Make sure that you get a written quotation. I did manage to do this (hurray!) but it did me no good at all. Let's take a closer look...
Point 2 'To level the site'... Mistake no 4 as they were cowboys, even though my field is flat and level (joy of being in S Cambs)...my school slopes! How is that even possible...? So the surface migrates from the A end to the C end. A is very shallow; C is very deep indeed. And it does feel as if I'm riding up & downhill. Point 4 'Road plannings (sic)' - they did indeed use 'road plannings or equivalent'... but (mistake no 5) road plannings (or indeed planings or indeed 'similar'...) are NOT a suitable ingredient for a school! Our soil is very sandy and drains freely, so should therefore be pretty well impossible to mess up. But the layer of 'road plannings' (i.e. 'random c**p) is NOT very permeable. It's the sort of stuff that would be used to make a rough (very rough!) hardcore path. It doesn't drain, and water cannot get through to the carefully installed drainage channels, so water sits on top and rots the surface. I would have been better off just having a 20m x 40m wooden frame & filling it with woodchip as this would drain better than my school! See photos - the stone layer is rough, which is why it's worn through the membrane. It is also unlevel, which is why the school has high and low spots, and rides deep and shallow...and trippy. Point 5 '...all joints to be welded together...' Now we're getting to the bones of the matter! Manege membrane comes on a huge roll and is laid widthwise in strips. There are 9 strips laid widthways across my school, together with an interesting patchwork effect in one corner where they obviously didn't want to start a new roll. How do I know this...? Because the joints were NOT welded, and the whole lot came up! Giving me a completely unusable school. I am not sure if this is mistake no 6 because I should have WATCHED them to make sure they were dealing with the edges properly, or whether this is part of mistake no 1 for hiring cowboys in the first place. Or perhaps it's mistake no 1A which is trying to do things on the cheap and in too much of a hurry. And I also had quotations from two very reputable companies...and instead managed to choose the cowboy because I was trying to do things on the cheap! |