University of South Wales, Treforest Campus

he University of South Wales (USW) has recently installed 900 m² of Taraflex^® Area Elastic (AE) System vinyl sports flooring in ‘Maple’ from international flooring specialist Gerflor. This high-quality installation was for a replacement floor in the USW Fitzone at their Treforest campus.

“USW were looking to replace their existing timber sports floor due to damages caused by flooding. As they had an installation at USW Nantgarw Sport Park One of our Taraflex Combisport system they wanted costings to install a similar system at the Treforest site.” Tony Thorne added, “We specified 900m² of our world class Taraflex AE System, as there was existing equipment which included bleachers and doors. As part of the rigorous specification process, we had to meet the same height as the existing flooring. At Gerflor we have timber sports floors within our portfolio, however following conversations with various stakeholders on the project and due to factors, such as non-sport use and high life cycle costs due to the repeated maintenance needed for timber, we specified Taraflex as the floor finish.”

Richard Lewis, Capital Projects Manager at USW said,” We decided to replace the existing sports surface due to a previous roof leak that damaged the floor. The Taraflex sports flooring has only recently been installed, but it is already exceeding our high expectations.”

The installation of the Taraflex^® sports system would be the responsibility of Swansea-based Artisan Flooring who have installed Gerflor products on previous projects.

Lewis Williams, Contracts Manager, Artisan Flooring said, “We would choose Gerflor’s Taraflex again as it’s always been a reliable brand, especially when it comes to sports flooring. It’s a great product to work with.”

Taraflex^® AE systems are area elastic floors consisting of undercarriage construction topped with Taraflex^® Surface. Taraflex^® Surface is a compact vinyl sheet sports floor covering consisting of a D-Max^™ surface - Gerflor’s own complex made up of calendered polyvinyl chloride (PVC) sheets reinforced with a fibre glass grid for high durability and outstanding dimensional stability.