Play sand ok?

[Jeffross1968]

Was thinking about adding some sand to my run. I see lots available, but 50lb bags of play sand go for only 2 bucks at lowes. Is this ok to use? Also, how well does it hold up to rain?

 

[Dar]

a few people use play sand..

i know my dd's sand box gets compacted when it gets wet

 

[squeakyballs]

I was just thinking about doing this... I think to have 3" of sand in a 7' x 7' run it worked out to 24 bags of sand. Friggen expensive!

Dar - where did you get the play sand? Ours came from Toys R Us and doesn't compact. My MIL bought sand from Home Depot and it clumps. There is a difference in color, too. Her's is brown (especially if it gets wet) and ours is almost completely white. I suspect that some contain more clay than others.

 

[ThinkingChickens]

I'm marking this and looking forward to answers. We are going to do sand in our 6'x10' run so I'd love to hear what the best kind is.

 

[Dar]

TT! :

I was just thinking about doing this... I think to have 3" of sand in a 7' x 7' run it worked out to 24 bags of sand. Friggen expensive!

Dar - where did you get the play sand? Ours came from Toys R Us and doesn't compact. My MIL bought sand from Home Depot and it clumps. There is a difference in color, too. Her's is brown (especially if it gets wet) and ours is almost completely white. I suspect that some contain more clay than others.

hmm never thought about different play sands...

I have bought it from Home Deopt... Canadian Tire (like a multi purpose hardware store) .. and TSC is where I buy my sand and mine is brown...​

 

[Fluffy2]

Hi! I am pretty much a newbie, but we converted old greenhouse to a coop and put in the sand floor. We used kids playsand as it is washed and clean of clay and those things you would not want in kids playbox. It never clumps.
We laid down landscape cloth, the gray weed control cloth, under the sand, and on top of the brick greehouse/coop floor. We figured this had plenty of drainage, breathing, whatever.
But, this coop is next to a retaining wall, and the last rain, the sand got wet from the base of the retaining wall ground water.
SOOO, I would recommend placing the heavy duty visqueen plastic under the sand if you are on bricks or close to earth. I guess if you are up on wood coop floor it is not an issue.
My coop is 10x10 and I think we ended up with 7 bags total at about 5 bucks a bag. not bad since it takes little care, and is very easy.
Oh, I don't have a run because i let them out into yard in morning and back in coop at night.
If I did have a run, I would have the same visqueen, keep it dry concern. wet sand is cold. 1/2 of the coop sand got wet a few weeks ago and is still wet.
and they tend to say away, off of the wet sand. i don't see any foot prints there, which makes me think they don't like it wet.
If we miss a few days of coop clean up and it smells, the smell is instantly gone once we have raked and cleaned it up. pretty nice. we are composting the poop and sand rakings. don't know how that will turn out.
good luck!

 

[gvilledh]

I'm in S.C. and found that we can buy sand at one of the landscape places for $30 a ton. That covers about 110 sq feet, 2 inches deep. I'm not sure what the delivery price is. We are debating on whether to go with delivery or the little bags.