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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Norfolk and across the UK. A good deal of our work is for rural schools and community facilities where a single visit has to accomplish everything.
Our clients are schools, academy trusts, universities, leisure operators, councils and clubs, and have been since 1987. We cover the full lifecycle of a floor with our own team rather than a chain of subcontractors. Private homes are outside our scope and are served by Ryan’s Restorations.
Overnight/Weekend Installations
Professional Cleaning Demonstrations
Squash Court Maintenance
Recommended Cleaning Products
Professional Pendulum Slip Testing
Deep Clean & Reseal Service
Where a facility is a long way from anywhere, a contractor who has to return for a second stage is an expensive contractor. So work at distance is planned as a complete programme: survey, repairs, sanding, sealing, marking and any testing completed within a single agreed window.
Everything is priced before we travel, so there are no additional mobilisation costs appearing later and nothing left unfinished waiting on a return trip.
The first few metres inside the door take more punishment than the centre of any hall, and they are where slip incidents actually occur. Grit walked in from car parks and paths is abrasive in a way sport is not, and it cuts through a seal years early.
Effective matting, sensible barrier zones and the right cleaning routine address the cause rather than the symptom. We advise on all three, and pay particular attention to entrance areas during slip testing.
Community buildings work to tight budgets and committee timescales, and they are frequently sold work they do not need. We would rather give the cheap answer and be trusted with the expensive one later.
If a floor needs nothing more than a deep clean, that is what we will say. If it needs a recoat rather than a full sand, we will price the recoat. The survey report sets out the options with firm costs so a committee can decide with evidence rather than pressure.
The sports hall at St George’s had a Granwood block floor that decades of use had left dull and tired. Granwood cannot be sanded like timber, so we restored it correctly: careful preparation, a modified epoxy coating system and crisp new markings.
The school kept a serviceable floor out of a skip and spent a fraction of what replacement would have cost.
~ 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
Dance floors have requirements that pull against those of a sports hall, and specifying one as though it were the other produces a room nobody is happy with.
Grip is the first difference. Dancers need a surface that allows controlled slide, particularly for turns, while still being safe to land on. A finish specified purely for basketball grip will be too grabby, and injuries follow from a foot that stops when the body does not.
Resilience is the second. Dance involves repeated jumping and landing, often in the same spot, and a sprung floor is not a luxury in a studio used seriously. Where a studio sits above other rooms, that same resilience needs to work acoustically as well.
Surface choice varies with the discipline. Ballet and contemporary generally want a vinyl performance surface over a sprung base. Tap and musical theatre want timber. Multi purpose studios need a compromise, and it is worth being honest about which discipline gets priority rather than pretending one floor suits everything equally.
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.
If a sports floor fails early, moisture is usually the reason, and it is the thing we test for before anything else.
Water reaches a timber floor from three directions. From below, through a slab with no effective damp proof membrane or one that has been compromised. From above, through roof leaks, radiator failures and over wet cleaning. And from the air, where a building swings between damp and dry and the timber moves with it.
The symptoms differ. Boards that cup, with edges lifting higher than centres, generally mean moisture from below or a spill. Boards that dome or lift in the middle of the hall usually mean the floor has expanded with nowhere to go, often because perimeter gaps have closed. Gaps that open every winter are a humidity swing rather than a fault.
Sealing over a wet floor guarantees failure, which is why we take readings rather than assume. Where a slab is giving off moisture we install a mitigation membrane before laying, and where the cause is a leak we will tell you to fix the building first.
We have been trading since 1987, and the reason a firm lasts that long in this trade is that people call it back rather than calling somebody else.
Our work is guaranteed, and if something is not right we come back and put it right. That sounds like the least anybody should offer, and in this industry it is not as universal as it should be.
What we will not do is guarantee against things outside our control. A floor sealed over a slab we advised was too wet, a hall where the cleaning regime uses polish despite the guidance, or damage from a leak in the building are not workmanship issues, and we will explain the distinction at the time rather than in the small print.
Equally, we will tell you before we start when we think a job carries risk. If a floor is marginal, if a repair may not match perfectly, or if a stain may not fully come out, you will hear it at survey. Managing expectations honestly is a large part of why this works.
Norfolk brings us a largely rural mix, weighted towards school sports halls, community buildings and club facilities rather than large leisure estates.
School halls are the biggest group, and in a great many Norfolk communities the school hall is also the main indoor sports space for the area, taking curriculum sport, club training and community lettings on the same floor. That volume of mixed use wears a finish faster than the timetable suggests.
Village halls and church halls are the second group and the county has an exceptional number of them. Those timber floors are frequently a century old, buried under decades of polish and scored by chair and table legs, with plenty of board depth left underneath. We worked on St Katherine Hall, and it is a good illustration of the type: a well loved, well worn floor that carries badminton one evening and a community event the next, restored rather than replaced.
Because journeys within the county take a while, we plan work here as continuous blocks and bring everything with us.
Norfolk enquiries are dominated by rural halls, and the problems reflect that.
The most common is a village or church hall with a timber floor laid a century ago, buried under decades of polish and scored by chairs and tables going out and back several times a week. That polish has to come off chemically before sanding, and underneath there is almost always plenty of board depth left. Those floors transform completely.
The second is school halls that also serve as the community sports space, taking far more traffic than curriculum use alone, and arriving overdue as a result.
The third is moisture. Older buildings with solid floors and limited damp proofing need proper readings before anything is sealed, and it is one of the few things that cannot be corrected afterwards cheaply.
We quote by element throughout so hall committees can see exactly what each part costs and phase it if the funds require.
The most common mistake in court relining is tracing what is already on the floor. It repeats old errors and it keeps sports on the hall that nobody plays any more.
We set out from current governing body dimensions using laser and tape, not from the existing paint. Courts that have been remarked by copying the previous set drift over the years, and a surprising number of halls turn out to have netball thirds that are not equal or three point arcs that are not true. If your courts have always felt slightly wrong, that is usually why.
Every dimension is checked before a drop of paint goes down, and the two ends of a court are compared so the layout is symmetrical rather than merely plausible.
On timber the lines go on between coats of seal, which puts the paint under the final lacquer where trainers, trolleys and scrubber driers cannot reach it. That single detail is the difference between line marking that lasts the life of the finish and line marking that starts lifting within a season.
We quote fixed prices after a free survey rather than estimates over the phone. The main variables are the size of the floor, how much preparation it needs and whether repairs or sub-floor work are required. All of it is itemised in writing.
Comprehensively. We have delivered projects from Cornwall to the north of Scotland, and the approach does not change: survey, agree, price, then complete the work in a single visit.
A recoat lightly abrades the existing seal and adds fresh coats without touching the timber. A full sand takes the floor back to clean board. The recoat is far cheaper and is the right answer whenever the seal is worn but intact.
Yes, when the right system is specified. Sports vinyl and polyurethane are made to meet BS EN 14904 for shock absorption, ball bounce and friction, and are widely used in leisure centres and schools.
Machine cleaning with appropriate solutions to lift embedded residue and grime that normal mopping leaves behind, restoring appearance and grip. It starts from four pounds fifty per square metre.
Constantly. Summer holidays and half terms are when most of our school work happens, and summer slots book up early. If you are planning for next year it is worth speaking to us in January rather than June.
Light foot traffic is normally possible around twenty four hours after the final coat, and full use with equipment back at seventy two hours. We confirm exact times for the system used, because they vary.
Yes, and for organisations with several floors it is where we usually start. You get a written report per site with photographs, moisture readings, remaining wear layer and a costed priority order.
Heating dries the air, the boards give up moisture and shrink. It is normal seasonal movement rather than a fault, and it closes again in summer. Keeping the building humidity more stable reduces it.
Usually because the expansion gaps at the perimeter have closed or been blocked, or because moisture is coming up through the slab. Both need diagnosing before refinishing, or the cause simply repeats.
No. Every job is carried out by our own directly employed team using our own machinery. It is why we can commit to a finish date and why the standard is the same on the last day as the first.
Book a free survey of your floor in Norfolk 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.