Gym Flooring Maintenance and Repairs
Part of keeping your athletic facility in top shape is proper flooring maintenance and repairs. A professionally designed and installed gymnasium floor is often the centerpiece in schools, community centers, and athletic clubs. The large open surface of a gym floor provides one of the best areas for branding and showing team pride. Today’s gymnasiums are used around the clock providing space for a wide variety of sporting events, gym classes, and charity events, to just name a few. With such constant varied use it becomes evident that gym floors require continuous cleaning and maintenance to look great, provide a safe play area, and have a long useful life.
Flooring Maintenance Services
Our hardwood floor services include annual buff and recoat, complete sand and refinish, repairing of game lines, repaint/add logos, and even large area patches and sub floor repairs. Our synthetic and rubber floor services include spot repairs, cleaning, complete resurfacing (when applicable) and total replacement. One of the biggest questions we often receive is should I screen and recoat my gym floor or sand and refinish? How often should you have these maintenance services performed? Many people also ask if they should scrub their gym floor as part of a maintenance routine.
H2I Group experts, the MFMA, and gymnasium floor manufacturers recommend you never use an auto scrubber on your wood gymnasium floors. For day to day maintenance, H2I recommends using an untreated dust mop, dry mopping, or sweeping to eliminate dirt and dust, which can cause scratches. Any liquids spilled on the floor should be quickly removed to prevent damage. an annual recoat is part of a perfect preventative maintenance schedule. Floor cleaning and daily use slowly wears the finish down, so an annual recoat will refresh and rejuvenate the surface to build it back up. This increases the life span of your investment. Screening and recoating is a process where a floor is buffed prior to applying a maintenance coat of polyurethane to a floor. The buffing is required for the finish to properly bond.
A screen and recoat is a relatively quick service. Depending on the size and condition of the floor, it should take about 1-2 days. Another day or 2 for larger field houses. Recoating should be done annually. It extends the period of time before sanding and refinishing is needed. A full sand a refinish is only required every 12-15 years if proper maintenance and care is taken.
Gym Floor Maintenance
- Dry mop or sweep the floor more than once every day. In addition to the obvious dirt that is tracked into gymnasiums every day, there is a huge amount of dust in large gymnasiums that ends up on the floor as an abrasive that prematurely wears the floor surface.
- Have a quality gym floor maintenance company recoat your wood gym floor at least once a year.
- Have a quality gym floor maintenance company resand and refinish your gym floor every 5 to 7 years.
- Manage patron, student and player traffic
- Keep water and liquids away from the gym floor
- Maintain and monitor bleachers and other heavy equipment that is used on the gym floor.
- Do not allow sharp objects like chair legs and furniture to be used on the floor.
- Install ceiling mounted volleyball nets to protect the floor from damage due to heavy steel volleyball standards.
- Monitor potential water damage areas like drinking fountains and exterior doors.
- Repair problem floor areas immediately to protect players from injury and to minimize the cost of repair.