Woo Hoo! New paddocks and (hopefully) new arena!!!

[PotterWatch]

I am totally uneducated about this sort of thing. What the heck is hogs fuel?

 

[arabianequine]

I heard hog fuel was used as bedding. It is like wood chips. So why get it out of there?

 

[jettgirl24]

The paddocks look great!!! He pulled out the top gravel and the base looked great so we just had to put new gravel on top.

We decided to go ahead with the arena... He's working on it as we speak and it should be done this weekend! The guy is amazing, he was able to scrape off the hogs fuel without disturbing the fabric underneath so we'll still have the geotextile fabric to help with drainage. On top of that, the french drains that we put in when we originally built the arena are still intact and working perfectly so we don't have to re-do that either. He took some trees out along the edge to widen the arena to 70' on both ends (it was 60' at one end and 80' at the other before). Next he'll be bringing in base to level the area and we'll be ready for the sand top footing! YAY!

PotterWatch & arabianequine - Hogsfuel is sort of like beauty bark but with much larger pieces of wood. It's made of very large cedar chips like below:

I probably wouldn't use it for bedding - it would be a pain to clean and much more expensive than shavings. It's also better not to keep horses on cedar bedding IMO as many horses have allergic reactions and it can cause upset stomachs. It worked very well in the arena for several years after we built it 15 years ago but since it's an organic material it breaks down over time. At this point it has basically turned into dirt. On top of that my mom has been turning the horses out in the arena for the last few years that my parents have lived there so the footing got torn up really bad.

 

[animalpro24]

Sounds like it will be AWESOME!!!!!!

 

[jettgirl24]

Well, big update on the progress! Paddocks have been done for a month and we got to test out their mudless-ness with some early summer rains... Happy to report they were absolutely 100% mud free! YAYAYAYAY!

Here's a pic of the finished product... Please forgive me, I haven't cleaned yet today

Next up, the arena! Thanks to the bad weather this summer we experienced a delay for a couple of weeks. They started to deliver the base and the first truck got stuck in the mud so we waited for some dry weather before we tried again. Our guy did a fantastic job clearing out the old footing. Somehow he managed to scrape every last bit off without disturbing the geo-textile fabric and drainage underneath. Turns out the drainage is in perfect shape - we did a good job on that originally so no added cost there. He took out some trees for us so we now have a nice 70 x 120 rectangle. Not standard dressage ring size but for my retired guy and the kids it will be fine. We've had some serious truck traffic in and out with footing today and he's down there spreading and leveling it as we speak. Here's some pics of the progress there:

Old footing taken out and a closeup of the buried french drains:

New footing delivery

View from the barn:

Closer view - about half done with the base:

 

[welsummerchicks]

What a wonderful job! It looks beautiful!!!

I'm back to working on mine, too!

 

[jettgirl24]

Awesome! Is yours outdoor or covered? What kind of footing are you going with?