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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Cardiff and across the UK. We have delivered full sports hall refurbishments across Wales, planned as complete programmes with fixed dates agreed before we travel.
Since 1987 we have worked on indoor sports floors the length of the country and internationally. We remain family-run and deliberately specialist, covering installation through to long-term aftercare with our own team and machinery. We take no domestic work; Ryan’s Restorations covers that.
Overnight/Weekend Installations
Professional Cleaning Demonstrations
Squash Court Maintenance
Recommended Cleaning Products
Professional Pendulum Slip Testing
Deep Clean & Reseal Service
A refurbishment runs in a fixed sequence, and skipping steps is where results go wrong. Survey and moisture readings first. Then dust-controlled sanding back to clean timber, so the rest of the building keeps operating. Damaged boards cut out and replaced with matched timber. Gaps attended to and the surface fine-sanded.
Seal is then applied in the correct number of coats with proper curing between them, with markings laid between coats so the lines sit protected within the finish. Finally a documented handover setting out exactly when the floor takes traffic.
Most halls carry four or five sets of court markings at once, and the difference between a legible floor and a confusing one is planning rather than paint. We establish which sport leads, mark that court so it reads instantly, then work the others in behind it using colour and line weight to create a clear hierarchy.
Each court follows its current governing body specification, and crests can be sealed beneath the final coats. Full detail is on our line marking page.
The question every facilities manager actually wants answered is when they can reopen. Seal systems cure in stages: light foot traffic first, then equipment and posts, then full play, and rushing any of those stages damages a finish that has just been paid for.
We set out the schedule precisely at handover so bookings can be taken with confidence, and the reopening date is agreed in writing before work begins rather than estimated afterwards.
The sports hall floor at Treguib had given years of service and looked it. Our team took it back to clean timber, repaired the wear, then resealed and re-marked the full hall.
The result is a floor that plays and looks like new for a fraction of replacement cost, delivered a long way from our base and still on the date we promised.
~ 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
School halls across Cardiff and the Vale follow term dates set by the local authority, and they do not always line up with the English calendar that most contractors plan by. We check the actual dates for each school before offering a slot, because a week’s difference decides whether a full sand fits or not.
The summer break takes the big jobs. A full sand, repairs, seal and new markings for a typical hall needs one to two weeks including cure, and it has to be finished, hardened and back in use before the caretaker starts setting out for September.
Half terms take the lighter work. A screen and recoat fits inside a week, and a relining or a repair to a run of boards fits inside a weekend. Slots for the summer are usually spoken for by Easter, so the conversation is best had in the spring term.
A sports floor can look perfect and still be unsafe, and the only way to know is to measure it. The pendulum test is the method recognised in the UK, and it produces a friction value that an insurer, a governing body or a health and safety officer can act on.
We swing the pendulum at a number of points across the hall, in different directions, on the wear lanes and in the untouched corners, because the average hides the danger. A hall in Cardiff that passes in the middle and fails at the doors is a hall with a problem at the doors.
You receive a certificate with every reading and its location. Where the values sit low we say what is causing it, and it is nearly always polish build up or seal wear, both of which are quick to correct.
Two very different jobs get lumped together under refurbishment, and the price difference between them is large. Knowing which one your hall needs is the first thing a survey establishes.
A screen and recoat abrades the top of the existing seal and applies a fresh coat of two pack polyurethane over it. It takes a few days, removes no timber and restores grip and appearance. It works when the seal is worn but has not yet gone through to bare wood anywhere on the floor.
A full sand takes everything back to clean timber, deals with repairs and stains, and rebuilds the finish from the first coat. It is the answer when the traffic lanes have worn through, when boards need replacing or when the markings have to be set out again from scratch. On a well kept floor it should be needed only about once a decade, with recoats every two to three years in between.
What happens to the floor in the months after we leave decides how long the finish lasts. We hand over a written aftercare sheet and, where the site wants it, a short demonstration for the cleaning team.
The routine is dry dust mopping every day to lift grit, and a damp mop or scrubber dryer with a neutral cleaner at the correct dilution as often as use demands. What is not allowed is polish, wax, bleach, steam or any product that promises shine. Those leave a film that destroys grip, and they are the most common reason a Cardiff facility calls us about a slippery floor.
Matting at every entrance, felt pads on chairs and tables and a rule about outdoor shoes finish the job. None of it costs much, and together it doubles the interval between recoats.
Cardiff gives us a strong weighting towards university sport, the city leisure estate and secondary school facilities, and each has its own working pattern.
University and college facilities are busy across the full year, with summer conference and external hire filling what would be a shutdown elsewhere. The windows are narrow and they do not move, so these projects are planned well in advance and staffed to complete inside them.
Leisure centres and community sports facilities come next, and there the driver is booking income. Closing a sports hall for a fortnight is expensive, so most of this work happens overnight or across an agreed quiet period, with the floor sealed at the end of a shift so it is walkable by opening.
School and academy halls make up the rest, along with a steady flow of church and community buildings whose timber floors are usually in far better condition than they look.
Because we travel to the area we will generally look to sequence several projects together where we can, which brings the cost down for everybody involved. It is worth mentioning if you know of another facility considering work.
The projects most relevant to Cardiff enquiries are our university and leisure work rather than anything defined by location.
Aston University is the closest parallel for campus sport. The hall was heavily booked, the finish had worn through in the traffic lanes, and there was no long summer shutdown because conference and external hire filled it. We surveyed early, ordered materials ahead, staffed the job to the window and handed the floor back on the agreed date with markings set out fresh rather than copied.
Medina Leisure Centre is the better comparison for operator run facilities. Booking income made a long closure impossible, so the work was sequenced around the centre timetable with the noisiest operations falling when the building was quietest, and sealed dust extraction kept the surrounding areas usable.
Both were straightforward technically. Both depended on the survey being thorough enough that nothing surprising appeared once the old finish came off.
It comes down to size, condition and what you want at the end. A hall that needs only a recoat sits at the bottom of the range and a full sand with board repairs and a complete reline at the top, with all of it still well below replacement. After the free survey the price is fixed and itemised.
Yes. We work across Wales, from Newport and the Valleys through Swansea to the west and up to North Wales, and further afield across the UK. Projects are planned as one complete visit with everything agreed and priced beforehand, so distance affects our logistics, not your result.
Decades, if it is maintained. A solid timber floor can be recoated and sanded repeatedly, so the boards themselves often outlast the building’s heating system several times over. Synthetic surfaces have a fixed life of roughly fifteen to twenty years before they are replaced rather than restored.
Yes, and we say it more often than you might expect. If a hall needs nothing more than a thorough clean, that is what the survey report will say, with no charge. We would rather be called back in three years for the recoat than sell a sand nobody needed.
Yes, and it is routine. Split, crushed or water damaged boards are cut out along the joints and replaced with timber matched by species, grade and grain direction. Once the area is sanded and sealed the repair sits within the floor as a slight change of tone rather than a patch.
Worn lacquer, surface marks and most discolouration sand out completely. Water staining that has soaked deep into the grain may remain faintly visible, and we tell you at survey which marks will go and which will not, so there is no disappointment at handover.
An area elastic floor, usually sprung timber, flexes across a wide zone when a player lands and suits basketball, netball and badminton. A point elastic floor, usually vinyl or PU over foam, gives only under the foot and suits fitness and multi use rooms. Combined systems layer one over the other.
No. Courtship Flooring works only on commercial and institutional buildings, from school halls and university sports centres to leisure facilities and clubs. Domestic timber floors are handled by our sister company Ryan’s Restorations, who should be contacted directly for that work.
Book a free survey of your floor in Cardiff and we will tell you what it needs, what it will cost and the dates we can commit to before we travel. Call 01823 674562 or send us a message.