Hey Mike,
Looks like you have got a great idea, let me offer some input for you to think about. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
We just went through this with stalls. Our barn sits on C L A Y and more C L A Y. The stalls slope into a french drain, maybe a 5 gallon hole in the clay at the most. It is filled with stone and on top of this is about 6 inches of stone dust.
On top of the stone dust are stall matts. WoodyPet, a brandname wood shaving mixture is on top of that.
The stalls are BONE dry, don't smell and let me tell you with this rain, the horse was in her stall the last two weeks.
On the outside, I ran drain tile, about 300' feet, connecting to the downspouts. I also ran drain tile in the "pen" paddock area. I put this down TOO FAR, for the clay. I rented a ditch witch and took it down 3-4 feet. On top of this a placed blue stone #5 (good for driveways). I leveled it back off with the
B7800 using the churned up clay mixture.
The horse has compacted the clay on top of the drain tile so much it does NOT drain. This w/e I will return to the paddock area and take out (about 1-2 feet) of clay and just use stone dust. That is if it dries out.
Anyway, your milage may vary.
-Mike Z. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif