4 Bay Stable Integrated Wash Bay

Grooming, farrier visits and vet work all happen in the same spot on this property. The owner didn’t want that spot tacked onto one end of the line.

With four horses that’s a workflow question before it’s a building question. Every horse gets walked to the wash bay, tied, worked on, walked back again. Where the bay sits decides how far each of them travels and who they pass on the way. The owner also wanted to keep an eye on the rest of the line while washing, instead of disappearing round a corner with a wet horse and losing sight of everyone else.

Two Stalls Either Side of a Central Wash Bay

Each bay runs 4m across the front, so the stalls give you 64m² and the wash bay adds another 16m², for 80m² of structure end to end. Frame is galvanised steel at 2.4m. Solid panels run the lower half of each bay with heavy mesh above, and that’s what the high airflow model gives you in practice: air moving through from the front and the back, not just over the top.

It went up in a day and a half on a gravel pad, and it rained through most of that. Didn’t slow the build.

Central Wash Bay on an Open Stable Line

In an enclosed barn an end wash bay sits against a wall and that’s the end of the discussion. But what do you tie a wet horse next to when the structure has no walls?

• A wash bay on either end leaves a tied horse taking crosswind straight round the corner of the building.
• Dead centre, the bay sits between solid stall partitions on both sides, which is the closest thing to a wall this structure has.
• The horse that feels the wind is the wet one standing still. That’s the horse this placement is for.
• Open at the front and the back means overspray dries instead of sitting, and there’s no enclosed aisle for water to track down.

A Shorter Walk From Every Stall

• Exact centre puts every stall one bay away from the wash bay.
• Put it on the far right and the far left horses walk the entire line, past every neighbour, every time.
• In an open front run that’s where the excitement and the territorial nipping start.
• The bay doubles as the station a vet or farrier works from, with the rest of the line still in sight.
• And the symmetry makes the build simpler. Four bays split evenly is straightforward to set out, and it sits balanced on the block.