How often a court needs resurfacing here (and why "every five years" is a guess)

"Every five years" is the answer everyone has heard, and it is a guess dressed up as a rule. I have resurfaced courts that needed it at four and courts that were fine at nine, and the difference was never the calendar. It was five things about the court. Here they are, in the order they matter around Cleveland.

1. Sun

Ultraviolet light breaks down the acrylic binder in the color coat, and once the binder goes the pigment chalks and the sand lets go. A court in full sun all day ages faster than one that gets afternoon shade, but the shaded court has the next problem instead. Dark colors absorb more and run hotter, which ages the binder faster still; a black-green court in the open wears sooner than a light-blue one in the same park. The color chip's reflectance figures on the color page are a rough guide to which colors take the sun best.

2. Water

A court that drains in an hour after rain lasts years longer than one with birdbaths. Standing water softens the acrylic, grows algae, traps grit, and in winter freezes and lifts the color around the puddle's edge. A blocked drain or a lawn that sheds onto the court does the same across a whole side. Of the courts that come to us early, most have a water problem that was never fixed between surfaces.

3. Use

A high school's six courts, used by the team from March to October and by the neighborhood the rest of the time, wear through at the baselines in four or five years. A private court played twice a week goes eight or nine. Pickleball courts wear faster than tennis courts for their size because the play is concentrated at the kitchen line. Basketball courts wear in half-moons under the rims. The wear is where the feet are, and the surface is done when those zones go to black, however good the rest looks.

4. Maintenance

Cracks filled every autumn, a wash a year, leaves kept off, nothing with metal legs dragged across it: a court kept that way reaches the long end of its range. A court where the cracks were left open for three winters is resurfacing early, with membrane work on every crack, and the owner has paid twice.

5. What is underneath

A color coat put on over a sound resurfacer, on a sound base, lasts its full life. One put on over a surface that was chalking, or over green asphalt, or as a repaint on a court that needed resurfacing, fails in two or three years regardless of everything above. The last contractor's shortcut is this surface's lifespan.

The honest range

Four to eight years between resurfacings for an acrylic hard court in Northeast Ohio. Four for a busy, dark, shaded, puddled, neglected court; eight for a lightly used, lighter-colored, sunny, drained, swept one. Most of the public courts we look after are on a six-year cycle, and the clubs that keep up the maintenance run seven. The base, built right, is good for thirty years and two or three overlays after that.

Stretching the interval

• Fix the water first: level the birdbaths, clear the drains, build the swale. It is cheap and it is the biggest single lever.
• Choose a lighter surround color at the next resurfacing, and a court color that is not the darkest on the chip.
• Fill the cracks every October without fail.
• Wash once or twice a year with a broom and a fan tip, never a turbo nozzle.
• Keep the benches off the surface and the plows off it in winter.
• Have the court looked at in year five, so the resurfacing is planned rather than discovered.

And when it is time, do a resurfacing, not a repaint; the first article in this series is about telling the two apart.