Sand school costs?

[Ohshitiveturnedintomymother]

Has anyone had a sand school built recently that can give me an idea of costs? It’s on my land so I would have to have planning but that should be ok as it’s equestrian land and very secluded.
I wouldn’t want floods or anything fancy like that, just your bog standard 20x40m
And in terms of surface, what would people recommend? Again not looking for too too spec but equally don’t want to go for just sand and then find out if doesn’t drain properly and I can’t use it all bloody winter!
I’m in the SE if that helps.

£35k for it to be done properly, with good drainage and decent fencing and surface. We had ours done last year and it is brilliant. We use it all the time. It has never been too wet or frozen to ride on, and the ground it is built on was sloping and wet. We have silica sand and fibre. We bought the fibre separately from a company called Surfaces R Us, and the builders had a special machine to mix it in. Planning permission was straight forward, we did the application ourselves. We are in an AONB and needed to have change of use from agricultural to equestrian but it wasn’t a problem. Happy to recommend a builder if you want to PM me.

I would say at least £20k
There’s no point scrimping. Poor drainage will wreck the surface quickly.
A rubbish surface you’ll never be able to use - quagmire when it’s wet, frozen when it’s cold and deep when it’s dry! A good proper AW surface - speak to Martin Collins about what gets used of racehorse gallops.

Thank you both. That’s one hell of a price difference! I reckon I can stretch to about 20k but no way up to 35k!

I’d say £20k as a bare minimum I should add!! I’m also in the north which helps

Mine cost £17.5k 3 years ago but we used a local contractor and researched very carefully especially around drainage and materials.
However… material prices are insane atm. You could easily add a third more to that I reckon.

The quote I was given went up by £4k between initial quote and work completion 8 months later due to the increase in cost of materials. The sand alone was over £7k. Our site was difficult to work on because of a slope and wet ground, but if your land is already flat and dry you could probably save a bit. You can do it yourself, but you really need to know what you are doing - our contractor said even the slightest slope on the school base would result in the surface migrating downhill over time! It was much more expensive than I was hoping, but I have waited for years for one, and it’s fabulous. I am glad we did it.

We put a 20 x 60 in 18 months ago and including mirrors was just over £50k. Our drainage is fantastic we haven't lost a single day to the weather. We scrimped ion everything apart from the drainage.

It didn’t take 8 months to build btw. 2 months of that was getting planning permission, 4 months was waiting for the builder, the final 2 months was because our site got waterlogged after work started and we had to wait for it to dry out. The actual work took 3 men about 24 working days. They used 2 diggers, a dumper truck and tractor with various attachments for spreading and mixing the surface. So a lot of man hours and equipment. I looked for every way I could to keep costs down while getting a school which would not be unusable in certain conditions.

Thank you all, lots to think about here! Some costs like £35/50k are so out of my reach but I could stretch to 25k I reckon. Also my land is largely flat and drained so maybe that would help?
It’s one of those things I’ve always dreamed of having and now it’s (almost) within reach

Speak to Chapelstone Equestrian if you are in the south east. They did our school for us. It's amazing. They will give you good advice and were a bit cheaper than others. They just do schools, so are spot on with drainage etc.

I've been getting quotes recently in the SE and the cheapest was £27k+VAT for a sand surface. Most have been £30-40K plus VAT

We did it for 11,000 with silica sand and then added rubber chippings for a further £1,000 . We did all the work ourselves apart from the initial digging out. We hired the machinery. It's been in 7 years now and has never flooded despite being in a dip. I did lots of research before we started and the main thing seemed to be was to ensure there was enough drainage. We put in 80 tonnes of clean stone. It was hard work as we started it in February and it was wet and cold but it was so worth it . Its never frozen and I've been able to ride all year round.