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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 a sports hall produces fine timber dust, and in a school that is still teaching in the rooms next door it has to be contained, not just swept up afterwards. Our machines run on sealed extraction units and the hall is isolated before the first pass.
Doors are sheeted, ventilation grilles are taped and any shared air handling is switched off or blanked for the duration. At the end of each shift the hall, corridor and thresholds are vacuumed so nobody walks dust into the rest of the building overnight.
Before any coat goes on, the floor is vacuumed again and tack wiped, because a seal applied over dust looks grainy and wears faster. Newport schools that keep classrooms open beside the hall tell us the work passed almost unnoticed, which is the standard we aim for.
A quotation from us is broken into its parts, so you can see what each element costs and take a view on it. Sanding and sealing is priced by area and by the number of coats. Repairs are itemised by the number of boards or the area affected.
Markings are priced per court and per colour, with any logo or coloured zone shown separately. Structural work under the boards, sub floor levelling and moisture barriers appear as their own lines, because those are the items that vary most between halls.
Travel and mobilisation are stated openly. For a Newport hall that is a modest figure, and it falls further where a second facility nearby books into the same trip. What you will not find is a provisional sum that grows once the work starts, because the survey has already told us what is there.
BS EN 14904 is the European standard for indoor sports surfaces and it sets out what a floor must do: absorb shock, return energy, give consistent ball bounce and resist slipping. Two families of system meet it in different ways.
An area elastic floor uses timber boards over battens on resilient pads or cradles, so the whole area flexes when a player lands. It suits halls where competitive sport comes first. A point elastic floor uses a foam backed vinyl or a poured polyurethane that deflects only where it is loaded, which is more forgiving for general use and easier to clean.
Combined systems place a point elastic layer over an area elastic base for the best of both. When we specify for a Newport leisure hall or school, we start from what the timetable asks of the floor and choose the class to match, then confirm it against the standard.
Court lines are only useful if they are right, and the drift that creeps in when each set is copied from the last is surprising. We set out every court fresh from the governing body figures, not from the paint already on the floor.
Netball is 30.5 by 15.25 metres. Basketball is 28 by 15 metres with the three point arc at 6.75 metres. Badminton is 13.4 by 6.1 metres for doubles. We measure the hall, place the principal court centrally, check the diagonals and only then mask and paint.
Lines are applied between coats of seal so they sit within the finish and wear at the same rate as the floor. On a Newport hall used for league fixtures that accuracy is what keeps the court eligible, and on a school hall it means pupils learn on a court laid out as the sport intends.
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.
Leisure centres cannot close for a fortnight without losing income and members, so much of our leisure work happens while the building is shut. We arrive after the last session, work through the night and leave the hall sealed and ventilated before the doors open.
Sanding is the noisy part and it is done first. Coats go down in the small hours so they have the longest possible cure before anyone walks in. Where the programme needs several nights, we agree with the duty manager which sessions move and put that in writing before the first shift.
Weekend blocks suit schools and colleges with a clear Saturday and Sunday, and a Friday evening start turns two days into a workable window. Across Newport we plan around the timetable you already have, not the other way round.
Yes. We test in wet and dry conditions at agreed points across the hall and issue a certificate recording the values, the method and the date. It is often the first thing we do when a hall is reported as slippery, because the numbers show whether the surface or the cleaning is at fault.
Because a seal applied over damp timber or a wet slab fails from underneath, and no amount of good application saves it. Readings tell us whether the floor is ready, whether a barrier is needed and whether a leak or condensation problem has to be solved first.
Possibly. Bitumen adhesives used under Granwood and some parquet floors before the 1980s can contain asbestos fibres. We do not disturb an old bed without checking, and where the age and type give cause for concern we arrange sampling before any lifting begins.
We recommend satin for almost every sports hall. Gloss shows scuffs and glare under LED lighting and makes the floor look dirtier than it is. A full matt can look flat and marks easily. Satin gives grip, hides wear and photographs well.
Yes, provided it runs with minimal water, a soft pad and a neutral cleaner. The floor should be dry within a minute of the machine passing. Flooding the surface or leaving standing water lets moisture into the joints, which is where cupping and black staining start.
Usually. Boards that have cupped or blackened are cut out and replaced with timber matched by species and width, then the area is sanded flush and sealed with the rest of the floor. We check the battens beneath at the same time, because water often reaches them too.
Yes. Many Newport schools and councils book the survey and structural repairs in one year and the sanding, sealing and marking in the next, or split a large estate site by site. We quote each phase separately so the figures sit cleanly in the right budget.
A great deal. Most of the grit that scratches a seal arrives on footwear in the first few metres inside the door. A properly sized barrier mat, cleaned regularly, removes it before it reaches the playing area and can add years to the life of a finish.
Arrange a free survey of your sports hall floor in Newport and we will set out clearly what it needs, what it will cost and how soon we can start. Call 01823 674562 or send us a message.