[Womble]

Hi Folks,

Our lambing / hay / whatever shed is a couple of hundred years old, and just has a dirt floor. Unfortunately, when the weather is wet outside, water tends to run in and turn parts to mud. The same happens if we wash any of the bays down to disinfect them.

We have a digger here next week, so we're going to put in french drains around the perimeter.  I'm also thinking about scraping back the floor a little, and then putting some type 1 hardcore down. Do you think this is a good idea though?

On one hand I can see that it will make a nice hard, level base. On the other hand, I'm worried that it might make it difficult to muck out without getting loads of stones in the muckheap.

Any thoughts? 

[Buttermilk]

We put rammed chalk floors down in ours.  You just had to be carefull with the mucking out.  About 20 years later we had to top them up as they were getting a bit too uneven.

[YorkshireLass]

We have quite coarse (is that the right word?) hardcore in part of a cow barn. Although it allows drainage, it's useless for mucking out, it will harbour any infection, it snags when you're trying to move kit across it, and it's annoying to walk on. It potentially could damage hooves too, though nobody is in there on a shallow enough bed for that to really happen.
In other words, I'm not a fan!

[valmet10]

get a wacker plate and spend some time compacting it , if ur not careful when cleaning out you can dig up hardcore

[doganjo]

Concrete?

[Womble]

In an ideal world, Doganjo, yes of course!  In reality I'm just not up for that big a job right now.

Thanks for the advice everybody. I think what we're going to do is to put in the french drain and sort out the gutters properly. If that keeps the inside dry, that will be good enough for now.

[landroverroy]

Just a thought Womble. . .
Years ago we used to get puddles in our buildings in winter. However, water finds it's own level. The floor level had got slowly lower from mucking out with a machine, as the bucket repeated scraped up a thin layer of soil. So the floor level inside the building gradually got lower than the ground level outside and therefore in wet years the water came in. I argued this point with my husband for several years. (After all I'm female so what do I know?? ). Eventually he "humoured" me and brought in a few (JCB) bucket loads of soil and rolled it down. The internal floor level is now slightly above the external ground level, and as water does not flow uphill we have never had a puddle inside since.

[Womble]

water does not flow uphill

Who are you, who are so wise in the ways of science? 

That's a very good point, Landroverroy. Our floor is not low from being scraped out, but purely because the ground level outside has increased over the past 100 years or so, from leaves rotting down etc. I hadn't realised until we took the back wall off the barn  - the inside floor is about 8" lower than the outside!

I've checked all the levels properly tonight, and I still think the french drain and new gutters will probably sort it. I have dug some nice sandy soil up from another ditch though, so I'll drop some of it in the shed and level it out while I have a dumper here for the weekend.  Thanks for the tip  .

[pharnorth]

By serendipity rather than skill I have ended in the same place as @landroverroy.  We were scrapping top soil off to creat a concrete base for the pig pen so decided to put it in the barn. The barn floor is 50% concrete and 50% soil. The latter had a drop of about 30cm through years of wear.  Topping it up to just above the concrete level has made life a lot easier.
The concrete part is useful for some things but I prefer to house animals at th soil end as much easier for mucking out. 

[Still playing with tractors]

If you decide on concrete we have used this in high impact areas ie scraping out and heavy slurry sheds

 http://www.cemex.co.uk/agriculturalconcrete.aspx

you will see there are different types for each application, if you need any further info PM me