Building a schooling arena

Hello everyone

I am in the process of building a manege and am researching surfaces. We are on granite/shist and I read that it is not necessary to put in any drains or membranes, but best put in a little slope 1-2 percent - you wouldn't notice to ride on it, but it will help with drainage. As for the surface, tangue has been often mentioned as really good, but I think this comes from the bay of Mont St Michel, which is really too far for us. Another suggestion was:

Go to a wood yard, where they make items of fencing from hard pine and OAK. The chippings are brilliant, it was worked out for us that it would cost 3,000 euros to suitably cover a 40 X 75 arena. The chippings are quite large and will not break down as quickly as bark, it is said to take about 9 years. The cost is about 10 euros a cubic meter. It does naturally drain, it does not freeze, when it does start to break down it produces heat which further aids to non freezing, and it is cheap to top up again.

Now this sounds like a really good idea - cheap too! Has anyone got any experience of this type of surface? I have used a woodchip school before ages ago and find the chips can break down, but if it is hardwood this might work well. It's only for flatwork - not jumping.

Thanks!

We put in our own sand school a couple of years ago rona. We live on a hill so needed to put in a flat area, we paid to have a bulldozer to cut out a flat area and then left it to settle for 5 months [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] it drained beautifully a) because we'd cut into the land so it was mostly chips of stone and granite, b) because the guy put in a very small slope.

After the 5 months we bought some membrane, geotex, to stop our sand from disappearing into the ground, we're lucky enough to own a small digger, so cut a ditch around the edge of the area, we layed the membrane, leaving enough to drop into the ditch, then pulled the earth onto the edge to hold it down. Then we had a massive amount of bayeux sand delivered which we pulled down. Our area is probably 30x25 and cost us about 2,000 euro, including the boards, to keep the sand in place. For lungeing and the sort of basic school work we do, it's fine..... infact it's perfect

pen

Could you please let me know the contact info for the suppliers of the membrane, and bayeux sand?

We bought the membrane from a company in Derby they were very helpful, asking us how many hours per week we were going to use the school and how many horses, if we were jumping etc, they could tell us then which grade of geotex we needed it was very much cheaper to buy it in uk and have it carried than to buy it in france we bought the sand at the quarry in Tessy, I would think that most carriere's have it.
pen