Gym Floor Maintenance Tips

Quality Hardwood Floors discusses gym facility maintenance issues every day. The QHF pros are regularly tossed wood gym floor maintenance questions.  Every facility is understandably different. In this article, we hope to address the most common advice QHF has passed on to our gym floor maintenance customers.

dust mop gym floor maintenance

Gym Floor Maintenance: Do These!

  • Sweep Daily: If sweeping the floor doesn’t fit your daily schedule, shame on you. Champions of facility maintenance will sweep floors multiple times a day if there is heavy use. Also, it’s recommended to devote one dust-mop to one floor. Multiple floors will require multiple dust-mops. It’s also important to treat court-appointed (hazaah!) dust-mops with waterless dust-mop treatment. 
  • Have Towels Ready: Clean up any spills or moisture on the court surface. Be quick about it, too!
  • Ensure HVAC system is Functioning: Don’t turn it off.  Don’t you do it! You can save the electric bill, but you’re not going to like the gym floor repair bill. Maintain a relative humidity between 35% and 50% all year. Low humidity will cause floor shrinkage and gaps between boards. High humidity will expand/swell/cup your wood floor. 
  • Make the Rounds: Inspect the floor daily for shrinkage (or expansion). Routinely look for moisture after heavy storms or equipment leaks. 
  • Protect Your Investment: Protect your gym floors with appropriate covers when moving equipment across the floor. Avoid portable equipment that has crowned, or ridged, wheels.
  • Schedule Annual Refinishing: The Maple Flooring Manufacturers Association recommends refinishing gym floors, at least, every 12 months. Many rec centers and major universities will refinish their gym floors twice a year. Annual refinishing improves the condition and extends the life of your wood flooring. By doing so, annual refinishing increases protection from many hardwood horrors like water damage. 

Don't Do These!

  • The HVAC should never be turned off for long durations such as winter or summer breaks
  • Your gym floor and water are not friends! Do not clean your wood floors with auto-scrubbers that use water under pressure. 
  • Avoid heavy equipment on your wood flooring.  The weight will cause irreparable damage to both the surface and sub-floor system. 
  • Keep household cleaning products at home. These products will ruin both the finish and the wood flooring.  Additionally, common cleaning products can result in sticky or slippery floors for your athletes. 
  • Stay away from sticky situations with tape.  Tape will ruin and remove gym floor finish.  Yes, we are talking about blue painters tape!
  • Wax Off, Never Wax On! Commercial waxes leave residue that must be sanded away to bare-wood.

Simple Wood Gym Floor Maintenance

Above we outlined the major points of wood gym floor maintenance.  Follow these basic maintenance rules to ensure your gym floor will perform perfectly and safely. It is easy to skip a few or forget. Nobody is perfect. But, what do we say about practice?

Every gym is unique and will have circumstances that may not be addressed here.  If you still have a question, our pros will have an answer for you.