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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Manchester and across the UK. Much of our work here involves maple performance courts and the racquets facilities that sit alongside them, both of which reward restraint rather than aggressive treatment.
Founded in 1987 and still run by the same family, we specialise in commercial sports and timber flooring: new installations, full refurbishments, sanding and resealing, court markings, pendulum testing and maintenance contracts. Domestic enquiries are passed to Ryan’s Restorations.
Overnight/Weekend Installations
Professional Cleaning Demonstrations
Squash Court Maintenance
Recommended Cleaning Products
Professional Pendulum Slip Testing
Deep Clean & Reseal Service
Hard maple is dense, pale and beautifully consistent, which is why it remains the benchmark for basketball. It is also finite: every full sand removes timber that never comes back, and a court machined every few years will run out of floor decades early.
We measure the depth remaining above the tongue before recommending anything. In practice a well-maintained maple court wants a screen and recoat every two to three years and a full sand roughly every eight to twelve. Contractors who only sand will tell you otherwise.
The most common complaint we hear is that a floor has become slippery, and the most common cause is not a worn seal but the residue left behind by cleaning. Over-strength product, the wrong pH or hard water leaves a film that reduces friction, and facilities respond by cleaning harder, which makes it worse.
A professional deep clean lifts that residue and normally restores grip without touching the seal. A pendulum slip test before and after tells you objectively whether the problem was the floor or the routine.
Squash courts follow different rules entirely. The floor is traditionally left unsealed so the bare timber provides grip, which makes dust control and board condition far more critical and rules out the lacquer systems used in a sports hall.
We sand, repair and maintain squash court floors to the standard competitive play demands, and where a club has several courts we phase the work so play continues throughout. Doing courts alongside the main hall in one visit costs considerably less than two mobilisations.
The gymnasium at The Bradfield Club had served generations and its floor wore every year of it. We sanded the original timber back to life, made the repairs it genuinely needed, then resealed and re-marked the space.
Community facilities work to tight budgets and cannot lose their halls for long, so the programme was planned accordingly and finished on the date agreed.
~ 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 question we are asked most is when the floor can be used again, and the honest answer is that it depends on the system, which is why we put it in writing rather than giving a rule of thumb.
As a general guide, light foot traffic is possible around twenty four hours after the final coat. Full use, with equipment wheeled back and posts refitted, is usually seventy two hours. Some systems are faster and some are slower, and cold or humid conditions extend both.
Walking on a floor too early is the single most common cause of a job needing touching up, and it is entirely avoidable. Footprints in a curing seal do not polish out. Nor do the marks left by equipment put back a day early.
So we agree access arrangements before we start, we sign the room, and where necessary we arrange for it to be locked. It is not us being difficult. It is the difference between a floor that hands over properly and one that needs us back.
Granwood is a composite block of wood flour and cement, laid in a bitumen bed, installed in thousands of British schools and halls from the nineteen thirties onwards. A great many are still down and still serviceable, which says a good deal about how well they were made.
It is not timber and it must not be treated as timber. There is no grain and no wear layer in the usual sense, and aggressive sanding takes block that cannot be put back. Bitumen softens with heat, so a machine held too long in one place draws adhesive up through the joints. Some older bitumen beds contain asbestos, and we treat every one as suspect until testing says otherwise.
Restoration means rebedding loose blocks, replacing those that have broken up, preparing the surface with appropriate abrasives, and coating with a modified epoxy system designed for composite substrates with the markings applied within the system.
Most Granwood floors described as beyond saving are not. We will tell you honestly which situation yours is in.
School work is governed by a date that does not move, and everything else is arranged around it.
A full sand and seal of a typical school hall takes one to two weeks, which fits comfortably into a summer holiday. Smaller halls and screen and recoat work fit into a half term. Easter and Christmas suit shorter jobs, though the drying conditions in midwinter need allowing for rather than ignoring.
Summer slots go early. Schools that ring in June are usually looking at the following year, and we would far rather have the conversation in January when there is still choice about dates. Trusts planning several halls should be thinking a full year ahead.
What makes these jobs work is preparation rather than long hours. We survey properly so nothing unexpected appears once the finish comes off, we order materials in advance, we staff the job to the programme instead of spreading a team thin, and we build cure times into the schedule rather than treating them as spare. The hall is back for the first day of term because it was planned to be.
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.
Manchester gives us a substantial mix of university sport, academy trust estates and city leisure facilities, across building stock that spans well over a century.
University and college facilities are among the most demanding to programme. They run year round, with summer conference and external hire filling the period a school would be closed, so the working windows are narrow, fixed and planned well in advance.
Academy and school 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 strong restoration candidates, and a survey often finds considerably more life left than the school expects.
Leisure centres follow, where the priority is always keeping the doors open and most of the work happens overnight.
We have completed work at Harris Academy in Wakefield and elsewhere in the north, and the pattern is consistent: survey properly so nothing unexpected appears once the finish comes off, plan to the holiday window, and hand the hall back on the agreed date.
The enquiries we take from Manchester cover a wide range, but three recur.
The first is a post war sprung floor that has lost its response in patches. Dead spots mean a failed pad, cracked batten or tired cradle beneath the boards, and no amount of surface work will change how that area feels. The repair is local: lift the boards, replace the components, relay.
The second is floors that have been coated repeatedly rather than refinished. Layer on layer eventually clouds, peels and lifts, and the answer is to take it back properly rather than add another coat over the top.
The third is markings that have accumulated. Halls carrying six sports, several no longer played, in colours that merge under modern lighting are common. Rationalising down to what is actually used is the cheapest improvement available and it makes the hall look considerably larger.
It varies with the state of the floor more than anything else. A hall needing only a clean and reline costs very little; one needing full sanding, repairs and resealing costs more but still far less than replacement. We will tell you honestly which category yours is in.
Yes, along with the surrounding area. Projects are planned as complete visits with everything agreed before we travel, so distance affects our logistics rather than your price or the quality of the finish.
Solid and engineered timber from Junckers, Boen and Havwoods, plus vinyl, polyurethane and lino, and specialist coating systems for Granwood and composite block floors.
Usually cleaning residue rather than a worn seal. Over-strength product or the wrong pH leaves a film that reduces grip. A deep clean normally restores it, and a slip test confirms it objectively.
Yes. Boards are matched by species and grade so repairs blend into the finish rather than announcing themselves. It is one of the reasons we do repairs in-house.
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.
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.
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.
Yes. Logos are painted from your own artwork between coats of seal so they wear with the floor rather than scuffing off. It costs least while the floor is already open for a refinish.
A typical hall takes one to two weeks from first machine to final coat, depending on size, how much board repair is needed and how many coats the seal requires. You get a day by day programme before we start.
Book a free survey of your floor in Manchester 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.