re:Portable corrals, homemade

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From: Nina Vasiliev 
Email: rmack@inreach.com

I love my PVC porta-corral which my 16 year old son made me.  It's made from 2 inch PVC, (I think...when the rain stops I'll measure for sure.)  I have four panels approx 4 1/2 feet tall.  Each panel has three, nine foot lengths of PVC so there's a bottom, middle and top pipe for each panel.  Next he glued together a one inch in diameter PVC pipe approx one foot long which is attached to an elbow joint then a 4-5 inch pipe, an other elbow joint, and then an other one foot pipe.  This makes a U shape, one side of which is slipped into the top corner of one panel.  The other end of the U, slips into the next panel's corner. I also use the U's to secure the bottom corners of the panels.  This holds the panels together pretty well.

Of course if my horse tried to charge the fence, he would probably break thru.  But it looks substantial enough that he has happily accepted the corral as his resting place.  

Now there is one more step.  My son connected rings to the trailer so that the two end panels can be attached to the trailer with a U.  I have one ring in the back and one in the front.  So, using the trailer as one side of my corral I have a corral which has five sides.
 
To transport, I lash the panels to my trailer, sitting them on the wheel well.

The corral cost me about a hundred dollars to make.  And I'm so happy with it!

Putting the panels together with the PVC glue is a little tricky to get the angles true.  The glue becomes fast within 30 seconds. I guess that's why they call it fast :-)  We found that having everything sawed to length and laid out in place on a flat surface helped. (For other hints e-mail me.)

I'm just guessing on the sizes.  If you want to know exactly, let me know and I'll go out and measure.  But how I decided how high I wanted each panel to be, was by bringing a tape measure out to the stable. I measured how tall I wanted it to stand compared to my horse.  I also measured how high his stall walls were, etc, to give me an idea of what height would work.  Then I walked over to my trailer and measured how long the panels could be while lashed to the side of the trailer.  I have a small stock trailer and I measured the straight edge of the side, before it began to curve in the front.  That measurement determined how long we made the panels.

I have gotten great use out of this corral.  Please contact me if you have any questions.

Nina Vasiliev