Court Resurfacing Conversation Preparation Checklist

Write down when the court was built and by whom as far as anyone can recall, and mark plainly which parts of that account are recollection rather than record.

A partial history still tells a specialist where to look, and labelling the uncertain parts stops a guess hardening into a fact later on.

Note what the court has been used for since it was laid, including sports it was never intended for, and any period when it stood unused or locked.

Courts commonly carry the marks of a use nobody mentions, and a spell of neglect leaves a different pattern of damage from heavy play.

List every repair, patch, paint, moss treatment or clean carried out on the surface, with a rough sequence and who did the work where that is known.

Previously repaired areas are often exactly where trouble returns, and a specialist will want them pointed out on the ground rather than described.

Note anything that changed around the court before the trouble appeared, such as tree growth, new fencing, altered drainage nearby, or a jump in how often it is used.

Changes at the edge of a court frequently precede changes on it, and the sequence of events is something only the owner can supply.

Gather any advice already given about the court, including opinions offered in passing, and record who said it and when rather than treating it as settled.

Opinions collected informally are not an assessment of the court; what a surface needs is for a qualified professional and a specialist contractor to establish.

Write down how play on the court has changed, including sessions that moved elsewhere and players who stopped coming, together with the reasons they gave.

The reason people stopped using a court is often more precise than any description of its condition, and it points at what actually has to be fixed.

Photograph every crack, blister, hollow, loose patch and bare area, and place something ordinary in the frame so that the pictures show relative size.

Photographs taken without a reference object are hard to read afterwards, and defects always look smaller in a picture than they do underfoot.

Mark each defect on a simple sketch of the court so that a specialist can see where trouble clusters, rather than reading a list of separate faults.

Where damage groups together often matters more than how much of it there is, and that pattern only becomes visible once it is drawn.

Note where water stands after rain, how long it lingers and whether the same places repeat, since ponding is the observation contractors most often ask owners for.

Standing water is visible for a short while and then gone, so it goes unrecorded unless somebody deliberately watches for it.

Note where moss, algae or a green film keeps returning, and which parts of the court players have quietly started to avoid in wet weather.

Whether any area of a court is slippery or safe underfoot is for a qualified professional to assess and must not be settled from appearance.

Record whether the defects appear to be spreading, and date your photographs, so that a change can be seen rather than argued about from memory.

Dated pictures turn an impression that things are getting worse into something a specialist can actually work from.

Write down what you observe rather than what you think caused it, and keep any theory of your own separate and clearly labelled as a guess.

The cause of surface failure is established by a qualified professional through proper investigation, not from photographs or an owner account.

Ask what investigation would establish the condition of the base before any remedy is discussed, and what that investigation involves on a court still in use.

What lies beneath a court can only be established by a qualified professional; nothing observed from the surface substitutes for that.

Write down plainly that the construction beneath is unknown where that is the case, instead of repeating an assumption inherited from a previous owner or member.

An inherited assumption about the base is repeated confidently from one member to the next and is a common reason a resurfacing proposal turns out to rest on nothing.

Ask whether anything was built into or beneath the court for drainage, and note every cover, channel or outlet you can see around its edges.

Old drainage runs are frequently forgotten between one generation of members and the next, then rediscovered halfway through the work.

Note where the surface appears to have sunk, lifted or moved at a joint, and ask what that might indicate rather than reaching a conclusion yourself.

Movement in a court surface may raise questions about the ground or the base and belongs with a qualified professional to establish.

Note the trees and hedges close to the court and where their roots might plausibly run, and ask how their presence bears on work to the surface.

Roots near a court affect both what can be done and what happens afterwards, and their influence is easy to overlook until damage repeats.

Ask what parts of the existing construction might be re-usable and what would have to be established first, recording the reply as their view rather than a promise.

Re-use is usually conditional on something being confirmed, and writing down that condition is what makes the answer useful later.

List every post, socket, anchor and ground fixing in or beside the playing area, including any that has not been used within living memory.

Disused fittings buried in a surface reappear during work and change what can be done, usually on the morning it is least convenient.

Photograph the existing markings for every sport before resurfacing is discussed, since worn lines are often the only surviving record of how the court was set out.

Marking layouts and colours for a sport and level of play are confirmed with the relevant governing body, not reproduced from a photograph alone.

Note where the fence, kerb or edging meets the surface and whether the two appear locked together, then ask what that means for work at the perimeter.

The perimeter is where most resurfacing scope disputes begin, because it belongs to neither the surface nor the enclosure until somebody says so.

Note the position of any lighting columns, bases, ducts and cable routes at the court, and ask who has to be involved before anything is disturbed near them.

Work near lighting columns, ducts or buried cables must be planned and carried out by suitably qualified people, never assumed to be dead or disused.

Mark every gully, channel, cover and outlet in or around the surface, including those that appear abandoned, and photograph each one before work is arranged.

Covers vanish permanently under new surfacing unless somebody records them, and finding them again afterwards is far harder than marking them now.

Note the benches, shelters, storage boxes, ball bins and other items standing on or against the court that would have to be moved, and where they would go.

Somewhere to put the contents of a court is a practical problem that nobody solves until work is about to begin.

Decide and record the part of the season when losing the court hurts least, and note who has to agree to that before any work is arranged.

The quiet part of the season for a club is rarely the part a contractor would choose, and that conflict is better found now than later.

List the groups, teams, sessions and members who would lose their court, and write down who is responsible for telling each of them.

Displaced sessions find somewhere else to go, and some of them do not come back, which is a real loss that never appears in any description of the work.

Ask what weather the work depends on and what happens when conditions turn against it, and write the answer down rather than assuming the plan simply holds.

Court work is unusually weather dependent, and an owner who has understood that in advance handles the interruption very differently.

Walk the route that plant and materials would take to the court and note what has to be crossed, protected, unlocked or temporarily removed to get there.

What machinery can safely cross ground, paving or a drainage cover is for the contractor and a qualified professional to determine on site.

Ask where materials would be stacked and where anything taken up from the court would go, since a court site seldom has spare ground beside it.

Nowhere to put material is one of the most common practical obstacles on a court job, and it affects the surrounding grounds badly.

Decide how the court will be kept clear of players while work is under way, and record who is responsible for that on a site with open or shared access.

Arrangements for keeping people away from a working area are for the contractor to set and control, with responsibilities agreed in writing beforehand.

Ask each specialist to set out the range of approaches open to this court rather than a single proposal, and write down what they rule out and why.

The options a specialist discards tell you more about the court than the one they favour, and that reasoning is rarely offered unless it is asked for.

Ask what each approach assumes about the existing base, and what would happen if that assumption proved wrong once the surface was opened up.

Nearly every difference between competing proposals traces back to a different assumption about what is underneath.

Ask what typically brings each approach to the end of its usable life on a court like this one, and record the reply as their view rather than as a promise.

How an approach eventually fails is as useful to know as how it performs at first, and it shapes what you are willing to accept.

Ask whether markings would be renewed as part of the work and whether the layout could change, then take the layout question to the relevant governing body.

What marking layout applies for a sport and level of play is confirmed with the relevant governing body, not agreed at the court.

Ask what a partial repair would look like against the rest of the court, since a sound repair that reads as a patch still disappoints people every time they play.

Appearance after repair is a question owners forget to ask and then complain about, and it is easily raised before anything is agreed.

Ask what happens if nothing is done for the present, and record that answer alongside the others instead of treating it as an option not worth hearing.

Knowing what waiting does to the court makes every other answer easier to weigh, particularly where funds have to be raised before anything can happen.

Fold your history, condition and use notes into one short brief, and give exactly the same brief to everybody you invite to look at the court.

Different briefs produce answers that cannot be set beside one another, and the difference is usually invisible until a decision has to be made.

Ask each contractor what their description of the work does not include, since fencing, lighting, drainage and equipment are routinely assumed to belong to somebody else.

Exclusions are where an owner quietly acquires a list of tasks nobody has told them about.

Ask who would carry out each part of the work and who holds responsibility if the parts are split between different trades on the same court.

Split responsibility on a court job leaves the joins between trades unowned, and the joins are where problems appear.

Write down what each contractor said while standing on the court, including the parts they were unsure about, and keep those notes with your photographs.

Uncertainty expressed on site is valuable information, and it is exactly the part that disappears from any later written summary.

Ask to see a court they have renewed that began in a condition similar to yours, and go and look at it in poor weather rather than in the sunshine.

A renewed court seen in the wet answers questions about drainage and finish that no description manages to settle.

Mark which of the answers you were given still have to be confirmed with the relevant governing body or the local authority before anything is agreed.

Whether court works need consent of any kind is settled by the local authority, and nothing said at the court by a contractor can stand in for that.