4-Level Wooden Bleachers Plans

Teaching Horseback

Riding Lessons

Sally Cochran

(my daughter)

My daughter, Sally Cochran, owns and operate the Equine Kingdom Riding Academy on their farm in Greensboro, North Carolina. In two years they have transformed a run-down property with a couple dilapidated buildings into a thriving horse riding school. Lots of hard work, re-use of existing materials, buying used parts on Craig's List, and bartering has kept expenses to where they were able to pay cash for everything except the house and property itself. Sally has been interested in horses since she was about 8 years old and she has a degree in Business Administration and a degree in Logistics. Rather than do the normal thing and work for large corporations, they have opted to start and build their own business.

Since Melanie and I live way up north in Erie, Pennsylvania, we try to do a major project when we visit. This time, the project was building bleachers that can be used during the in-house riding events that are held every few months. My degree is in engineering (electrical), but I've been a lifelong designer and builder of models as well as residential structures, so I took on the task of designing plans. I could not find anything close to what I was looking for on the Web - at least anything within my price range - so I fired up Visio and made my own. The two main criteria were they needed to be sturdy so they would last forever, and they had to be safe for all ages to use. Galvanized nuts, bolts, and washers hold all the frame components together, and deck screws hold the planks. Pressure treated lumber was used throughout. Safety rails are spaced closely enough they they should (no guarantee) prevent small children from crawling through. A 10-foot length was chosen to be a convent size for modularity. They can be stacked end-to-end and bolted together. We chose to eliminate the hand rails at the junction to make one bleacher 20 feet long. Pressure treated landscaping ties serve as a footer to prevent any of the structural members from contacting the ground - essential for longevity.

This is a photo of the completed wooden bleachers. A high-resolution PDF wooden bleachers plans file is available at no charge (see below), compliments of Equine Kingdom Riding Academy and the Airplanes and Rockets website. If you find these plans useful (they took many hours to draw), please send a note of thanks to Equine Kingdom.

Wooden Bleachers Built at Equine Kingdom Riding Academy

Click here for high-resolution Wooden Bleachers Plans PDF file.

Note: I *do not* have a detailed list of materials available.

Posted March 5, 2012