Sports hall floor salvage

So I might be able to get access (legally!) to two sports halls that are to be demolished.

I thought it would be nice to salvage the flooring. But aware that like many repurposing projects it might be a labour of love... with questionable amount of love....

They were built as part of community leisure centre, so not the fancy Junckers Sylvasport stuff style stuff... that would be perfect. I'll get some pics of the type of flooring on here shortly

From my limited research 'reclaiming' gym wooden flooring massively depends on how it's been treated/refurbished in its lifetime.
So it will either be OK with care, a decent circular saw, pry bar and patience, or just a total fail with it chipping up into shards.

Anyone with any experience, advice of getting sports flooring up?

I think @Vince has some sports hall flooring, don't know how he came to have it though.

How is it attached? Glued to the underlying floor surface and tongue and groove?

It is possible and it can look good. A local chain restaurant here has a huge reclaimed gym floor and I think it’s good.

Correct!

I bought if off a guy on eBay. Came to about £24/sqm + shipping.

Mine was from a Newcastle sports hall and was suspended so only attached by nail and very limited patches of glue so was easy to reinstall.

I have just got skirting installed this week so the photo is my current living room view

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that's really cool . Did you work it out or just put down at random and see how it turned out ?

Love the random patterns these floors create.

Mine came in 3.7m length so not the easiest to store / manoeuvre in a Lomdon home.

The fitter put them at random yes.

I would strongly advise people thinking of using reclaimed flooring to check if any of the boards have concave section - I did not do this and I have a short concave section, bang in the middle of the room.

Now it's all laid, glued and nailed, I can't just move it.

On a positive note, mine is the relatively high end SylvaSport Junckers (actually same as the Tate and some other museums) so it's just over 20mm thick beech so I can sand it back to a uniform smooth finish which will remove all imperfections the day I get bored of the random lines. Or that bloody concave section in the middle of the room!

On the other hand, the kitchen has come up great - see photo

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It's beautiful, @Vince!

Very envious

Thanks for the kind comments - all that bike money was spent wisely!

In terms of feedback for used flooring @gp700, it isn't new so as much as you want them to be 100% smooth with no gaps, well, it is inevitable that they have scuff, marks and some of them show slight gaps or very light concavity.
Sanding them down would make them 100% smooth and uniform. Gaps would be filled with wood dust. Clear varnish would make them perfect again.
So for someone willing to do it, it is worth it.

Mine are 22mm thick pure beech wood which has not been dark varnished so plenty of options!

For reference, in terms of broad (London) costs:

• Used flooring with shipping is £30/sqm;
  
• Professional fitting is £20/sqm;
  
• Sanding and varnishing is £30/sqm
  
  

The reasoning behing my purchase was that it is, when you look at the overall cost, cheaper than buying it new (£80-£90/sqm), without delivery or fitting. So it's like paying in instalments if you want.

And you re-use and employ someone to do the work so that's good as well.

I didn’t know this was a thing and now I want it!
If memory serves my primary school had an absolutely stunning parquet floor which would look ace rearranged with the painted lines at random.
Long demolished, hope someone salvaged it.

They're always a company salvaging stuff.
They charge to remove, then they charge to sell it.

The company I dealt with were great and even gave me the address of the venue it was taken from so I could have a look at it in its previous life!

Oh don’t get me wrong, I’ve crowbarred enough interesting stuff over the years as part of projects or helping people out but for some reason the idea of repurposed sports flooring never occurred to me. It’s such a great look!

That looks really good and brings back happy memories.

My dad used an old Basketball gym floor for our kitchen when i was growing up. Sadly was shit for practising dribbling skills on.

He ruined it when he finally sanded it back and varnished it IMO. Those paint lines hide a lot of wear and tear (and make it less obvious that you have been doing donuts with an RC car).

Anyone have a good recommendation for sourcing this stuff? I’d just need 10 square metres for an office. Do you use adhesive to lay it? Can you lay it on hardboard? I’d be doing it myself and this is what’s under the tired old carpet I want shot of.

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That’s just carpet underlay - you can order it online

Ah, apologies - I meant the sports hall floor!

Was just posting a picture to ask if I could lay direct on that hardboard.