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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Merseyside and across the UK. We work across the county on school, community and leisure facilities, much of it multi-use halls.
We have been specialising in indoor sports and commercial timber floors since 1987. The business is family-run, nothing is subcontracted, and the crew who survey a building are the crew who work on it. Domestic and residential projects fall outside what we do and are looked after 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 sheet vinyl sports floor is only as good as its joints. Sheets are laid in runs and the seams heat welded with a matching rod, then trimmed flush so the surface becomes effectively continuous and watertight.
Poorly executed welding is the commonest defect we are called to repair on vinyl floors: seams lift, dirt tracks in, and eventually water reaches the sub-floor. It is entirely avoidable with correct tooling and temperature control.
Synthetic floors cannot be sanded, but they are far from disposable. Damaged areas can be cut out and patched with matching material, failed seams re-welded, and deep cleaning will lift the residue that makes a surface look tired and feel slippery.
Some systems also accept a resealing treatment that restores appearance and grip. We assess what you have and what it will genuinely accept before recommending anything.
Unlike timber, a synthetic surface has a finite life and cannot be renewed indefinitely. The indicators are clear enough: wear through to the backing, widespread seam failure, or a surface that no longer holds a clean.
We will tell you when a floor has reached that point rather than selling maintenance that merely postpones the inevitable, and we will quote replacement including strip-out and sub-floor preparation.
Harris Academy wanted a sports floor to match its ambitions, so we fitted a complete Junckers solid-beech sports system, the same Danish flooring specified in elite competition venues, finished with full multi-sport line markings.
An installation like that is a long-term statement: properly maintained, it will outlast every pupil currently on the roll. The project ran to programme from bare sub-floor to handover.
~ 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.
Most sports floors are replaced later and more expensively than they needed to be, because nobody was watching them.
An inspection is a short, structured visit that produces a written report on the state of the floor: the finish, the markings, the boards, the structure beneath, moisture readings, the remaining wear layer and anything that needs attention now rather than later. It comes with photographs and a rough cost against each recommendation.
That document does two useful things. It tells a business manager or an operations lead what is coming, so a floor appears in a budget rather than as an emergency. And it creates a record over time, so you can see whether a problem is stable or getting worse.
For organisations with several floors it is the single most valuable thing we do, because it converts an unpredictable estate risk into a plannable one. Discovering in July that a hall cannot open in September is the situation everybody wants to avoid, and it is entirely avoidable.
For a leisure operator, floor work is a revenue problem before it is a maintenance problem, and we programme accordingly.
Closing a sports hall stops booking income immediately, and members notice. So most of this work happens overnight or across quiet weeks, sequenced so the noisiest operations fall when the rest of the building is emptiest. Sealing at the end of a shift means the floor is walkable by opening.
Dust control matters more in a leisure centre than almost anywhere, because air handling is usually shared between spaces and a pool hall carries dust remarkably well. Sealed extraction and proper screening keep the rest of the building usable.
Operators running facilities on contract often have obligations about facility standards, which makes documented condition and slip resistance testing genuinely useful rather than administrative. We provide the certificates as a matter of course.
Where an operator holds several sites, a phased programme across the estate is almost always better value than site by site reaction.
Most facilities cannot fund everything a floor needs in one financial year, and the useful question is therefore not what the whole job costs but what has to happen first.
We split every quotation into the work that protects the asset and the work that improves it. Structural repair, moisture remediation and sealing protect the floor: leave those and the problem compounds, and next year the job is bigger. Markings, logos and cosmetic improvements can wait a year without any consequence beyond appearance.
That distinction lets a business manager fund the essential element now and schedule the rest, rather than deferring the whole scheme because the total was too large. It is also far easier to defend to a board or a governing body, because the reasoning is visible.
Where a facility holds several floors, the same logic applies across the estate. We will tell you which building needs money this year and which can safely wait three, so the spend is spread rather than arriving all at once.
Merseyside brings us a mix of academy trust work, council leisure facilities, university sport and a good number of club and community buildings.
Trust estates are the pattern we see most often. Where a trust holds a dozen or more sports halls of differing ages, surveying the whole estate and producing a costed priority order is far more useful than dealing with each hall as it becomes urgent, and it lets the spend be phased across budget years.
Leisure centre work follows, where booking income makes long closures expensive and most of the work is done overnight, sealed at the end of a shift so the floor is walkable by opening.
Older school and church halls in the region frequently have Granwood floors. It is a composite block in a bitumen bed rather than timber, it needs a specialist approach, and most of the Granwood we are asked to look at is worth restoring rather than replacing.
Squash courts and club facilities make up the rest, and squash in particular needs a matt high grip specification rather than a general sports lacquer.
Merseyside enquiries reflect a mix of ages and uses, and three problems come up repeatedly.
The first is a school or academy hall where the seal has gone in the traffic lanes and dirt has worked into open timber. Caught reasonably early those floors restore completely. Left too long, the staining goes deeper than sanding will reach, and the finished result is compromised through no fault of the work.
The second is Granwood in the older school and church halls. It is a composite block in a bitumen bed rather than timber, it needs specialist preparation and a modified epoxy coating, and most of what we are asked to look at is worth restoring rather than replacing.
The third is squash courts that have polished smooth at the T. That is a safety issue rather than a comfort one, and a matt high grip reseal restores it properly rather than masking it.
Court relining is one of the cheapest interventions available to a facility and often the one that makes the most visible difference for the money.
Price is driven by the number of courts, whether the line marking is going down inside a reseal or as a standalone visit, and how much redundant marking has to be dealt with first. Removing three sets of lines nobody uses makes the job cheaper, not dearer.
On timing, a standalone reline of a multi sport hall is typically two to three days including cure time. A full recolour of a synthetic floor takes four to six days depending on coats and drying conditions.
The hall has to be empty throughout and stay empty while coatings cure. Foot traffic is normally possible around twenty four hours after the final coat and full use at seventy two. Walking on a floor too early is the single most common cause of a marking job needing touching up, and it is entirely avoidable.
We work holidays, weekends and overnight as a matter of routine.
It depends on what the floor actually needs. A deep clean is the least expensive intervention, a recoat sits in the middle, a full sand and seal above that, and replacement is the rare last resort. We survey free of charge and price every realistic option so you can choose on evidence.
All of it, plus the surrounding region. Everything is surveyed, agreed and priced before we set off, so there are no additional travel charges appearing partway through a project.
We stop, tell you, and price the options before proceeding. Nothing gets sealed over and no additional work happens without your agreement in writing.
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.
Yes. We survey the slab for level and moisture first, install mitigation where readings require it, and specify the system to the actual timetable of the hall rather than to a standard answer.
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.
Surface marks and worn lacquer come out easily. Deep water staining and anything soaked into open timber may remain faintly visible, and we will tell you honestly at survey what to expect.
Yes, and we set out from measured dimensions rather than copying existing lines. Courts remarked by tracing the previous set drift over the years, and many halls turn out to be dimensionally out.
Yes. On timber the reliable method is sanding, which removes them completely. Most halls carry markings for at least one sport nobody plays, and taking them off is the cheapest improvement available.
Almost always polish or the wrong cleaning product building up, or a seal worn smooth in the traffic lanes. Both are fixable, and both should be dealt with before somebody is injured.
Book a free survey of your floor in Merseyside 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.