Wood Floor Blog

Different sports require different floors and floor designs can focus on a specific activity such as basketball, squash, dance and aerobics etc.

The ultimate sports floor must encourage optimum performance and safety whilst being easy to maintain. Sports floors are designed to deliver shock absorption, resilience, ball bounce and a precise surface friction.

The shock absorption level of a floor determines how much of the shock from a landing after a jump will return to the athletes leg. Hard surface such as concrete provide little or no force reduction for the athlete upon impact. Sports floor systems are designed to absorb as much of the shock as possible. If the floor is too hard the athlete will be exposed to early fatigue and aching joints through to the extreme, such as injuries, joint and shin bone damage. The friction levels of sports flooring has been closely studied. This characteristic is used to measure the floor’s ability to control the sliding of an athlete. Sports flooring must have a high enough surface friction to prevent uncontrollable sliding of athletes but also low enough to permit sliding if an extreme force is exerted on an athlete. Hardwood sports flooring are excellent protection against sports injuries. Research conducted has proven that more injuries occur on synthetic floor surfaces than do on hardwood sports floors. Sports flooring must also be able to withstand heavy loads from bleacher seating, trolley wheels and gym equipment etc.

A hardwood floor will not only fulfil the requirements needed for a sports floor but it will also creates an attractive internal environment, it is very easy to clean and maintain and also resists accidental damage. The day to day maintenance of sports floors is simply limited to sweeping or vacuuming the floor, when required the floor can be cleaned with scrubber dryer machines. Hardwood sports floors can be sanded and refinished many times over its lifetime this is because they are solid woods and usually ¾ inch thick.

When choosing interior sports flooring it essential you do your homework. At www.realoakfloors.co.uk we can supply a massive range of hardwood sports flooring from suppliers such as Junckers and Boen. In the UK, hardwood sports floors are governed by a number of recognised standards and all sports floors must fully comply to BS7044 Part 4. All of our sports flooring comes from suppliers who fully comply with at least this standard.

JUNKERS

A major supplier of sports floors are Junckers,they have a wide variety of sports flooring to suit any activity. Examples include the Blubat system, which comprises 22mm press dried beech boards secretly nailed to a kiln dried softwood batten with a continuous layer of 9mm thick special foam to the underside. This offers a semi-sprung floor at budget cost. Other systems from the Junkers range include the UnoBat 62+ this is an undercarriage system featuring softwood battens with unique shock absorption rubber pads with J-Lock connection systems, or the DouBat 110+ system which features double layer batten systems with construction heights of 110mm.You can even choose portable flooring systems to offer flexibility for arenas and halls that play host to a wide variety of sporting events and even a specialised squash flooring system which provides high levels of friction and shock absorption.

BOEN

Boenare a top selling manufacturer ofBoflex and Arenasport sports flooring. The BOEN Boflex P1 flooring system is an engineered sports surface designed to provide excellent elastic resilience. The Boflex P1 consists of standard boards measuring 2200mm ´ 137mm and 28mm thick. Inset into each board are Evazote 50 resilient foam strips, which provide the shock absorption qualities. The BOEN Arenasport another engineered board is laid onto Springbok semi-sprung battens. The foam pads include a specially formulated rubber, which will not significantly harden or deteriorate over the life of the floor. Most of these sports floors are available in different types of hardwoods such as Oak, Maple, Beech and Ash.

KAHRS

Kahrs have created a sports floor where the absorption material and reinforcements are already fitted to the backside of the board so this can be laid directly to the sub-floor without the time consuming and complicated construction of floor battens or special fittings. The floor has a total thickness of 30mm and is available in oak and beech. The floor satisfies all of the parts of the DIN test such as energy absorption, deformation, ball bounce, rolling load and friction.

POLYFLOR

Polyflor provide a hardwearing vinyl Polytred Sport PU floor covering with foam backing which is suitable for sports floors, the range is designed for to perform effectively and safely in multi-purpose indoor sports arenas.