Which type of Geocell is suitable for Horse Paddock?
I have one customer in Europe who wants to use Geocell to build horse paddock, but they don’t know which type to use. Height use 50mm or 75mm? Welding distance use 250mm or 330mm? Textured or smooth surface? Perforated or Non-perforated type?
We have an important question regarding cell size. Here is for exemple a link of a US company that sells much smaller size cells.
Do 330 mm cells provide sufficient bearing capacity for our intended use? We plan to develop strongly the use of geocells here and it is essentiel no mistaking in quality of what we provide to clients. Thanks for your sincere advice.
Please check all my answers below, then you will know the most suitable Geocell that for the application of horse paddock.
1, Geocell Welding distance
Our engineer said that 330mm and 356 mm welding distance definitely can provide sufficient bearing capacity. But for the application of horse paddock, the bearing capacity is not the most important thing we need to consider, because the horse hoof is very different from the tires of vehicle.
Due to the horse’s hoof being very small, the force is only locally applied. If a large cell size, local deformation is likely to occur. So the smaller the cell size, the better. As 250mm welding distance is the smallest for most Geocell manufacturers, so 250mm is the most popular type in the application of horse paddock.
2, Geocell Height/Depth
Our engineer said that for the application of horse paddock, most customers use 75mm, a few use 50mm, it is better to choose 75mm.
3, Use Perforated or Non-perforated type?
Our engineer said that due to the height of 50mm and 75mm is very short, then there is no need to use the drainage holes for cross drainage, and the bottom infill material is mostly gravel, which is also good for vertical drainage. At the same time, the non-perforated type Geocell has little damage to the sheet, which can lead to better tensile strength.
4, Install Geotextile under Geocell
Our engineer said that for installation, you must use Geotextile under the Geocell to prevent uneven settlement of fillers. As shown in the photo below:
5, The size of the gravel
Due to the cell size of 250mm is very small, so in the installation stage, you need to control the size of the gravel(diameter better no more than 3cm and use different sizes for compaction).
All in all, our engineer recommends height 75mm, welding 250mm, thickness 1.5mm, textured and non-perforated is the most suitable type for your horse paddock application.
The expanded cell size for welding 250mm is 180x156mm, this is fixed. The expanded panel size can be produced as per your requirement, our regular size is 2.34×5.304m.
