason supply company and go there. That’s what I did and was able to handle different products and get a sense of their surface.
Make sure you understand that bricks and pavers are different from each other! They are not only used and installed differently (bricks on a wall, pavers underfoot) they are manufactured differently. People with slick floors and walkways have typically used bricks instead of pavers.
Still love my “brick” aisle–they’ve held up great with a very non-slick finish.
The breezeway in our ancient barn has giant stones. Some of which are 5 or 6 feet across/long…most around 2 or 3 feet. No mortar or cement. Each stone is six to 10 inches deep so they don’t move at all. Dirt inbetween. 200 year old dirt, so pretty dense. I don’t work on keeping it ‘clean’, i just remove poop and any hay that gets dropped to the floor. It works for my purposes. Right now it’s full of sheep and hay because we shear in there because it’s nice and cool.
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We have a 24 by 36 barn that has a pavestone complete floor. The weight of the pavers was over 60,000 pounds, there is another 40,000 of road-base as a base with 20,000 pounds of bedding sand that the paver were set on, Then add the weight of the mats. So there is at least 120,000 pounds of materials in the floor.
The pavers we used are interlocking which allows them to be removed if desired
I have a friend that owns a barn that has what I am pretty sure is bricks laid in a herringbone pattern in the aisle. This barn was built maybe 40 years ago and was a really fancy barn for its day. Still is a really nice barn. The bricks are not as level as they once were and some of them are damaged a little but it is still a fancy hallway. I think they used “old brick”. I don’t recall it ever being slippery.
And another friend built her sister’s “price is no object” barn with rubber pavers. I really like them but ka-ching, I won’t be affording them now or in the future. Nonslippery, has a little give, just really nice for a hallway. The only downside was that a blower would not get them clean and they had to buy a special barn vacuum for the floor. I don’t know how they held up. The barn got sold and I hear it is a wedding venue these days with no horses on site.
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