Mirrors for an Outdoor Riding Arena

I didn't initially put mirrors into my farm budget. I had boarded for several years at a place that didn't have them, and they seemed like a luxury, especially for an outdoor where weather damage could easily happen. However, I did end up getting them installed and couldn't be happier. I immediately felt like my position improved and I was able to see the ways in which my horse was crooked, etc.

I wanted real glass mirrors rather than the acrylic type, because I've seen acrylics with such bad distortion that you don't even know what you're looking at. I got a quote from an equestrian mirror specialty vendor online that was, no joke, $30,000 for a 66' wall of 4' high mirrors!!!! And that didn't even include the frame. Obviously that was out.

I also considered using mirrored closet doors and building frames for them to slide into, after reading that idea online. It was intriguing but I was worried about how the MDF etc around the mirrors would hold up outside, because it's really not meant to get wet. Also, unless you luck into them on Craigslist or something, they aren't cheap, and I wanted a whole set of matching ones.

What I finally did was contact a local general glass and mirror company that was well-reviewed on Angie's List. The price they gave me was only twice that of the closet mirror idea, which was great. They had done one or two previous arena mirror projects before so they weren't specialists but had some idea what they were doing.

I'm not handy enough to build the massive frames myself, so I asked the Amish guy who installed all my fences if he'd be up for it. He is reasonably priced and super easy to work with, and it is basically just carpentry work plus post driving, which fence installers are really good at already!

The mirror company provided the fence builder with a working design, and when it was in place they came to install the mirrors.

After doing some research I chose to leave the mirrors free-floating in the mounts rather than gluing them to the plywood. I was concerned about the plywood swelling and bending with changing moisture levels, and causing distortion in the mirrors if they were glued to it. If you don't glue the mirrors do make sure you get ones with safety backing.

Substantial post-installation tweaking was required to make the mirrors fully functional, and even now they're not perfect. The trouble with using wood posts is that they are not 100% straight and will bend and flex over time. It's also difficult to drive posts into the ground with minute precision. Since the mirrors are so large, small amounts of deviation in the angles can make a big difference.

• Vertical angles: The mirrors are set 4' off ground level. I read and was told that at that height they would not need to be angled, but upon installation I saw that they did need to be tilted back/up to be visible from farther away. The fence builder routed out the front edge of the frames to allow the bottom edge of the mirrors to slide forward.
• Horizontal angles: Due to some variation in the posts and frames, the mirrors didn't end up exactly perpendicular to the long side of the arena. On one side you could see far beyond the edge of the arena and on the other side you could be on the track and not see yourself. The fence builder adjusted the frames again and also put sealant in one corner to hold the mirror at a different angle. It's not 100% perfect but much better now.

The mirrors have been up for over 3 months now and look just as good as the day they were installed. Hopefully that continues. Some people will tell you you can't put mirrors outside, but my trainer has had them for 20+ years and only one has had to be replaced.

Update 4/26/15 - Here are a few pretty spring pictures of the end result:

Building an Arena with Limited Space

The last major project for us was building the outdoor riding arena. At first glance my space is not that limited because I have 9 acres, but it's a weird sprawling layout with several existing buildings and hills and multiple driveways, so there were really only three options for the arena. Two of them would require me to give up current or future pasture space and move or replace my run-in shed. Here are the three options, more or less to scale:

After a lot of thinking I decided that I really did not want to do #1 or #2 because I only have 4 acres of pasture right now and site #2 could be fenced in the future, plus #2 could only be about 175' long. I also wasn't crazy about having the ring basically adjoin the pasture because riding the older horse would probably send the younger horse into a tizzy. Far better to have some distance from the pasture and be closer to the barn! So I ended up picking site #3.

Site #3 was where the old cinderblock stallion barn was. It would have cost more to remodel it into something safe and useable than it did to have the Amish build a totally new, airier barn, so we demolished it to build the ring. Here's the barn being torn down (under the close supervision of a curious coonhound!):

You can sort of see in that photo that on the far side of the barn the land drops off towards the trees. (I wish I had taken some better "before" pictures.) The elevation difference between the far end and the near end was at least 10 feet (??), which is pretty substantial.

My amazing contractor, who is a horseman and engineer with tons of ring-building experience, took a long look at the site before we went ahead with it. Between the existing fence, the line to the sewer drain field, the property line, and the large grade we were cutting it really close. He needed to do everything very precisely to be able to fit in my standard dressage arena (66'x198') plus the swales needed for drainage. Thankfully he's really good at what he does. Here are some pics of the work in progress:

Below are some after pictures. I love it!!!!! The 3-board fence at the far end was definitely necessary with the huge drop-off (see below). I rode without it for a couple months and trying to really ride those far corners properly was a little unnerving, especially since my horse is so spooky. Now I feel quite secure.

Here are some photos that illustrate how much cutting and filling had to be done to make this site level (and why riding at the far end without a fence was a little unnerving!).

By the way, the cutting and filling did not cost me extra except for some topsoil and water that was trucked in (because we hit a dry spell during construction). As my contractor explained it, he has to strip the topsoil and move the dirt around no matter what to level and compact it, so the cutting and filling isn't that much more work.

Managing Water in the Winter

I'm in the mid-Atlantic region so our winters aren't as bad as further north, but this has been a cold one for us and cold weather does sometimes present challenges, especially if you're caught unprepared. The focus of this post is water!

Keeping your horses drinking in the winter is huge. Hot water in the barn helps a lot! I have a 10 gallon water heater that fits under the sink and produces enough warm water to give three horses at least one warm bucket. (I originally wanted a tankless heater but the plumber said it probably wouldn't produce enough hot water to meet my needs.  When it's below 30 degrees, I fill one bucket with warm water when I bring them in from the field between 4 and 5 pm and a second bucket when I do night check around 9 or 10 pm. That encourages drinking at two different times and keeps the buckets from freezing longer at night. (Bucket cozies are also helpful.)

As for outside, if you can have an electrical outlet near your water source that will save you lots of time and effort. If you're installing new water lines, ask the plumbers to drop some appropriate electrical wire in there, even if you're not sure you'll install an outlet right away. It's always better to have it for later! I did that then bought this outlet intended for landscape lighting from Amazon and wired it. It's been extremely useful since the temperatures dropped. I put the 5 gallon buckets away and set a 16 gallon heated water tub on the ground, so even the donkey has access to water that's kept above freezing. They especially need extra water outside when they're eating mostly hay. I was worried the yearling would step in the tub or try to play with it and yank the cord out, but so far so good. It's a lifesaver! Another alternative is an automatic waterer designed for cold-weather use, but I don't have any personal experience with those yet.

Remember to remove your hoses when they're not in use. I have a very short one (5-6') at the pasture hydrant and I just detach that and set it on the ground, pointing downhill. Even if it feels stiff or crunchy in the morning, it's functional right away because it's short enough to drain completely. In the barn, I have a longer hose that I keep coiled in a large but lightweight Rubbermaid container that used to be my traveling tack box until the lid was chewed by someone else's dog. When I'm not using the hose, I store it in the tack room in the container. The container keeps the water that drains from the hose off the tack room floor, and it's easier to drag in and out than a loose hose. I've seen other barns put hoses in the sink during the day but I wanted mine out of the way.

Relatedly, have a plan in place to keep your pipes from freezing in very cold weather. Insulate your tack room walls and floor if possible. If you do that, pay a little more for higher-quality windows intended for use in insulated rooms. My tack room has insulated walls and an upgraded window, and I have not had to use a heater yet to keep the room above freezing (the possible fire hazard makes me nervous). Tonight will be in the single digits so I will stick a shielded light bulb under the sink where all the pipes are and maybe leave the sink dripping too.

Outdoor Wash Rack Design

If you're trying to make the most of a small amount of space, you may not be able to do an indoor wash stall. For me, that's not so important anyway because I rarely bathe in the winter so the most I need is a place to hose off muddy legs. I decided to convert part of the old house foundation adjacent to the barn into a wash rack by adding a fence and posts for tie rings. Here are some design tips:

• You can make do with a small space! My wash rack is 12' deep but only 8' wide. My long-bodied 17 hh warmblood can walk in and turn around. I always turn him clockwise so that his head can swing over the fence rather than towards the barn, and he has no trouble maneuvering. If you are trying to fit a wash rack between two solid walls, however, you will probably need a minimum width of 10'.
• Consider leaving gaps in the fence big enough for a person but not a horse to fit through. I did not like the idea of being trapped between a panicked horse and a solid barn wall, or even a low fence, so I left 18" gaps in either back corner. This is narrow enough that even a yearling will probably not try to squeeze through, but I can escape if needed.
• A lower fence is easier to reach over if for some reason (like not wanting to get squished) you need to work on the horse from the outside. Mine is only 3'6".
• Make sure your base, whether concrete or rubber or stonedust, is sloped for drainage. Mine slopes towards the front but if you have a choice it's probably nicer to have the water and debris running away from you and out of sight. Depending on your setup, you may want to put in a floor drain. For my small operation, that was not necessary and anyway the existing concrete slab is very, very thick.
• Speaking of base, wet concrete can be very slippery unless it's the right texture. If you're pouring it fresh, get a broom finish. If not, spray it down and walk around on shoes with poor traction to see what you're getting into before putting a horse on it. A relatively inexpensive solution for increasing traction is rubber ring mats, but they do tend to trap mud and manure. If you get solid mats, make sure that they are textured and intended for wet use, because some of them can get slippery!
• The fence of an outdoor wash rack can double as a drying rack for sweaty or washed saddle pads, towels, etc. Since I'm the only one riding there, I don't have to worry about someone coming along and spraying off the things I am trying to dry. On sunny days I even clip my synthetic girth to the tie post so that it dries out completely. Using an outdoor space prevents your dirty laundry from stinking up the tack room.

Some improvements I am considering in the future are:

• An over-the-fence basket for storing shampoos and tools.
• A sprayer boom or dedicated wash rack hose (right now my general barn hose does double duty).
• A shade cloth or awning.
• Rubber mats or other footing upgrade.

One thing I would like to have done differently is putting the posts for the cross-ties further back. As it is, a cross-tied horse can easily step forward off the concrete.

Small Barn Layout and Design

There is lots of information out there on barn layouts. Cherry Hill books, for example, often have detailed diagrams of many different floorplans. However, the two main variations seem to be the center-aisle or the shedrow. I considered both of these but the center-aisle was more barn than I needed and a traditional shedrow was too open to the elements, even with a large front overhang. I also considered less traditional prefab layouts with a small aisle/work area in the middle of the stalls and other rooms (like this). After months of thinking, planning, and changing my mind, I settled on a shedrow with an enclosed overhang, which is also two-thirds of a center-aisle barn. Here's the floorplan:

I really like this design because you get the functionality of a center-aisle barn without the bulk and expense. Also, all of your stalls can face whatever direction is best in your area. In my climate I worry much more about the heat than the cold (especially since one of my horses has anhydrosis and isn't getting any younger), so all of my stalls face east to keep the horses from baking in the afternoon sun. In the summer the windows and aisle doors let a good breeze through, and combined with the shade and the ridge vent they have kept the barn 10-15 degrees cooler than outside so far. We will see how it all works in the winter, but again, I am much less concerned about cold horses here than hot horses, and I can always add another layer of clothes myself!

Here's what it looks like on the inside:

And the outside:

Here are a few tips:

• If you will consistently be approaching the barn from one direction more than the other, put the tack/feed room there. That will often be your first stop when you start your chores. With only a few horses, you can probably have one room for tack and feed together, as long as you keep it clean so the rodents don't move in (though of course that goes without saying anyway).
• Consider having one more stall than you think you need to store tools and a couple days' worth of hay and bedding, so you can keep the aisle clear. Try not to fill that extra stall with one extra horse!
• Another option for an extra stall is a wash stall. I don't bathe my horses in the winter so I decided to stick with an outdoor wash rack, but I did add a drain at the far end of the aisle with a slight slope to the concrete there in case I need it in a pinch.
• To save some space and expense, try a 10' aisle instead of 12'. 8' is cramped but 10' allows a truck or tractor through and gives you room to walk horses past each other if needed. It's also small enough that a horse is less likely to turn around in the crossties. To get a feel for how much space you need, measure your current aisle or a friend's, then use chalk or a broom handle or longe whips to visualize it at different widths. Try working with a horse or doing chores using only that width you marked off to see how it will work for you. Don't forget that a "10' aisle" is often measured from the outside of the outside wall, so the true interior width may end up around 9'6" (the same for your 12'x12' stalls, which are actually typically 11'6"x11'6").

Stay tuned for posts on how to finish the barn with plumbing and electric.

Mounting Saddle Racks on Walls Without Studs

When we started trying to mount saddle racks on the tack room walls, at first we thought the stud finder wasn't working through the pine paneling. Eventually we figured out that the tack room walls were framed with horizontal beams only, no vertical studs! I can't imagine why anyone would build a tack room that way knowing that people like to put racks and shelves on the walls, but we had to deal with it somehow. This is what DH did to solve the problem, and it turned out quite nicely! It seems sturdy enough for English saddles though if I ever own a Western saddle again I will probably put it on a standalone rack just to be safe. I would hate to rip all that pretty pine paneling after I spent so long staining it.

1. Buy quality 1" thick wooden boards to match your walls. We used 1x3 pine boards because each of the pine panel boards were about the same width (2.5" or so). Check them for straightness before you buy them. (We didn't do this so ours are a little off but I don't think anyone would ever notice but me.)
2. Finish the boards with the same stain or paint as your walls.
3. Find the horizontal beams in your walls with a stud finder, and confirm their location by tapping in a very thin nail. When you meet more resistance on the other side of the panels, you have probably found a beam. Don't assume that the beams are level or continuous--check independently everywhere you want to put racks. Mark their location with a pencil or painters' tape once you find them.
4. Take your first board and line it up over the panel board where you want your first column of saddle racks to go. Trim the ends as needed (since the ceiling is sloped, we needed to cut the top at an angle to meet the molding).
5. Drill pilot holes and, using long, strong wood screws, attach the boards to the beams that you found, lining up the board and panel board edges as best you can. It may take one person to hold the board in place and another to drill and screw.
6. If you want more than one column of racks, repeat with the second board. If you have a sloped ceiling, start with the board where the ceiling is higher then trim the second board to match the length of the first board, using a level. I find a miter saw easiest for straight cuts. See the first picture below for what your project should look like now.
7. Once your boards are in place, secure the two vertical holes of your saddle racks. Be sure to use good screws or bolts for this too.
8. To support the sides of the saddle rack, cut a similarly stained and sized board to fit the "wings" on either side (two for each rack). If desired, stain the newly cut edges. Then position the small pieces under the wings of the rack and screw the sides of the rack down.

Steps 1-6:

 Steps 7-8:

Voila! As you can see, the new boards are hardly noticeable and will be even less so once there are saddles on the racks.

Installing Stall Mats

I bought Tru Lok interlocking rubber stall mats at the nearest warehouse. Since I already owned the mats and a big pile of stonedust, I thought it would be a satisfying do-it-ourselves job--especially since I was quoted $650 to install them in just three stalls. Surely we could do it for less time and money than that, right? Here is the tally:

• Rental of the first compactor: $40 for one day. It lasted less than an hour before a belt started to disintegrate. We were refunded 2/3rds of the rental cost after being insulted by the rental company.
• Rental of the second compactor: $55 for one day, though we never paid this because it stalled out every few min. Thankfully this rental company was more responsive and drove the third one out to replace it.
• Rental of the third compactor: $40 for 4 hours.
• Rental of the hand tamper: $7-10 per day, twice (because the disintegration of the first compactor set us back by a whole day).
• Hired labor to help DH because stall mats are really freakin heavy and I have a bad back: $15 per hour for about 7 hours.
• Wooden 1x3s to be used as thresholds: $7 apiece at Lowes.
• Hours of my life I will never get back: about 12, over three days.
• Thanks I owe DH: infinite.

Jokes aside, it wasn't the worst experience ever, especially since I was excused from the heavy lifting. I would totally conscript DH to do it again!

I found these to be the most comprehensive and helpful instructions for first-timers, with lots of pretty pictures. A few supplementary tips:

• Interlocking mats are cool because as you hammer them together they straighten and flatten each other out. I would definitely pay the difference for them again, although I guess I should really wait and see how they wear.
• Vibratory plate compactors are really really heavy, so two strong people are needed to avoid injury.
• One thing they don't tell you is how long you might expect to tamp the base (other than, "until it's so hard you don't leave footprints"). We attacked the first stall for almost two hours with the plate compactor, but the second and third stalls only took about half an hour each. Part of that was a learning curve but part of it may have been too much water in the first stall. We were told the more water the better so we soaked the first stall, but we had much better results spraying the other two stalls just enough to dampen the entire surface.
• If you get what look like bubbles while tamping with a plate compactor (the plate will look like it's sucking up the top layer of the stonedust), try using the point of a shovel to break the surface a couple times and mix in a small amount of dry stonedust before passing over the spot with the tamper again. This may be an indication that you used too much water, like we did.
• If the compactor starts leaving drag marks on the ground, tilt it up and have a buddy check underneath and wipe off stonedust that has built up there.
• The longer the handle on the hand tamper, the easier on your body. You will definitely need a hand tamper for the corners because the plate compactor really only likes to go forward so you can't pull into a corner and back out. 
• If you have a prefab barn with hurricane brackets, there may be bolts sticking up from the floor in the corners of some of your stalls. DH figured out how to lay the mat over the bolts, beat them with a hammer until the exact location of the bolts was imprinted on the mats, then use a hole saw to make spaces for the bolts to stick through. Otherwise your mats will curve up in the corners, which is okay in the back but not if you have one right near the stall door like I do. The top of the bolts still sit below the plane of the mats so the horse can't step directly on them.
• To anchor wooden thresholds on concrete while still preserving the possibility of removing them one day (i.e., not using construction adhesive), use an appropriate drill and screws made for concrete. I would have preferred to have the top of the mats level with the concrete of the aisle, but it wasn't possible with the concrete footers and hurricane brackets. The threshold prevents the horse from lifting up the edge of the mat when pawing.

Here is the finished product, somewhat out of focus (oops), before the threshold:

  

And after the threshold has been added:

 

Not a bad day's work!

Space-Conscious Trailer Parking

Ideally, I would have liked to put a circular driveway around the barn. However, it was very expensive and also messed with the drainage and the beauty of the setting (well, it wasn't very beautiful at the end of construction but hopefully it will be again one day). There wasn't space to put a circular driveway in front of or behind the barn either.

Instead, the contractor recommended widening the end of the driveway into a triangle that would allow enough space to turn the trailer around in. He measured it out knowing the approximate length of my trailer, and somehow when I first saw it I thought it was plausible that I could just make a tight turn and end up facing the other way. Not even close. Turning the trailer around for the first time required a series of maneuvers that ultimately ended in a successful 18-point turn. Now that I'm used to it, it only requires a 3-point turn, sometimes 5.

These are the only circumstances under which I would recommend what I have:

• Your barn is small and mostly private.
• You have a 2-horse bumper pull trailer (dressing room is okay).
• You trust in the competence of anyone driving a trailer into your barn area, including yourself.
• You don't need to receive deliveries on massive trucks (my hay fortunately will come on a pickup with a 9' flatbed).
• You can allow enough room for the farrier to set up his rig.
• You can coordinate all of the in and out activities so that two trailers or large trucks are never there at the same time.
• Worst-case scenario, a skilled driver could back all the way out of the driveway safely.

If at all possible, a circular driveway around or in front of your barn is by far the most convenient.

That said, it is an efficient little setup!

The Big Arrival

Yesterday was the big day: Mr. F moved into his new home! A few of my favorite pictures.

So, I am obviously not very good at this blogging stuff. A blog like this should probably start with the planning phases, then go through construction, and then work up to a post about the big day when the horses finally move in. But whenever a topic occurred to me I didn't think I could really say anything useful without seeing how my planning panned out during everyday barn life. Now that I am actually using the barn and learning what works and what doesn't, I will try to be more prolific. One upcoming topic: the one-horse barn.

The Importance of Being Specific

The building process involved many different contractors of varying degrees of professionalism. Through that process, I discovered that even when I did not realize it, I had some very specific expectations about how things would turn out. Unfortunately, I really only realized this when something turned out differently than I wanted or expected. Many of these things were not something I would think to specify, because I couldn't imagine it being done differently. For example...

Example 1. The tack room, which is finished with pine board paneling that is pretty but not strong enough to screw almost anything into, was framed out with no vertical studs. That's right, the builder designed a room that is specifically intended for storage, and failed to provide any way to hang anything on the walls. Like shelves and saddle racks. The process of hanging those up without studs will be a whole separate blog post. Apparently I should have specified that I wanted to be able to hang things on the walls in my tack room?

Example 2. These were the switches for my main aisle lights, stall lights, and the outdoor flood light:

This layout is seriously awful. You have to lift the plastic cover to do anything, which requires carefully depressing a small latch underneath it. Also, the layout of the switches is ridiculous, with one vertical (the aisle) and two horizontal (the stalls and flood light). A layout like that might be useful if you did not expect to use two of the switches often, but grouping the stall lights (which I will use very often) and the flood light switch (which will virtually never be used except when bulbs need to be changed, because it's motion-sensor) made zero sense to me.

The most frustrating part about this one is that I actually specifically talked to the electrician about what I wanted. I had this brilliant idea about putting the flood light switch separately, above eye level, since it will be used so rarely. That would eliminate the annoyance of it being accidentally turned off or of having a switch that did nothing that was readily apparent. He seemed to understand what I was saying but the result was not at all what I requested.

DH will be rewiring it with this (an outrageous $40 from Amazon, plus a new box):

It's not exactly what I intended because all three switches are together, but at least I don't have to flip an awful plastic cover to turn my lights on every day.

The cause of this extra work and expense was my assumption that every barn electrician would use the same gray weatherproof switches I have seen in every barn ever. I should have been more specific.

Example 3. The plumbers ran a water line to a hydrant next to the pasture, so I don't have to deal with super long hoses. Yay! Naturally, they installed a shut-off valve which I anticipate using regularly during the winter to prevent freezing. Unnaturally, they buried the shut-off valve more than an arm's length underground and made it virtually impossible to use. When we actually needed to use it and realized how inaccessible it was (and that they had inadvertently glued the access cap shut), they had to come back and redo the whole thing. One of them then told us that a standard access box hadn't been included in the quote. Who would contract someone to put in a water line with a shut-off valve and not implicitly want the shut-off valve to be accessible? If the contract doesn't include that, shouldn't it say that instead of leaving it to the inexperienced customer to decipher that no provisions are being made for access?

Lesson learned: When hiring contractors, spell out everything that you know you want. Then think about all of the assumptions you've made about how things will be done, and spell that out too. Then resign yourself to fixing the things based on assumptions you didn't even think about. Don't be the laid-back, easy-going customer who ends up with nothing as you need, want, or expected it.