A general remark after having seen some different types of selfmade roundpens. Safety is the most important thing. The horse absolutely must not be able to escape. If you use one that is not very safe it can be included in a bigger (safe) one. Monty discribes other features in his book about diameter (16 m), the importance of the ground, and so on.

Hi Karinwatson,
I needed a roundpen in a hurry and had very little materials to make one from.
The first thing I did was find a good place to build one.
I looked for good turf that was sound but soft for footing.
Next I drove into the ground a huge spike and attached a rope and measured exactly 25 feet in length.
I used this for placing the pipes. They measured 25 feet to each post that was placed 5 feet apart.
Afer the pipes were placed I removed the spike.
Making it 50 feet in diameter a perfect circle.
We had some 12 foot steel poles given to us and my husband climbed on a ladder to pounded them into the ground at least one foot.
He then drilled holes through the pipes and we threaded fencing wire through this.
I attached stripes of noisy plastic bags to these wires so the wires could be seen.
The top wire is at her shoulder height and the bottom one is about 18 inches from the ground.
We then drove two wooden posts into the ground and used this as the gate.
I did not have my husband attach a wooden gate but I use ropes and tie them securely.
This is a temperory pen until her new arena is finished.
It measures exactly 50 feet in diameter, from one post to another directly accross from it.
It has worked great for her until next year.
I have a video on my youtube that you could see if you like.
Go to youtube and on the search bar type in: mystarmajestic and her vieos will come up, then you can then look for the one that says join-up.
Hope this has helped.
If you want one more permanent use different materials.
Have a good day, Ronda

Hi karin,
As an advanced student of Monty's I just started to work with some Arabian horses at the breeders home. They didn't have anything that looked only a bit like a roundpen, but they offered to build a simple one for me. I could make all recommendations, so my diameter is 16 meters, I find it ideal for that size of horse. They had wooden poles dug into the soil, having the biggest part looking out, about my shoulder height, the distance between the poles is 2 meters. Right now we have two horizontal poles, connecting at the top and halfway, so no horseleg coild get hurt, when cantering. When everything is finished there will be a entrance, poles at groundlevel to keep the sand from being kicked out and finally beachsand in it.
At this moment it already works without all this luxury, I use an old lunge to close the entrance, once I'm inside with a horse and am very happy with it!
Ofcourse this is not a temporary roundpen, so if you want to build something similar it will cost a little, but not very much.
I hope this helps you in your effort to find a place to work regularly with your horse.
Miriam

hi

thank you all so much for your help and advise, what i thought might be quite a task now looks much more practical and some questions i had in my head about safety have also been answered, many thanks.

Hi Ronda
just had a look at your join up on you tube, and would like to thank you for posting the video it was a great help.

Hi Karin, I have a roundpen in my paddock verysimilar to Ronda's and it works fine. I used steel posts and what we call Hot Tape in Australia. It is 12mm wide white temporary elecric fence wire. You can also buy 40mm wide tape but is quite expensive so i went with the 12mm. My horses are used to electric fences so they respect the hot tape very much! I have two strands one at chest height (i am 5"3) and one about a foot from the ground. I have a mini and a 14hh brumby and it works for both of these. Hope this helps :-) Good luck with it all!
Janelle

Oh and my diametre is 7.5 metres :-)
Janelle