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PREPARING YOUR STALL FLOORS
Stall floor preparation is one of the most important steps of the installation process. The sub-floor of your stall needs to be smooth, hard and level. Wood, concrete and asphalt all make excellent bases for rubber matting. However, most of our customers forgo the cost of these materials and choose to work from a natural base. Natural bases such as dirt, clay, or sand are not firm enough to provide the proper amount of support needed under stall matting. You must remember that your rubber stall floor will contour to whatever is under it. “Dirt floors” have a tendency to form “soft spots” and give way under stall mats. These “soft spots” will cause the stall floor to dip or buckle making it hard to clean, damaging the mats, and leading to unsafe conditions in the stall. To prevent this from happening we suggest that the “dirt floor’ be covered with 4 to 6 inches of a crushed stone base. This base material should be a ¼” down or 3/8” minus and have a good mixture of dust. It goes under a few different names such as stone dust, road base, screenings or ¼” minus. Stone dust can be found at any local quarry and is relatively inexpensive.
Pictured above is an uneven dirt sub-floor that we found in a customer’s stall. I am sure you can see why it would not be ideal to lay your new stall flooring over this rough natural base.
Here is an example of the type of damage that a horse can do to an improperly installed stable floor. This matting was laid over the uneven dirt base previously pictured.
In many cases it will be necessary to re-level the dirt floor before adding the stone dust to the stalls. This is done with a shovel, pick axe, garden rake, and a little bit of elbow grease.
