Equestrian Fibre Installation Guide

12/07/2019

In this how to guide we will provide the benefits and how to knowledge on the installation of manège fibre into your existing Equine surface.

Firstly, why install our Horse Arena fibre additive?

• Give your equestrian surface a new lease of life and prolong its lifespan for another 10 years.
• Provide the sand with a root structure, this stabilises the surface to prevent the surface from riding deep and being unstable.
• The fibres free up pore spaces within the sand allowing water to pass through far more easily which helps prevent puddling.
• The fibres hold a relatively large amount of moisture which helps reduce summer drying.

In addition it will transform sand and rubber chip surfaces, during the installation process it drags the rubber down through with it and holds it there.

No more unstable rubber banking in the corners and no more black legs from degraded rubber chip.

It helps the rubber work where it does best which is buried within the sand giving a good flex to the surface.

Step 1 

Levelling your existing surface 

The first step is to re-grade the surface that you already have, work your way around your arena kickboard and dig-out out any surface that has banked into the corners and around the outer track, throw this surface back into the Arena.

Next you will need your box leveller and preferably a laser level. Now we are looking to drag the existing surface out from the corners and into any low areas to get a nice even depth throughout, take your surface dipper or similar and note pad and every 5m metres take a depth reading from your surface and plot it on your plan, this is to make sure that you have correctly graded it and you haven’t still got any low areas. If you have get your box grader and spend a bit more time re-grading it.

You are looking for between a 4″ to 6″depth 

Step 2 

Spreading your fibre

Now take your fibre bales and place them at equal distances apart throughout your Arena and split down the bales. The amount of bales you will need depends on varying factors           

• Age of surface
• Quality of sand 
• What if any additive you have in place already
• How firm you want your surface to be, we can fine tune this depending on your discipline
• If it’s a top up or for a new surface

As a rule we generally aim for between 12 – 18 bales for a 20m x 40m all depending on the above information.

Our fibre is delivered in large dumpy bags for ease of transport and manoeuvrability.

Now take you rake and harrow and evenly spread your Pro-Ex fibre throughout your Arena making sure to get it into the corners and right up to but not touching the kickboards. It is very important that you achieve a consistent fibre depth of around 2″, make sure that you haven’t got any thin areas.

Step 3 

Installing the fibre

 This is the part of the process where the most care must be taken, set the depth gauge on your stone burier/rotovator at 3.5″.

Now you are ready to begin burying the fibre, take great care, keep the machine at low revs and most importantly take your time.

You have to be very careful not to snag your membrane.

Work the machine up and down your arena making sure to get right into the sides and corners.

Step 4

Compacting and levelling 

Now you can begin re-levelling your freshly mixed surface.

Set your harrow at a shallow depth and begin levelling the surface, when levelling it is a kin to floating concrete, the best way is to harrow firstly in a series of small circles, larger circles then straight up and down repeat this process until the correct levels and compaction is achieved.

It helps to have a harrow with a roller built in, if not your local hire shop will be able to provide you with a vibrating roller for the day.

Installing a fibre additive is a highly beneficial process, it will transform your ageing surface, providing you with an Equestrian surface you can have confidence in.