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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Pembrokeshire and across the UK. A coastal county where humidity and entrance wear define most of the technical decisions.
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
Buildings near the sea experience higher and more variable humidity, and timber responds by moving more than it would inland. A floor laid without adequate expansion allowance will gap in one season and tighten in another.
We take moisture and humidity readings at survey, set expansion gaps according to species, board width and the building environment, and advise on ventilation where a hall swings widely between heating seasons.
Seal systems cure differently in persistently humid conditions, and a product that performs perfectly in a dry inland building can fail early on the coast.
We select systems suited to the actual environment and allow realistic curing times rather than manufacturer minimums. It occasionally extends a programme by a day and it substantially extends the life of the finish.
Coastal facilities deal with sand and salt carried in on footwear, both of which are abrasive and corrosive in ways ordinary dirt is not. Entrance zones bear almost all of it.
Matting, barrier zones and an appropriate cleaning routine address the cause; specifying a harder-wearing finish addresses the consequence. We advise on both, and prioritise entrance areas during slip testing.
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
Most enquiries reach us as a description of a symptom, and there are a few things that let us give a genuinely useful reply rather than a holding one.
Photographs are the most valuable. Two or three of the whole room, and two or three close up of whatever is worrying you, tell us more than several paragraphs. If there is a worn patch, a stain, a lifting board or a dead spot, photograph that specifically.
Approximate dimensions, or just the number of badminton courts, gives us the area. The rough age of the floor and whether anybody knows what is underneath helps. If you have any record of previous work, even a decade old invoice, that is genuinely useful.
Then tell us what the room is used for and when it could realistically be closed. Those two facts shape the recommendation as much as the condition does.
From that we can usually give an informed steer and a budget range before arranging a survey.
Where one organisation is responsible for several sports floors, the sensible approach is a programme rather than a series of separate decisions.
We start with a condition survey of every floor: construction, remaining wear layer, state of the finish and structure, markings, moisture, all photographed and recorded. That produces one document showing what the estate holds and what condition it is in, which very few organisations have.
From there the work is prioritised. Some floors need attention this year, some can wait three, some need nothing beyond maintenance. The programme then phases across budget years, taking each hall out of use at the quietest point in its own calendar rather than trying to do everything in one summer.
The advantages compound. Costs fall because mobilisation is spread and the sequence is efficient. Specification is consistent across every site. Documentation is standardised. And nobody is ever in the position of having six floors fail at once.
We work this way with academy trusts, local authorities, leisure operators and universities.
Almost every hall we work in has a stage, and it is usually in worse condition than the hall floor because of what gets dragged across it.
Stages are often a different construction and a different timber from the room they sit in, sometimes with a hollow void beneath for resonance. That changes how they are sanded and what they can take, and it is worth knowing before a machine goes on.
The finish is a different decision too. A matt or dead matt seal kills the reflections that stage lighting otherwise produces, and it hides the scuffing that scenery and staging leave. Some venues want a stage that can be painted for productions, which changes the specification again and needs discussing at the outset rather than afterwards.
We generally recommend doing the stage at the same time as the hall. It costs considerably less than two separate visits, it gives a consistent appearance, and the stage is usually the part that most needs it.
Every quotation follows a site visit, because a sports floor holds information you cannot get from a photograph and a price given without it is a price that will change.
We take moisture readings in the boards and, where there is any reason for doubt, in the slab beneath. Moisture from below is the single most common cause of a new finish failing early, and it is far cheaper to find before the work than afterwards.
We measure the remaining wear layer. Every full sand removes timber, and a floor that has been through several cycles may be close to its fixings. Knowing where you stand tells you whether this is a floor to refinish now or a floor to plan on replacing in a few years.
We lift a vent or an edge trim and look underneath. Dead spots, squeaks and movement almost always start below the boards, and no amount of work on the surface will touch them.
Then we record the finish, the markings and the condition of the perimeter. The survey takes about an hour and it decides everything that follows.
Pembrokeshire work reaches us mainly from school sports halls, community leisure facilities and a large number of village and church halls.
Because the county is a long way from most suppliers, we plan this work as continuous blocks and bring everything we need with us: machinery, abrasives, coatings and spares. Nothing can be collected in the afternoon, so the job has to be thought through completely before we set off. That makes remote projects more tightly planned than local ones rather than less.
School halls are the largest group, and in many communities the school hall is the principal indoor sports space for the surrounding area, taking club training and community lettings alongside curriculum use.
Village and church halls follow, and there are a great many. Those timber floors usually have plenty of depth left under the polish, and restoration transforms them for a modest sum.
Where several facilities in the region are considering work, sequencing them into one trip makes a genuine difference to cost for everybody involved.
Pembrokeshire enquiries usually resemble one of two projects.
For school halls that serve as the community sports facility, De Wint School is the closest comparison. Curriculum sport, club training and evening lettings on one floor, a seal worn through where the traffic runs, and a fixed term date at the end of it. The floor was taken back to bare timber, damaged boards replaced, and markings set out fresh from measured dimensions with redundant sports removed while the floor was open.
For village and church halls, St Katherine Hall is the better parallel: an old timber floor under decades of polish with chair and table scoring across the whole area, restored rather than replaced.
Both make the point about remote work. We plan these as continuous blocks with everything brought with us, which makes the programme tighter and the dates more reliable, and sequencing several halls into one trip brings the cost down for all of them.
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.
Yes. Every survey produces a written report with moisture readings, board condition, recommended work and firm costs, designed to be usable as budget evidence.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A well maintained hall wants a light screen and recoat every two to three years and a full sand roughly every ten. Sticking to that keeps the boards alive far longer, because every full sand removes timber permanently.
Book a free survey of your floor in Pembrokeshire 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.