Understand Your Sports Flooring Load Capacity

The use of certain machines or equipment could impose an excessively heavy load to a sports floor, causing permanent damage. Knowing the sports flooring static load capacity becomes essential.

What does static load mean?

Static loads are loads that are applied to a surface up to a maximum stationary value, and then remains relatively stable afterward.

What do static loads have to do with flooring?

The static load capacity of a floor is an important factor, especially when it comes to keeping your flooring system in good working condition. The weight, force, and pressure applied to a floor can potentially damage the resilient properties (area-elastic, point-elastic, combi-elastic) of the floor covering. If this is the case, these factors will surely affect the playability, shock absorption, and performance of the sports floor.

What does the calculated value represent?

In the technical data sheet of a product, the static load value is usually expressed in the form of PSI, meaning Pounds Per Square Inch. It indicates the pressure of one pound of force applied to the area of one square inch of the floor's surface. The tolerance value indicated is something to keep handy and consider when something might inflict too much pressure on the floor.

What are examples of static loads?

Some machinery that needs to be operated on the sports floor can impose an excessively heavy load on the surface. If heavy bleachers, other heavy sports equipment, or even non-sports equipment is left stationary on the floor for long periods of time, it can inflict pressing forces that will lead to irreversible damage. Therefore, these circumstances are important to evaluate before it's too late.

In most cases, heavy equipment manufacturers provide the PSI load of their products in their technical documents. Evaluating the capacity of a floor would lead one to first consider not only the weight of the equipment, but also its length and width, footing size, and weight distribution. These factors are all considered when determining the PSI that the floor will be subjected to. For example, in the case of a lift that weighs 1,000 pounds, its static load is 250 pounds per wheel. This is determined by dividing the total weight of the equipment by the number of wheels.

What does this all mean for you?

If you do plan to introduce some heavy equipment into your athletic space, these factors don't necessarily rule out the possibility of doing just that. You can bring any weight into the space with just a little preparation. The static load capacity can be greatly improved when the load is uniformly distributed on the surface, therefore modifying the PSI value.

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