New Technology Materials for Stables

[ARKOS]

Buenos días
I´ve been designing stables for a long, and I think that traditional materials are fine, but there is some particular areas that urgently need to be redefined. For example, the inside walls are supose to be abused, so a regular painted wall sholud be repair and finished pretty often.
I think that some tartan-like surface veneer can reduce the maintenance, and be affordable within 3 years of savings.
I will like to have some suggestions, or (even better) solutions.

Thanks a lot.

Victor Garcia

 

[usjbh]

Victor,
There is something to be said for traditional materials like wood. In my early career as an engineer I worked with a scientist at the Foxboro Co. who designed and built all his engineering models from wood. By his example he had convinced me that wood was one of the most neglected engineering materials around.

Fifteen years later, while at another company, I needed to design a volumetric filler cylinder that had stainless steel tubing coiled inside it. A long story short, after prototyping designs in aluminum and HDPE plastic, I finally found the least expensive and most effective design was with maple wood. I bought a truck load of maple turnings used in the furniture industry here in New England for a fraction of the cost of extruded plastic or aluminum and I also found local furniture makers willing to machine my parts for a much lower cost than traditional machine shops could. This was my first successful design using a local renewable resource material.

You may not like my suggestion, but stick with wood. Find a way to differentiate your wood stables from the ordinary and you will not only be in demand, you can command a premium for your ideas and workmanship. Be an artist, be creative, use these materials in new and attractive ways. If success follows you can then afford to hire suppliers and subcontractors to do the work while you select and plan the jobs. The beauty of a renewable resource like wood is that you will get repeat business from the same customers to maintain the beauty and functinality of the original and before you know it you have a spin off service business, just like IBM is doing now.