This court was an overlay project which means that there was an existing court over which the new court was built. The existing court was an asphalt Tennis court with a carpet surface. The court was severely damaged from cracks and the carpet surface was peeling up. The best and most cost-effective option to provide a functioning court in this project was to build a new post-tension ASBA and USTA spec athletic court slab. The existing court was sawcut from the perimeter and such area was removed to allow for a turndown on the edges of the slab. The existing cracks where filled with sand.

There was an existing drain which on the south side of the court running 120′ in length which had to be rebuilt, this time with a higher volume which is better because it allow more space for the drain. The new court used the existing asphalt as its subgrade, and the turndown sturdily secures the new slab on top of the existing asphalt material. Furthermore, the post tension cables assure that this court does not any development of cracks to get bigger hairline concrete cracks. This assures not only the structural integrity of the court, but even cosmetic crack development in the slab for many years.

The new slab raised the court’s surface compared to the previous court by 5″ inches. We sloped down the court entrance hallway to the road entrance to “level off”, and also had to level off with a set of stairs on the north side of the court. The most challenging part of this project was rebuilding the drain since we were not able to use new drain material since there was already existing drain material beneath the level of the existing court which sloped down as the drain reached the exit canal. A new drain raised concrete wall and level had to be built on top of the existing drain canal and had to follow the same existing drain slope along with the new post-tension slab slope. All came out to specs successfully.

We had to have the concrete mixer trucks be filled to a maximum of 8 yards each because we had to bring in the trucks inside the home driveway, and we wanted to avoid any possible damage that the weight of the concrete trucks themselves could cause. Concrete mixer trucks usually top off at 11 cubic yards of concrete.

Since the area of the court placement was surround by walls on all four sides of the court, we had to first pour the post-tension concrete area of the tennis court slightly smaller then the full court size. This is because the post-tension cables must be pulled/tensioned from two sides. Since there were walls on all 4 sides of the court’s edges there was no room to pull and tension the post tension cables.

The post-tension concrete slab was built with a reduced side from 2 sides by removing about 12″-14″ of the width of the slab  from 2 sides of the court ( one 60′ foot edge and one 120′ foot edge). After the post-tension concrete had been poured and set, the remaining area of the slab was poured separately and reinforced with rebar.