Client: Queensbury Celtic Junior Football
Type of works: supplied Taraflex™ Sport M Plus flooring.
When your football club is situated 1,100 feet above sea level, as is the case for Queensbury Celtic Junior Football Club in Queensbury, Bradford, the need for an indoor training hall is of extra importance! After a heavy amount of fundraising, the club has managed to build an indoor training hall complete with Gerflor Taraflex™ Sport M Plus flooring. Taraflex™ Sport M Plus was laid on a Taraflex™ Isolsport membrane. Importantly, the flooring not only offers an affordable solution but one that is easy to maintain and which allows the hall to be used for a variety of purposes other than football.
Queensbury Celtic AFC is run by volunteers and there was considerable debate about the choice of flooring. Some six to eight surfaces were considered including artificial grass, which would have restricted the use of the hall, and wood, which was prohibitively expensive and raised maintenance issues. When one of the volunteers suggested Gerflor and its Taraflex™ Sports M Plus flooring, it was quickly acknowledged as suiting all the required criteria in terms of maintenance, safety, comfort, cost and multi-use.
The flooring is often regarded as the most important piece of equipment in a sports hall but it is vital to match the product with the exact requirements of the venue. At Queensbury, football clearly comes first. The need to make the hall viable was a key consideration and there was also a need to accommodate activities such as practice sessions for the local Scout group’s marching band and events where chairs or tables may need to be set out.
Gerflor’s Taraflex™ Sport M Plus is ideal for multi-activity and multi-sports halls whilst providing excellent value for money. Indeed, as well as being a tried and tested flooring, it is the market’s most popular synthetic indoor sports floor. Importantly, it provides shock absorption of 32% and is fully compliant with EN 14904 standard for indoor sports floors while being available in 15 different colourways and two wood designs.
At 7mm thick, Taraflex™ Sport M Plus incorporates a number of innovative features including a dynamic double density CXP (Cellular Extreme Process) foam backing, which offers unparalleled comfort, and D-Max, a multi-layer surface to ensure maximum performance throughout the product's lifetime. It is reinforced with a glassfibre mesh which contributes outstanding dimensional stability and improved indentation resistance while allowing free-floating installation.
Along with the floor’s performance characteristics, its whole life cost and environmental credentials were considered. With some flooring, maintenance costs can be considerable. An environmentally-sustainable product, the whole life costs of Taraflex™ Sport M are low and the product is easy and inexpensive to maintain. Triple action Protecsol® means no polish is ever required and it contributes to easy maintenance, anti-friction burn, slide and grip, while hygienic protection against fungus and bacteria is provided by Sanosol®, an anti-bacterial and fungicidal treatment.
Gerflor offers a number of installation solutions for Taraflex™. At Queensbury, the flooring was laid over a membrane of Taraflex™ Isolsport. This allowed installation onto the concrete slab of the training hall as it is designed to protect against moisture levels as high as 10%.
Prior to the training hall being built, the club was using external venues such as sports centres and school halls which was costly. Unsurprisingly, the new training hall, and consequently the flooring, gets a lot of use, especially in the evenings and at weekends. Queensbury Celtic FC was formed in 1978 to provide children and young people with the opportunity to play football in a safe and friendly environment and there are now up to 300 boys and girls training or playing every week. The age range spans from under 5’s through to under 17s. The teams play in the Keybury Alarms League, Garforth, Craven, Aire & Wharfe and the Huddersfield Leagues and the club has built up a reputation in local junior football, producing a number of players who have made the grade in the professional game.
Tony Stead, a Queensbury Celtic FC committee member, comments: “Gerflor was very supportive right from the start and, as a product, Taraflex™ speaks for itself. Gerflor offered us an incredible level of service and advice and have shown a huge commitment to our club while also recognising the commitment that we’ve put in over the years. They recommended a contractor who specialises in laying sports surfaces. Gerflor could have just sold us the floor and left it but they’ve followed up with excellent after-sales service which is very, very important.”