round pen placement?

[wildwoman]

I am wanting to build a round pen but am having a hard time deciding where to place on the property. If anyone has time to help me eyeball this-I can PM you the address and Google has an aerial photo satellite view that can be zoomed in on pretty well. Need input and ideas!
Thanks
Lisa

[cutiepiepmu]

Hey Lisa - I am in the area if you want help next week I will have a little free time scattered throughout the week.

sara

[wildwoman]

Sara,
I will PM you the address so you can see on google earth-is nice to have a birds eye view to help decide layout.

[cutiepiepmu]

Well - looked at the whole picture and thsi is what I have to say It looks like you have some open areas that would work on both sides of the house. BUT - what I would do? Choose and area that is closest to your barn that the ground is mostly level, and sits a bit higher than the surrounding so that your round pen doesn't end up a swamp. Are you planning to dig out the area and put down a rock base then sand - or just put the round pen on dirt??? drainage makes a WORLD of difference!!!

Sara in WA

[wildwoman]

How about in the back corner on the left? We don't have one central barn as I am sure you can tell from the pic-there is the back middle (north side of property) with tack room and hay storage and on either side(east and west) of the barnyard- the stall units. (which need to be rebuilt ) There are so many projects around here it is overwhelming as to where to start.
Thanks for your input-how deep should the rock base and sand be?

[cutiepiepmu]

Is the area back there fairly flat? What kind of soil is it? How deep to excavate depends on the soil type and how hard it is packed. If you are building the round pen to be perminant, I suggest looking up a few plans on how to build an arena and use those. If the ground is fairly rocky and fairly hard packed, not loamy or sandy you won't have to take as much out. The big thing is to make sure that after you pull some of the area out, you level it really well an dhave a 2% grade so it will drain away from the center and not pool up with water. THEN, use a large rock - like a 1-2 inch crushed as your first layers. Generally 4-6 inches thick at minimum. On top of that, lay down another 3-4 inches of 5/8 minus crushed rock. Remember, every 1-2 inches you will want to compact the area. You can rent one of the walk behind compactors pretty cheap and they work great. Just use a hose and water down the area as you compact to get the hardest compaction. after that is compacted, use a geotextile fabric over the top and stretch tight, THEN, add your sand. OR - better choicei s granite dust. It packs for the first 1-2 inches but leaves a nice layer of cushion on top. i like it better than actual sand personally. but, if you can't find it - look for true beach sand that the little kernals are not perfectly round(like manufactured sand). It will lock the pieces together some and create a little more stable footing. You will only want this about 3 inches deep. Going deeper can result in pulling tendons and your horse getting hurt

hopefully that all made sence? That is the plans we are going by when we do my round pen. If the area is pretty wet or the soil is really loamy, you may need alot more base rock and end up building up the area for the round pen so it sits about 6-8 inches higher than the surrounding ground when finished so that the water runs around and away from the round pen. Doing that, you will also want to install french drains to keep the water away from it too.


Obviously you d'nt have to do all of that if you want to kind of wing it - but if you want something that will last a LONG LONG time without much maintenance other than watering and dragging occasionally that is the way to go Ohhh and Port Orchard Sand and Gravel is one of the cheaper in the area for rock

Sara

[icehorse]

Are you going to be using your round pen just for training? I placed mine inside a 2 acre pasture. That way it had many uses. It was under a big tree so it had shade, it was near water, so if I wanted to separate horses at feeding time I could do that. It came in handy when a new horse would come to the property(that didn't need qt, but needed to be separate). It also came in handy during breeding time, I could keep a mare in there, and my stallion outside(he wasn't the silly type that would try and breed through the fence or mess with fence). Also came in handy when trailering horses in or out, we could put the loose horse in the round pen, drive in and pick up or drop off horses. And of course, I also used it for training. I could train a horse while other horses were still in the pasture, or if the horse lived in that pasture, then this would be the training place so he wouldn't have to work in his home. Never had any drainage problems and this worked well for our 6 acres and our set up. It was great to have it in the pasture because we lived on a very very busy road, and taking them out of the pasture and into a round pen would have been dangerous with a young horse.

Just a different option.