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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Hertfordshire and across the UK. A large proportion of the halls we survey here were built between the 1950s and 1980s, which brings a specific set of floor types with it.
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
Getting this wrong is the most expensive mistake available. Granwood and composite block floors look superficially like timber but hold almost no surface material, and sanding one the way you would sand boards destroys it permanently.
Granwood appears as small rectangular blocks in a brick-like pattern and feels noticeably harder underfoot. If you are not certain what you have, send a photograph and we will identify it free of charge before anybody quotes for work.
A sound Granwood floor is well worth keeping. The correct route is careful preparation followed by a specialist modified epoxy coating system, which restores an even, consistent surface with the colour back in it and provides a durable finish for heavy use.
It costs a fraction of replacement, keeps a serviceable floor out of a skip, and produces a result most people assume must be a new installation. Fresh markings are applied as part of the same programme.
Buildings from that era were frequently constructed at speed, and their slabs often predate modern damp-proofing expectations. Vapour rising from below is the commonest reason a floor laid over one fails early.
We take moisture readings in and beneath the floor before specifying anything, and where readings demand a barrier we install one and explain why. Where they do not, we leave it out rather than adding cost you do not need.
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
When a hall is reported as slippery, opinion is not enough. We test the surface with a pendulum to BS 7976-2, taking readings across a grid and in more than one direction so a worn centre court does not hide behind good readings at the edges.
You receive a written report giving the values, the positions and a clear statement against the threshold accepted for sports use. Hertfordshire trusts use it as evidence before committing budget to a hall, and as a completion certificate showing that a new finish performs as it should. It also answers an insurer’s questions quickly if an incident is ever reported.
A low reading almost always traces back to polish residue, the wrong cleaner or a seal worn smooth in the traffic lanes, and we set out the remedy with the result rather than leaving you with a figure and nothing to do about it.
A dance studio asks for something a sports hall does not. Dancers need a floor that absorbs landings generously and gives a controlled, consistent slide, whereas a hall floor is built for grip and true ball bounce. Specifying one as if it were the other causes injuries either way.
The usual answer is a sprung timber sub structure with either a sanded timber surface for tap and ballroom or a vinyl performance layer for ballet, contemporary and drama. The vinyl is loose laid or fully bonded depending on how the room is used, and it can be lifted for a hall that also stages performances.
Hertfordshire’s independent and grammar schools often have a dedicated studio next to the hall, and the two floors want different maintenance. Studio vinyl is deep cleaned and never sealed, while the timber beside it is on a recoat cycle, and we set both regimes out at handover.
Everything we do is carried out by directly employed staff using machinery we own. That is not a boast, it is the reason the rest of our promises hold. The people who survey your hall are the people who sand it, so what was agreed on the visit is what happens on site. We control the programme, so a finish date given in writing is one we can keep.
It also matters for the specialist work. Granwood, parquet, sprung floor structure and pendulum testing are not things a general flooring firm picks up in a week, and a subcontracted job has nobody on site who has done them before.
Many of the team have been with us for well over a decade, and the company has traded since 1987. That continuity is why we can look at a hall in Hertfordshire and tell you what is under the boards before lifting one.
Hertfordshire gives us a heavy weighting towards school sport, with academy trust estates, independent schools and grammar schools all well represented.
Trust work is the pattern we see most. Where one organisation holds ten or twenty sports halls of differing ages, a condition survey across the estate followed by a phased programme is far more useful than dealing with each hall as it becomes urgent. It spreads the spend across budget years and stops several floors reaching crisis in the same summer.
Independent and grammar school halls tend to be better maintained and come to us for preventative work, which is exactly right. A screen and recoat every two to three years keeps a floor off the full refinish cycle for far longer.
Leisure centres and community facilities follow, where booking income means overnight and weekend working.
We completed work at De Wint School in the wider region, and the constraints were typical: a hall in constant use, a finish long overdue, and a fixed date to be back for term. Summer slots book up early, so it is worth raising these in January rather than June.
Almost every Hertfordshire enquiry is a school or trust, so the comparison that matters is De Wint School.
That hall had gone considerably longer than it should have between refinishes. The seal had worn through in the traffic lanes, dirt had worked into open timber, and the markings had faded to the point where several sports were awkward to officiate. We sanded back to bare timber, cut out and replaced the damaged boards, resealed with a two pack polyurethane, and set the markings out fresh from measured governing body dimensions instead of tracing what was there.
Two redundant sets came off while the floor was open, which cost nothing and made the hall noticeably clearer.
The constraint throughout was the term date, and it did not move. That is the case on every school project, and it is why we survey early, order materials ahead and staff the job to finish inside the window rather than treating the end date as an aspiration.
The programme does not end when the last coat goes on. A two pack polyurethane takes light foot traffic after around twenty four hours, and equipment, mats and full use wait seventy two hours or more. The seal keeps hardening for about a week, and a floor loaded before then carries the marks until it is next recoated.
That is why the reopening date we give is a specific day and time rather than a hope, and why we confirm it against the manufacturer’s data for the product actually used.
For a Hertfordshire school putting exam desks into the hall on the first day of term, or a leisure centre selling court bookings, that certainty matters more than shaving a day. If a hall is needed sooner than the cure allows, we say so before we start and look at nights or phasing, never at cutting the cure short.
It follows the area, the depth of timber left, the number of sports marked and the hours you need us to work. We survey free and return a fixed, itemised quotation, so a trust can see what each hall costs and phase the spend across its budget years.
Yes, from Watford and St Albans through Hertford and Stevenage to the Cambridgeshire and Essex borders, and nationally beyond that. Our own team travels with its own machinery, and travel appears as its own line in the quotation.
Yes, once the leak is fixed. Boards that have cupped, stained or rotted are cut out and replaced with timber matched by species and grade, the area is levelled, and the whole floor is sanded and sealed together so the repair vanishes. We check moisture first.
Lay a purpose made protective covering before the desks arrive, not after. Several hundred desk feet dragged into rows score a floor more in a fortnight than sport does in a year. We advise on the right grade for your surface and how to store it without marking.
Yes. Many older halls we restore are listed, and we keep interventions sympathetic, matching replacement timber by species and grade and choosing finishes that suit the building. We can advise on what conservation officers usually accept before you apply for consent.
Yes. We visit, measure the timber depth, take moisture readings, check beneath the floor and review the markings and fittings, then send a written report with a fixed quotation. There is no charge and no obligation, and the report is yours to keep.
Yes. Individual boards that are split, lifted or worn through are cut out and replaced with matched timber, then the whole surface is sanded and sealed as one. It costs a fraction of a new floor and the repair disappears into the finish.
A great deal, but almost none of it leaves the hall. Our sanders run on continuous extraction with bagged collection, the doors are sealed, the ventilation is isolated and the hall and access route are vacuumed at the end of each shift. Classes can continue next door.
Book a free survey of your sports hall floor in Hertfordshire, for a single school or a whole trust. We will assess it, say what it needs and give you a fixed price and firm dates. Call 01823 674562 or send us a message.