Centaur 4 Bar ECO rug dryer

Although we were fortunate enough to build and design our own brand new barn for the horses when we moved over here in July last year, what we didn't anticipate was needing a lot more space for drying rugs... We have our storage room, the tack room as well as the rug rack outside the storage room but after 3 or 4 consecutive days of torrential rain, we really struggled to get the turnout rugs to properly dry out! ☔️🌧 After several weeks of grumbling and moaning with a nearly constant 95% humidity inside the barn and all the wet rugs taking over the entire barn, we decided to invest in a rug dryer after seeing posts about it on Facebook, and ended up buying the Centaur 4 bar ECO rug dryer just before Christmas.

We went for the four bar dryer which is best for people with 4 to 8 horses. Centaur claims that the dryer has the power to dry rugs which are soaking wet in just four hours, so that it's possible to dry two sets of rugs each day. And according to their website, its running costs average £0.04 per hour, which will obviously add up to be expensive if you use it all day every day, but so far we've needed it  only twice or three times a week for 5+ wet (but not soaked through) rugs. What really sold this particular product for us is the fact that it's fully portable and it can easily be manoeuvred from place to place - ours is out in the aisle during the day and locked in the storage room over night - even though the 4 rug dryer weighs 43 kilograms! It's very easy to move around, I move it every day when sweeping the aisle and have never struggled moving it, even when it has four wet rugs on it.

Delivery!

If you don't use a rug dryer, chances are you’re like we were and have been air-drying the horses' rugs. But have you ever noticed that when you leave the rugs to air dry quite quickly the rugs get this unpleasant mouldy smell because they don't have the chance to properly dry out? 😣 This obviously isn't a problem if you leave your outdoor rugs on the ponies when they're brought back inside, but I really don't like doing this! This heated rug dryer has the power to dry rugs which are soaking wet in 4 hours, but in my experience over the last several weeks it's taken only 3 hours, and stable rugs coming out of the washing machine have been fully dried in 2 hours. (NOTE: here soaking wet means as in raining wet, if the rugs are covered in 2 inches of wet mud it's taken around 4 hours to dry them!) I always leave all of our turn out over reach boots to dry over night on this without the heating on as it's super easy to whip them off it in the morning rush. I also use this for warming up saddle pads before putting them on the horses as well as warming my exercise rugs which the horses all seem to really appreciate, especially on those days when the temperatures have been hovering between 0 to +4C even during the day!!

It's carefully wrapped up for transportation and delivery

What I also really liked this particular brand for us was the 10 year guarantee against faulty material/workmanship and the 3 year guarantee on electrical parts, so we don't have to stress about it for many many years! Here's a video from Centaur showing you the rug dryer. Overall, I really do think that this was a superb investment for us, it's exactly what we need in the barn and especially in this country where you it's muddy throughout winter and it's always raining in autumn and spring! ☔️🌧