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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in West Yorkshire and across the UK. We have completed both premium timber installations and full refurbishments across the county.
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 new sports floor is far more than the surface you eventually see. The slab is tested for moisture and levelled where required, a barrier is installed if readings demand it, and the sprung sub-structure is built to the specification chosen for the sports involved.
Only then does the surface go down, followed by sealing, marking and a documented handover. The elements nobody ever sees determine whether the floor lasts a decade or four.
Solid timber offers the greatest number of refinishing cycles and the longest potential life. Engineered boards are more dimensionally stable in buildings with fluctuating humidity, and their wear layer still permits sanding, though fewer times.
Neither is universally better. In a well-controlled environment solid timber generally wins on longevity; in a building with poor humidity control engineered frequently outlasts it. We specify against the building rather than the price list.
A floor should be handed over with more than a handshake: curing schedule, cleaning routine, recommended products, maintenance intervals and the warranty terms set out plainly.
Because we install every element ourselves the cover applies to the whole system rather than one component, and the same team returns for maintenance. That continuity is why most of our installation clients become long-term maintenance clients.
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
The question we are asked most is when the floor can be used again, and the honest answer is that it depends on the system, which is why we put it in writing rather than giving a rule of thumb.
As a general guide, light foot traffic is possible around twenty four hours after the final coat. Full use, with equipment wheeled back and posts refitted, is usually seventy two hours. Some systems are faster and some are slower, and cold or humid conditions extend both.
Walking on a floor too early is the single most common cause of a job needing touching up, and it is entirely avoidable. Footprints in a curing seal do not polish out. Nor do the marks left by equipment put back a day early.
So we agree access arrangements before we start, we sign the room, and where necessary we arrange for it to be locked. It is not us being difficult. It is the difference between a floor that hands over properly and one that needs us back.
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.
A great deal of what we do happens when the building is empty, because for most facilities that is the only way the work can happen at all.
Leisure centres in particular rarely have a fortnight to give up. Booking income stops, members notice, and some of them do not come back. So we work overnight, sealing at the end of a shift so the floor is walkable by opening time, with heavy equipment going back once the finish has hardened properly.
Weekend working suits buildings that are busy on weekdays: offices with sports facilities, universities in term, and community halls with a weekday programme. Bank holiday weekends are particularly useful because they give an extra day of cure time.
Out of hours working costs a little more in labour and it saves considerably more in lost income and disruption. We will quote both ways so you can weigh one against the other rather than being told what your only option is.
Key holding, alarm codes and access arrangements are agreed in writing before we start.
University sports facilities have a particular problem: they are busy year round, so the long summer shutdown that schools rely on does not exist.
Term brings curriculum use, club training and league fixtures. The summer brings conferences, summer schools and external hire, which is often more lucrative than term time use. The window for work is therefore narrow, defined and non negotiable.
The way we handle it is by planning to the window rather than hoping to fit inside it. We survey early, order materials in advance, staff the job properly rather than spreading a team across sites, and build the cure times into the programme rather than treating them as slack.
Campus estates usually hold several floors of different ages: a main sports hall, studios, squash courts and a fitness suite, often built decades apart. A condition survey across all of them, with a phased programme, is generally far more useful than dealing with each as it becomes urgent.
West Yorkshire brings us academy trust estates, university sport, council leisure facilities and a considerable amount of older building stock.
Academy work is the pattern we see most. We have completed projects at Harris Academy and at Hornbury Academy in Wakefield, and the constraints are consistent across them: halls in constant curriculum use, finishes that had gone well past their proper cycle, and fixed term dates that do not move.
Where a trust holds a dozen or more halls, surveying the whole estate and producing a costed priority order is far more useful than dealing with each as it becomes urgent, and it lets the spend phase across budget years.
University and college sport follows, with the narrow year round windows every campus has.
Leisure centres come next, where booking income means overnight working. The older halls across the region frequently turn out to be Granwood, which needs a specialist approach and is usually well worth restoring.
Both of the projects most relevant to West Yorkshire enquiries are in the county, and the constraints were identical.
Harris Academy and Hornbury Academy in Wakefield were halls in constant curriculum use with community lettings on top, where the floor had gone considerably longer than it should have between refinishes. In each case the seal had worn through where players actually run, dirt had begun working into open timber, and the markings had faded past the point of easy officiating.
Both were surveyed thoroughly first, which is what allowed a fixed price and a date that held. The floors were sanded back to bare timber, damaged boards were cut out and replaced with matching timber, and the halls were resealed with markings set out fresh from measured governing body dimensions. Redundant sports came off while the floors were open, at no extra cost, which made both halls noticeably clearer to use.
Each was handed back for the first day of term, because the programme was built to that date from the outset.
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.
Usually straightforward on a sound floor. Removing old lines completely requires sanding, so we will plan the new layout to work with what is already there and explain the options.
A well-installed and properly maintained timber floor can serve for decades because it can be renewed repeatedly. Synthetic surfaces typically run fifteen to twenty years before replacement.
Yes, and we do regularly. If a floor needs nothing more than a proper clean, that is what we will say. It costs us a job and earns us the next five.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, routinely. A great deal of our leisure centre and university work is done overnight so the facility keeps trading. It costs a little more in labour and usually saves a great deal more in lost income.
It depends on board thickness and how much has already been removed. A solid strip floor might take six to eight full sands across its life. We measure the remaining wear layer at survey.
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.
Book a free survey of your floor in West Yorkshire 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.