What a Northeast Ohio winter does to a court

Every court and every lot in Northeast Ohio is attacked by the same thing between November and April, and it is not the cold. It is water that is cold one day and not the next. Understanding that one mechanism explains why cracks grow, why edges lift, why a court built on the wrong ground heaves, and why the autumn visit is the one that matters. Here is what winter actually does.

Freeze, thaw, repeat

Water expands about nine percent when it freezes. A crack full of water on a November night freezes and pushes its own edges apart; the thaw the next afternoon lets the water drain deeper and carry a little fine material out of the base; the next night it freezes again, deeper. Cleveland's winters are not the coldest in the country but they are among the most indecisive: the temperature crosses freezing something like forty to fifty times a winter at the airport, more in the snow belt east of the city where the lake-effect snow falls and melts and falls. Every crossing is a cycle, and every cycle does a little work on every crack, joint and edge.

Frost heave

The bigger version happens under the court. Footings here go below the frost line, a depth each local building code sets and that in most of our towns is around a yard. When the clay under a slab is wet and the frost goes down into it, the water in the clay freezes into lenses of ice that grow by pulling more water up from below, and the lens lifts whatever is above it. A court over a wet pocket of clay, a buried stump, an old drain, lifts there every winter and settles every spring, and the slab cracks along the edge of the lift. There is no coating for this. The pocket has to be dug out and replaced with stone, or the water has to be drained away from it; that is why drainage is the first thing we look at on a new site and the first thing we suspect on a heaved one.

Snow and ice

Snow itself is harmless on a court; it insulates. The damage comes from clearing it. A plow blade or a shovel edge cuts the acrylic; salt and ice-melt chemicals attack the binder and the asphalt; a court cleared and salted to play in February loses more surface than a summer of play. The rule is to leave courts alone until they melt, and to tell the plow contractor on a lot: blade raised over sealed asphalt, no chains, no salt piles, and the curb stops marked so the blade does not find them.

Sun in winter

A dark court on a clear January day warms to well above freezing on the surface while the slab under it is still frozen, and the two move differently. This is the reason courts crack in a pattern of blocks over years: the surface expands and contracts faster than the base. Lighter colors take less of this; so does a surface with no open cracks for the water to find.

What the spring reveals

Walk the court or the lot the week the snow goes and you will see the winter's work: cracks a size wider, edges lifted, a heave where there was none, a pothole where the plow caught a crack, color lifted around the birdbaths where the ice sat. All of it was done by water that got in. The owners who find little in March are the ones who filled the cracks in October, leveled the puddles, cleared the drains and kept the plow off.

The autumn list

• Bridge or fill every crack before the first freeze.
• Level the birdbaths; water that cannot sit cannot freeze in place.
• Clear the drains and the swale so meltwater leaves.
• Pull the windscreens and lower the nets; the wind is winter's other tool.
• Mark curb stops and basins for the plow, and write the plow contractor the rules.
• Then leave it alone until April.

The October article covers the first item in detail, and the season page has the calendar the weather sets for the rest of the year.