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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Birmingham and across the UK. A large share of our work here is for multi-academy trusts and university estates, where several halls are assessed, specified and programmed together rather than one at a time.
Our clients are schools, academy trusts, universities, leisure operators, councils and clubs, and have been since 1987. We cover the full lifecycle of a floor with our own team rather than a chain of subcontractors. Private homes are outside our scope and are served by Ryan’s Restorations.
Overnight/Weekend Installations
Professional Cleaning Demonstrations
Squash Court Maintenance
Recommended Cleaning Products
Professional Pendulum Slip Testing
Deep Clean & Reseal Service
Trusts rarely have one floor to worry about. They have several, in wildly different condition, and pricing them individually produces inconsistent specifications, inconsistent quality and a budget nobody can plan against.
We survey the estate as a single exercise, produce one specification and one packaged price, then work through the sites in a single programme. Each hall receives the same standard and its own documented handover, and the trust receives one set of paperwork rather than eight.
Sports floor performance is measurable, not a matter of opinion. BS EN 14904 sets out how shock absorption, vertical deformation, ball bounce and friction are tested, and a properly specified floor is built to hit those figures rather than to look right.
Ball rebound should reach at least ninety per cent of the bounce achieved on solid concrete, consistently across the whole playing area. Inconsistency usually indicates a failure in the build-up beneath rather than the surface above, which is why we test across the floor rather than in one convenient corner.
Where a hall hosts league or representative fixtures, the markings have to satisfy the relevant governing body, and several have revised their dimensions in recent years. A court marked to a superseded rulebook can be challenged, which is an avoidable and embarrassing problem.
We confirm the current specification before any paint goes down, plan the multi-sport hierarchy so the competitive court reads instantly, and can seal club or school branding in at centre court. Detail is on our line marking page.
The sports hall at St George’s had a Granwood block floor that decades of use had left dull and tired. Granwood cannot be sanded like timber, so we restored it correctly: careful preparation, a modified epoxy coating system and crisp new markings.
The school kept a serviceable floor out of a skip and spent a fraction of what replacement would have cost.
~ Matthew Evans
An outstanding company to deal with and they couldn’t have been better to work with. St George’s Ascot now has a stunning new sports hall floor and we are delighted. From quote, support, delivery and after sales, the Team has been brilliant. Thank you. 
~ James Anderson
Every job is carried out by our own directly employed team using our own equipment. Nothing is passed to a chain of subcontractors, and that has practical consequences rather than being a slogan.
It means the people who survey your floor are connected to the people who work on it, so what was agreed is what happens. It means we control the programme rather than waiting on somebody else availability, which is why we can commit to a finish date and hold it. And it means the standard is consistent, because it is the same team on the last day as the first.
It also matters for the specialist work. Granwood restoration, parquet, sprung floor repairs and pendulum testing are not things you can subcontract to a general flooring firm and expect a good result. They are learned over years.
Courtship Flooring has been doing this since 1987, and a good deal of the team has been with the company for a very long time. That continuity is the reason we can look at a floor and know what is under it.
Not every tired floor needs taking back to bare timber, and knowing the difference saves facilities a great deal of money.
A screen and recoat is a light abrasion of the existing finish followed by a fresh top coat. It restores grip and appearance, it takes a fraction of the time, and it costs a fraction of the price. It works when the seal is worn but still intact across the floor.
A full sand removes everything back to bare timber and rebuilds the finish from scratch. It is the right answer when the lacquer has worn through in the traffic lanes and dirt is sitting in open grain, when there are repairs to make, or when the markings need setting out fresh.
As a rule of thumb, a well maintained hall wants a screen and recoat every two to three years and a full sand roughly every ten. Sticking to that keeps the boards alive far longer, because every full sand removes timber you cannot replace. A floor refinished every three years will run out of wear layer decades early.
Slip resistance is the one performance characteristic of a sports floor that can be measured objectively, and it is worth having the number rather than an assurance.
The pendulum test is the recognised method in the United Kingdom. A weighted arm with a rubber slider swings across the surface and the resistance is recorded, giving a pendulum test value. Sports surfaces are expected to sit within a defined range: too low and players slip, too high and the shoe binds, which brings its own injury risk.
We carry out testing on floors we have worked on and on floors we have not, and we provide the certificate. It is worth having in three situations in particular. After a refinish, so you can demonstrate the floor was handed over correctly. Where a floor has been reported as slippery, so you know whether it genuinely is. And where an insurer, a governing body or a facilities audit has asked for evidence.
Where a test comes back low, the cause is usually polish build up or a worn seal, and both are fixable.
Sports floors are full of holes, and how they are dealt with says a good deal about the quality of a job.
Badminton and volleyball posts sit in floor sockets, and those sockets have to finish flush with the surface and stay watertight. During a refinish we lift the covers, clean out years of accumulated debris and dust, protect the sockets from sealer, and reset them to the new floor level. Sanding around a socket cover and sealing over it is the shortcut, and it leaves a raised ring that catches feet and machinery.
Basketball post fixings, wall bar mountings and floor boxes for power get the same treatment. Where a fitting has been removed at some point and the hole filled badly, we make it good properly with matching timber rather than filler.
Inspection covers, expansion joints and threshold trims all need setting to the finished level too. It is detail work and it is largely invisible when done well, which is rather the point.
Birmingham gives us the widest mix of any city we work in, because the building stock spans a century and the facilities range from single school halls to full university sports centres.
University and college sport is a substantial part of it. We refinished the sports hall at Aston University, and that job is a fair illustration of the type: a heavily booked hall with the finish worn through in the traffic lanes, no long summer shutdown because of conference and external use, and a fixed window to work in.
School and academy halls are the largest group by number. Many are from the nineteen sixties and seventies, with sprung timber floors that are structurally sound but have gone too long between refinishes. Those are usually excellent candidates for restoration rather than replacement.
Leisure centres and community sports centres follow, where the priority is keeping the building trading and most of the work happens overnight.
We also see a good deal of Granwood in this part of the country, particularly in older school and church halls, and it is worth saying that most Granwood described as beyond saving is not.
Because the building stock here spans a century, the problems we are asked to solve in Birmingham are unusually varied.
In the post war school halls the recurring issue is a sprung floor that has lost its bounce in patches. Dead spots mean a pad or batten has failed underneath, and the fix is to lift the boards locally and replace the components rather than refinish a floor that will still feel wrong afterwards.
In the older stock, Granwood is the recurring find. It gets mistaken for timber, sanded like timber and permanently damaged, or written off entirely and quoted for replacement. Neither is usually necessary. A Granwood floor with sound blocks and an intact bed restores well with the right preparation and a modified epoxy system.
In the modern university and leisure facilities the issues are different again: heavily used surfaces where the seal has worn evenly and the question is timing rather than diagnosis. Those want catching on a cycle before the finish fails.
We quote fixed prices after a free survey rather than estimates over the phone. The main variables are the size of the floor, how much preparation it needs and whether repairs or sub-floor work are required. All of it is itemised in writing.
Comprehensively. We have delivered projects from Cornwall to the north of Scotland, and the approach does not change: survey, agree, price, then complete the work in a single visit.
A single-court hall is typically four to five days including sanding, repairs, sealing, marking and curing, which fits inside a school holiday. The programme and a fixed reopening date are confirmed in writing before we start.
Yes. Plans typically cover an annual deep clean from four pounds fifty per square metre, condition inspections, recoating, repairs, relining and slip testing with written reports.
Yes, and it usually costs less. We survey the estate together, apply one specification and schedule the sites into a single programme with one point of contact.
Yes. We survey, take moisture readings, measure the remaining board depth and look at the structure, then quote a fixed sum broken down by element. There is no charge and no obligation.
Almost always polish or the wrong cleaning product building up, or a seal worn smooth in the traffic lanes. Both are fixable, and both should be dealt with before somebody is injured.
Photographs of the room and of anything specific that worries you, approximate dimensions or the number of badminton courts, the age of the floor if known, and when the room could realistically be closed.
A well maintained hall wants a light screen and recoat every two to three years and a full sand roughly every ten. Sticking to that keeps the boards alive far longer, because every full sand removes timber permanently.
Yes, and we recommend doing both together. Stages are usually in worse condition than the hall floor, and one visit costs considerably less than two while giving a consistent finish.
It can if it is run too hot or brought up too quickly, which dries the boards and opens gaps. The system needs proper commissioning and controlled surface temperatures, and the timber needs to be specified as suitable.
Book a free survey of your floor in Birmingham and we will tell you honestly what it needs, what it will cost and how quickly it can happen. Call 01823 674562 or send us a message.