Surprised by what I found under this old riding arena...

I’ve said it before—I'm not a fan of throwing wood in the ground. We don’t build that way. Screw piles, concrete foundations, true columns—whatever the project calls for, we make sure the structure starts on solid ground (literally).

So you can imagine my surprise the other day when I visited an old post-frame riding arena. I was doing an assessment, fully expecting to find rot where those posts had been in the ground for 30 or 40 years. But guess what? No rot. None. I didn’t check every post, but I dug beside four of them and they looked solid—bone dry and in great shape.

After taking a better look around, it clicked. The whole building was set on a raised pad. Out back, the arena sits about 5 feet above the surrounding ground, and even out front it’s still a foot or so up. The builder knew what they were doing—by lifting the site, they made sure water drained away instead of sitting against the posts. That’s likely what saved them.

So sure, maybe posts can last in the ground if everything’s done just right. But we still won’t build that!