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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Newport and across the UK. We work with schools, colleges and leisure operators across south east Wales.
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
A hall serving sport, dining, examinations and community lettings cannot be specified as though it only hosts sport. Chairs, tables and staging cause most of the damage we later repair.
We choose finishes tough enough for furniture while retaining acceptable grip and shock absorption for activity, and we say plainly what that compromise costs on the sporting side rather than glossing over it.
Protective covering is the cheapest floor protection available. Laid over the playing surface for exams, catering and events, it absorbs the damage furniture would otherwise cause and lifts quickly afterwards.
The cost is a fraction of the repairs it prevents. We advise on the correct type for your surface and on handling and storage, since badly stored covering can mark a floor itself.
Damage is frequently localised: an area by a doorway, a water-affected patch, or impact damage from equipment. That does not require a whole new floor.
Affected boards are cut out and replaced with timber matched by species and grade, levelled into the surrounding surface, then sanded and sealed as one so the repair disappears completely into the finish.
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
Sanding makes dust. The question is whether it stays in the room or ends up through the building, and that is a matter of equipment and preparation rather than luck.
Our machines run on sealed vacuum extraction rather than bag systems, which captures the great majority of it at source. We screen the working area, and we agree with your site team which doors, vents and air handling routes need isolating before we start. In buildings with shared ventilation, particularly leisure centres with a pool hall, that conversation matters.
Edges and corners are the point at which dust escapes on a badly run job, because hand machines are harder to extract from. We use extracted edge equipment for the same reason we use it everywhere else.
The room we are working in will be dusty. The rest of the building should not be, and if it is then something has been done wrong. We would rather set the expectation clearly than have you discover it.
Timber floors move with the humidity of the building around them, and a great many problems blamed on workmanship are actually a building management issue.
Gaps that open every winter and close every summer are the classic pattern. Heating dries the air, the boards give up moisture and shrink, and the gaps appear. Come summer the moisture returns and they close. That is normal behaviour rather than a fault, though it can be reduced by keeping the building within a more stable range.
The problems start at the extremes. Very dry heated air over a long winter can shrink boards enough to split them or pull them off their fixings. Very damp conditions, particularly in an unheated hall that is suddenly used intensively, cause expansion, and where the perimeter gaps have been closed by later flooring or skirting the floor has nowhere to go and lifts in the middle.
Running ventilation after use, rather than only during it, makes a measurable difference in halls that get hot and humid.
Most halls are asked to accommodate five or six sports on one floor, and the difference between a hall that works and one that confuses everybody is hierarchy rather than cleverness.
We start by asking what is actually played, and in what proportion. The sport used most gets the dominant colour and the clearest line. Secondary sports step back. Anything genuinely redundant comes off, which is almost always the single biggest improvement available.
The conflicts are predictable. Netball goal circles land on the basketball key. Badminton tramlines cross both. Five a side markings run through everything. We resolve them by colour weight and by removing clutter, not by adding more variation into an already crowded floor.
Colour choice is made under your own hall lighting rather than on a paint chart, because LED refits have changed how colours read in a great many halls. Two shades that look distinct on paper can merge completely on the floor.
The real saving in looking after a sports floor is not in the refurbishment, it is in avoiding one.
A floor that receives a light screen and recoat every two to three years may never need another full sand. A floor left until the seal has worn through to bare timber will need a full refinish, and will have lost some of its remaining wear layer permanently in the meantime. Over the life of a building that difference is substantial.
A planned programme means scheduled visits rather than reactive calls: deep cleaning, screen and recoat when it is due, minor board repairs, remarking as lines wear, and an annual written condition inspection.
The inspection is the part clients tell us they value most, because it turns an unpredictable risk into a short report with a clear recommendation and a rough cost. That is something that can be put in front of a board or a governing body, and it is a great deal better than finding out in July that a hall will not open in September.
Newport work comes to us from council leisure facilities, secondary school sports halls, college sport and a number of club and community buildings.
Leisure centre halls are usually the busiest floors and the ones that benefit most from being kept on a proper maintenance cycle. A screen and recoat before the seal wears through to bare timber costs a fraction of a full refinish and keeps a floor off the replacement list for years.
School and academy halls follow the fixed term calendar, and the recurring problem is halls that have gone a decade or more without a proper refinish. Once the seal has gone in the traffic lanes, dirt sits in open timber and the staining eventually goes deep enough that sanding will not fully lift it.
Community and church halls are the third group, and those old timber floors usually have plenty of depth left under the polish.
We are regularly in South Wales, so travel to the area is routine. Where several facilities are considering work, sequencing them together brings the cost down for everybody involved.
Two projects answer most of what Newport facilities ask us.
Medina Leisure Centre is the closest for council and operator run sports halls. Booking income made a fortnight closed impossible, so the work was programmed around the centre timetable, with the noisiest operations sequenced for the quietest hours and every coat given the cure time it needed. Sealed dust extraction and screening kept the rest of the building usable, which matters in a leisure facility where air handling is shared between spaces.
For school halls, De Wint School is the better comparison: a hall in constant curriculum use, a finish that had gone well past its proper cycle, and a fixed term date with no flexibility at the end.
In both cases the work itself was routine. What made them succeed was surveying thoroughly enough that nothing unexpected appeared once the old finish came off, which is what allows a fixed price and a date that holds.
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.
There is no standard rate, because no two floors arrive in the same condition. What we can promise is that we will identify the cheapest option that genuinely solves the problem and quote it alongside the fuller alternatives, with firm figures rather than ranges.
Yes, throughout. Distance is a logistics question rather than a quality one, and we resolve it by planning the whole programme in advance rather than working in stages.
Yes, using the pendulum method to BS 7976-2 with a written report recording values across multiple positions. It either reassures you or gives you documented evidence that the floor needs attention.
We carry the insurance and documentation institutional clients require, work to CDM where applicable, and provide method statements and risk assessments as standard.
We stop, tell you, and price the options before proceeding. Nothing gets sealed over and no additional work happens without your agreement in writing.
It can if it is run too hot or brought up too quickly, which dries the boards and opens gaps. The system needs proper commissioning and controlled surface temperatures, and the timber needs to be specified as suitable.
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.
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. 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.
The blocks and boards themselves are not the concern, but bitumen adhesive beds used before the mid nineteen eighties can contain it. We treat every bitumen bedded floor as suspect until testing confirms otherwise.
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.
Book a free survey of your floor in Newport 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.