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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Hampshire and across the UK. We work across the county on installation, refurbishment and the recurring maintenance that keeps both worthwhile.
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
A pendulum test measures how much a rubber slider is slowed as it sweeps across the floor, producing a Pendulum Test Value. A PTV of 36 or above indicates low slip potential; below that, the risk rises sharply.
Testing to BS 7976-2 is what the HSE recognises and what an insurer or investigation will reference. We record values across multiple positions in both wet and dry conditions and provide a written report, because a single reading in one corner proves very little.
A low reading rarely means the floor is worn out. By far the commonest cause is cleaning residue: over-strength product, incorrect dilution or the wrong pH leaves a film that reduces friction across the whole surface.
That is good news, because a deep clean costs a fraction of a refurbishment. Where the seal itself has genuinely broken down, a recoat restores the surface. Testing before and after tells you objectively which of the two you were dealing with.
Anyone responsible for a public or educational facility carries a duty of care, and evidence matters more than assurance if something goes wrong. An annual test creates a documented record showing the surface was monitored and acted upon.
Booked alongside a deep clean and condition inspection in a single visit, it costs very little and keeps the file current rather than assembled retrospectively under pressure.
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
Dance floors have requirements that pull against those of a sports hall, and specifying one as though it were the other produces a room nobody is happy with.
Grip is the first difference. Dancers need a surface that allows controlled slide, particularly for turns, while still being safe to land on. A finish specified purely for basketball grip will be too grabby, and injuries follow from a foot that stops when the body does not.
Resilience is the second. Dance involves repeated jumping and landing, often in the same spot, and a sprung floor is not a luxury in a studio used seriously. Where a studio sits above other rooms, that same resilience needs to work acoustically as well.
Surface choice varies with the discipline. Ballet and contemporary generally want a vinyl performance surface over a sprung base. Tap and musical theatre want timber. Multi purpose studios need a compromise, and it is worth being honest about which discipline gets priority rather than pretending one floor suits everything equally.
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.
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.
Every quotation follows a site visit, because a sports floor holds information you cannot get from a photograph and a price given without it is a price that will change.
We take moisture readings in the boards and, where there is any reason for doubt, in the slab beneath. Moisture from below is the single most common cause of a new finish failing early, and it is far cheaper to find before the work than afterwards.
We measure the remaining wear layer. Every full sand removes timber, and a floor that has been through several cycles may be close to its fixings. Knowing where you stand tells you whether this is a floor to refinish now or a floor to plan on replacing in a few years.
We lift a vent or an edge trim and look underneath. Dead spots, squeaks and movement almost always start below the boards, and no amount of work on the surface will touch them.
Then we record the finish, the markings and the condition of the perimeter. The survey takes about an hour and it decides everything that follows.
Hampshire is one of the areas we work in most, and it gives us the full range: school and academy sport, leisure operator facilities, university sport, clubs and community halls.
Leisure centre work is a substantial part of it. We completed the refinish at Medina Leisure Centre, and that project illustrates the type well: a heavily booked sports hall, an operator who could not afford to lose the income, and a programme built around the centre timetable rather than ours. Dust control mattered particularly there, because leisure buildings share air handling between spaces and members notice immediately.
School and academy halls follow, with the fixed term dates that govern every school job, and summer slots that book up a long way ahead.
Independent school sport, squash courts and club facilities make up much of the rest. Squash in particular needs a matt high grip specification rather than a general sports lacquer.
Because this is close to our base we can survey quickly and often fit smaller jobs around larger programmes, which helps on both cost and timing.
Hampshire is one of our busiest areas and the enquiries cover the full range, but three come up repeatedly.
Leisure operators call about programme as much as condition. The floor needs doing, the centre cannot afford a fortnight closed, and the question is how to fit the work around a booking diary. The answer is usually overnight working, sealed at the end of a shift so the hall is walkable by opening.
Schools call about markings and wear together, because both become obvious at the same time. Doing them in one visit during a holiday is considerably cheaper than treating them as separate jobs.
Clubs and squash facilities call about grip. A court or hall that has gone slick through the busiest area needs the right matt high grip system, and it is a safety matter rather than a preference.
Being local, we can usually get to a survey quickly, which helps when something has become urgent.
Court markings wear out long before the floor underneath them does, and recognising that is what saves facilities a great deal of money.
A timber sports floor might run eight to ten years between full refinishes. The markings on it, particularly in a netball centre third or a basketball key, can look tired in half that. If the seal is still sound and still gripping properly, replacing the whole finish because the lines have faded is an expensive way to solve a cheap problem.
The test we apply at survey is simple. If the lacquer is intact across the floor and only the markings have gone, you need relining. If the lacquer has worn through to bare timber in the traffic lanes, you need a refinish and the markings come as part of it. Somewhere between the two, a screen and recoat with fresh line marking usually gives the best value.
We will tell you which of the three your hall needs, and we would far rather quote the cheaper option and see you again in five years than sell a full sand nobody needed.
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.
We recommend products suited to your floor and local water, and run a cleaning demonstration for your own team. Most of the work between our visits is theirs, so getting the routine right matters.
The European standard for indoor sports surfaces. It sets out how shock absorption, vertical deformation, ball bounce and friction are measured, and what an indoor sports floor should achieve.
We can give indicative guidance from photographs and hall dimensions, which is often enough to plan a budget. A firm fixed price needs a site survey, which is free.
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.
A failed pad, cracked batten or tired cradle beneath the boards. It is a structural problem, and sanding the surface will not change how the floor feels. We lift the boards locally and replace the failed components.
Because we survey properly we usually know what is coming and allow for it in the quotation as expected work rather than presenting it later as an extra. Genuinely unforeseeable finds are rare.
Heating dries the air, the boards give up moisture and shrink. It is normal seasonal movement rather than a fault, and it closes again in summer. Keeping the building humidity more stable reduces it.
Light foot traffic is normally possible around twenty four hours after the final coat, and full use with equipment back at seventy two hours. We confirm exact times for the system used, because they vary.
Usually because the expansion gaps at the perimeter have closed or been blocked, or because moisture is coming up through the slab. Both need diagnosing before refinishing, or the cause simply repeats.
Book a free survey of your floor in Hampshire 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.