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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Essex and across the UK. A large share of our work is for academy trusts, where several school halls are surveyed, specified and delivered as one summer programme.
Established in 1987 and still family-run, we install, refurbish, sand, seal, mark and maintain indoor sports floors for schools, academies, colleges, universities, leisure trusts, local authorities and clubs. Every stage is carried out by our own team. We do not undertake domestic work; that is handled by our sister company Ryan’s Restorations.
Overnight/Weekend Installations
Professional Cleaning Demonstrations
Squash Court Maintenance
Recommended Cleaning Products
Professional Pendulum Slip Testing
Deep Clean & Reseal Service
The summer break is roughly six usable weeks, and a trust with five halls cannot afford a contractor who can only manage one at a time. Sequencing matters: which halls need the longest programmes, which can absorb a delay, and where machinery and crews move next.
We plan the whole sequence before the first site starts, with individual start and reopening dates for every hall. Because we do not subcontract, the same crew and the same standard arrive at the last school as at the first.
Three things move the price of a floor project more than anything else: the condition of the sub-floor, how much preparation the existing surface needs, and how tightly the programme is compressed. The first two are discovered at survey; the third is within your control.
Booking early and allowing a sensible window is consistently cheaper than an urgent job squeezed into a fortnight. We will tell you honestly where a slightly longer programme saves real money.
More school hall floors are damaged during exams than during PE. Rows of desks and chairs dragged into position leave indentation and scuffing that sport never would, and it happens over a fortnight every year.
Protective covering laid over the playing surface prevents almost all of it and lifts quickly afterwards. It costs a fraction of the repairs it avoids, and we will advise on the right type for your floor and how to handle it.
Years of heavy use had left the sports hall floor at Aston University dull, patchy and worn along every busy lane. Our team sanded it back to bare timber, made good the damage, then rebuilt the finish with a durable seal and a full set of new markings, working around a demanding academic timetable.
The before and after photographs show what a properly executed refurbishment delivers: a floor that looks and plays like new, for a fraction of replacement cost and without weeks of disruption.
~ 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
The complaint we hear most about other contractors is the variation that appears once the old finish comes off, so we price to avoid it.
Our quotations are broken down by element rather than given as a single figure. Preparation, sanding, board repairs, sealing, line marking and testing are each priced separately. If the budget will not stretch this year you can see exactly which part to defer rather than losing the whole scheme.
Because we survey properly, we know what is likely to appear once the floor is bare, and we allow for it in the quotation as expected work rather than presenting it later as an extra. The only things we would ever come back to you about are genuinely unforeseeable, and in twenty years that has been rare.
We also quote alternatives where they exist. If a screen and recoat will do what you need instead of a full sand, we will price both and tell you which we would choose. We would rather quote the cheaper option and see you again in five years.
If a sports floor fails early, moisture is usually the reason, and it is the thing we test for before anything else.
Water reaches a timber floor from three directions. From below, through a slab with no effective damp proof membrane or one that has been compromised. From above, through roof leaks, radiator failures and over wet cleaning. And from the air, where a building swings between damp and dry and the timber moves with it.
The symptoms differ. Boards that cup, with edges lifting higher than centres, generally mean moisture from below or a spill. Boards that dome or lift in the middle of the hall usually mean the floor has expanded with nowhere to go, often because perimeter gaps have closed. Gaps that open every winter are a humidity swing rather than a fault.
Sealing over a wet floor guarantees failure, which is why we take readings rather than assume. Where a slab is giving off moisture we install a mitigation membrane before laying, and where the cause is a leak we will tell you to fix the building first.
A great deal of what we do happens when the building is empty, because for most facilities that is the only way the work can happen at all.
Leisure centres in particular rarely have a fortnight to give up. Booking income stops, members notice, and some of them do not come back. So we work overnight, sealing at the end of a shift so the floor is walkable by opening time, with heavy equipment going back once the finish has hardened properly.
Weekend working suits buildings that are busy on weekdays: offices with sports facilities, universities in term, and community halls with a weekday programme. Bank holiday weekends are particularly useful because they give an extra day of cure time.
Out of hours working costs a little more in labour and it saves considerably more in lost income and disruption. We will quote both ways so you can weigh one against the other rather than being told what your only option is.
Key holding, alarm codes and access arrangements are agreed in writing before we start.
Timber remains the benchmark for indoor sports flooring, and the reason is simple: it performs well, it can be refinished repeatedly rather than replaced, and players prefer it.
The systems divide by what sits beneath the boards. A sprung floor uses resilient pads, foam blocks or engineered cradles under battens, producing an area elastic response that spreads load when a player lands. A semi sprung system uses a shallower build up. A floor fixed directly to the slab has no give at all and is hard on joints where sport is played regularly.
Above that, the playing surface is solid strip or engineered board. Maple is the traditional choice for its hardness and pale colour, with beech and oak also common. Solid strip has a generous wear layer and will take many refinishes. Engineered board has a thinner layer over a stable core, so there is less margin.
The detail that governs longevity is the perimeter. Timber moves with humidity, and a floor without a proper expansion gap and ventilated skirting will lift in the middle. It is skipped surprisingly often.
Essex brings us one of the largest concentrations of academy trust work in the country, alongside leisure operator facilities and a substantial number of community buildings.
Trust estates are the pattern we see most. A trust holding fifteen or twenty schools has that many sports halls, built decades apart, in wildly differing condition, and usually with no single record of any of it. The most useful thing we can do in that situation is survey the whole estate and produce a costed priority order, which turns an unpredictable liability into a programme that can be phased across budget years.
Individual school halls arrive for the usual reasons. A finish worn through in the traffic lanes, markings that have been copied rather than set out for several remarks running, or a hall that has become slippery.
Leisure operator work follows, where the priority is keeping the building trading and most of it happens overnight.
We completed work at De Wint School in the wider region, and the pattern was typical: survey properly, plan to the holiday window, hand back on the agreed date.
The pattern of enquiries from Essex is dominated by academy trust estates, and that shapes what we are asked to do.
The most common request is not for a single hall but for a view of several. A trust that has had two floors fail unexpectedly wants to know which of the others are next, and the answer is a condition survey across the estate producing a costed priority order. That converts an unpredictable liability into a programme.
Where individual halls do come to us, the recurring issue is a finish that has worn through in the traffic lanes on a floor that is otherwise structurally sound. Those restore well, and a survey usually finds more life left than the school has been told.
The third is markings. Halls carrying five or six sports in colours that merge under LED lighting are common, and rationalising them down to what is actually played is the cheapest improvement available to any facility.
Court relining can be done either way, and the cost difference between them is larger than most facilities expect.
Marking during a sand and seal is always the best value. The floor is already back to bare timber, the setting out sits inside a programme you are paying for anyway, and the lines finish under the new lacquer where they are protected. There is no second closure and no second mobilisation.
As a standalone visit, relining is still a modest job. A typical multi sport hall takes two to three days including preparation, setting out, painting and the seal coat over the top. That is a genuine option where the floor finish is sound and only the line marking has gone.
What is not worth doing is applying markings onto a finished floor and leaving them exposed. It is quicker and cheaper on the day, and it is why so many halls need remarking every few years. If your last set of lines lifted within a season or two, that is almost certainly what happened to them.
Price follows the size of the hall, the condition of the existing floor and the specification you choose rather than the postcode. Refurbishing a sound floor costs a fraction of replacing it, which is why we always price that route first. The survey is free and the quotation is fixed in writing.
Yes. Coverage is genuinely national, and where several facilities in one area need work, booking together shares the mobilisation and reduces the cost for each of them.
Yes, and it is the norm. Each sport is marked to its governing body specification in a distinct colour, with the layout planned so the primary court reads instantly. Crests and badges can be sealed in at centre court.
It depends on the depth remaining above the tongue, which we measure rather than guess. A floor sanded sparingly may have several cycles left; one machined every few years may have none.
Yes, including cradle, sports batten, pad and board and duo batten systems, specified against the sports being played and the build height available.
Yes, provided it is set up correctly and picks the water up rather than leaving it standing. We are happy to check your machine settings while we are on site.
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.
No. We are a commercial contractor working on schools, leisure centres, universities, clubs and public buildings. The machinery, finishes and insurance are different from domestic work.
No. Every job is carried out by our own directly employed team using our own machinery. It is why we can commit to a finish date and why the standard is the same on the last day as the first.
Yes. We carry out pendulum slip resistance testing and provide the certificate, which is worth having on file for insurers, governing bodies and facilities audits.
Usually a two pack polyurethane in a satin sheen. It holds slip resistance and appearance under heavy use, and satin hides scuffing and avoids glare under the LED lighting most halls now have.
Book a free survey of your floor in Essex 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.