Sports floor

So, our home and office floors are installed.  We have followed all the rules, considered all of the features and desires.  What will the next objective for installation of high quality floor coverings be?  Sports arenas and gymnasiums come quickly to mind.  Sports floors, in all of their diversity, are more numerous than hardwood floors and laminate combined.  The sports floor: A “layer cake” with an even greater number of layers, is a major element of the sports infrastructure.

The primary classification of sports flooring is based on the openness of the sports complex: Tennis courts in the open air and covered courts will require different types of flooring.

The greatest difficulty may come with sports floors for professional competitions on an international scale, where the quality and parameters of a floor’s structural elements are strictly regulated by world norms and standards.

The simplest and least expensive sort is composition flooring made from PVC.  A similar alternative is modular plastic flooring.  The problem lies in the fact that in this case, “cheap” is a concept which may be very far from “quality”.  Certainly, aerobics studios and fitness centers do not require very much form a floor covering.  Next in quality comes sports linoleum.  But the real place for implementing ideas about quality improvement is given only by the hardwood sports floor.

A sports floor should have the following characteristics: Noise reduction, the even bounce of a ball, resistance to displacement of the equipment, effective cushioning, resistance to moisture absorption, durability, and an even color of the finish.  The hardwood flooring, which is used for the final layer of the sports floor, is sanded to factory specifications, after which it is covered with several layers of varnish or oil.   By the way, an oiled surface is more durable – with powerful impacts, great pressure and abrasion, varnish more quickly falls into disrepair.

The sports floor, aside from the upper layer of three-layered or even solid hardwood boards, contains several hidden structural layers.  Since the wood in and of itself as a material is hard and dangerous enough, the parquet layer is set on a double or single lag system, or even on the “rough” PVC floor.  In principle, there are four basic design types of wooden construction for indoor sports venues: “floating construction”, knock-down floors, slat systems, and deck floors.

Floating construction of a sports floor means the connection of flooring elements with the help of glue, hardware or bolts, but none of these is attached to the rough floor.   A PVC underlayment of sufficient density levels out surface irregularities.

Knock-down sports floors are convenient for halls where competitions in several types of sport take pace.  All that is required is to simply replace one component with another.  As with floating floor construction, elements of this type of sports floor may simply be removed and replaced in case of damage.

Slat systems are difficult to construct, but allow for the installation of “warm floor” systems, the conducting of cables within the free spaces, and the addition of elasticity to the floor on account of the double slats, which lie perpendicularly.

Deck construction for sports floors is simple to install thanks to tongue and groove joints, but the cost of the solid beams with the ideal geometric shape, and the general thickness of such a floor compared to slat system somewhat limit their scope of use.

Many manufacturing firms (Barlinek, Karelia Spings, Action Floor, Herculan) are prepared to offer you a wide variety of sports flooring of any type.  You just have to select the most appropriate one for your specific situation.