One of the benefits of talking to Continental when planning your facility is our experience of hundreds of similar projects over the past 40 years.

We provide a consultancy service to architects, quantity surveyors, builders and owners of sites to help you so that you do not have to re-invent the wheel when designing your facility.

This valuable service is provided free from the early planning stage, through the tender specification stage and onwards hopefully until completion of your project. All that we ask in return is that we are able to submit a quotation for the equipment that you ultimately specify.

Design tips - Sport England provides two very useful guidance notes to sports hall design. The first covers all aspects of design of the building including ancillary areas outside the hall itself. This document includes discussions on lighting, colours, changing rooms, construction types etc. - to download "Sport England Sports Halls: Design" please click here

The second Sport England guidance note considers the sizes and layouts of the actual hall depending on the levels of each sport that are planned to be played in the facility. The recommended dimensions of the court required for each typical sport is included in this document (however, there are some conflicts between the different recommendations and some compromises are normally made - please contact Continental for further discussions, or see below). To download "Sport England Sports Halls: Sizes and Layouts" please click here

Sport England have recently (early 2007) published a document containing information on the sizes of sports pitches and courts at various levels of play, has been amended and updated in consultation with sporting National Governing Bodies. Please note that there remain certain compromises that are necessary when trying to acomodate a range of sports in one hall and some of the individual guidance must be adjusted in certain circumstances. Continental Sports has more experience of installing equipment in a multi-sports environment and we would be pleased to discuss with you the current typical practice and compromises that projects are udertaking. To download "Comparative Sizes - Pitches & Courts" please click here

Roof height - THIS IS BY FAR THE MOST COMMON RECURRING PROBLEM WITH SPORTS HALL DESIGN. PLEASE consider roof height at the earliest planning stage. We regularly see buildings that cannot accommodate recommended clear heights because insufficient consideration was given at the planning stage. Sport England guidance requires 7.6m clear height above the finished floor level, based on the requirements for badminton. However, please remember that various services including lighting and possibly heating will need to be above that height. You also need to leave enough space for the depth of trackway and the related bracketry onto which division nets and cricket nets hang - with enough gap between the nets and any Ambi-Rad or similar roof mounted heating - , and space for roof retractable basketball goals. We can advise on how much extra space is required. We regularly see sports halls that are built too low to accommodate the required equipment and still maintain the required minimum clear height - please send your drawings to Continental at an early stage and we can comment and provide no obligation advice FREE OF CHARGE. We can ensure you avoid costly late amendments to the design or problems trying to fit the sports equipment.

The most common problem we see is with curved roof profiles where an imaginary "box" is accommodated over the badminton courts to allow the 7.6m clear height. However, the limiting factor is actually the lowest point of the roof at the eaves as that is where division net trackway is located and that determines the height of all other trackway (e.g. for cricket). Therefore, although there may theoretically be sufficient space over your badminton courts, in practice there will be trackway passing through that space. Please talk to us at the earliest stage for assistance and advice - we have seen and worked with most shapes and sizes of sports hall and can help you before you repeat any mistakes that we have seen before.

Cricket bay widths - The English Cricket Board and Sport England recommend a minimum bay width of 3.66m and an optimal width of 4m. This would permit four bays to be installed in an 18m wide hall with a 1m safety gap at either side. However, if roof retractable matchplay basketball goals are to be installed as well as cricket bays, then a gap in the centre of the width of the hall must be allowed so that the goals do not interfere with the cricket netting trackway in the roof space. If the hall is a "standard" 18m width then the bay width must be reduced to 3.1m to compromise for both sports.

We recommend that 3.1m is sufficient, and due to most halls being 33m x 18m and them requiring both sports, 3.1m is very much a "normal" bay width. If you require compliant matchplay basketball AND compliant bay width for four bays (two double bays) then the hall must be at least 20m wide.

This means that to have roof retractable basketball goals AND ECB standard cricket bay widths in your hall, you can have one, two or three bays (of up to 4m each) and NOT four bays. With two or three bays at 3.66m to 4m wide and roof retractable basketball goals, the bays must be offset so that the roof retractable goals raise and lower between the trackway that forms one of the bays. If you specify 3.1m bays, then two bays will fit to one side of the hall so that there is room for the retractable basketball goals to lower to the side of the cricket bays, and with three or four cricket bays at 3.1m, then you can specify two lanes on one side of the hall and either a single or double bay on the other.

For a full and (possibly) clearer explanation and discussion of the options and the implications of the interaction between cricket, basketball and other sports, please call us.

Underfloor heating - If you are planning underfloor heating in your hall then provision will need to be made in advance for floor fixings for gamesposts and floor sockets for wall hinged equipment such as rope frames and beam units. We can help you make appropriate provision for equipment being installed now and also for any future equipment which may be specified in the future - it is vital that the floor is made "future" proof in case the owner of the building may want to install floor fixed equipment in the future.

For full details of the floor fixings we install in different floors in the presence of underfloor heating, and the builders work provision that is necessary, please click here.

Wall construction - If you will be specifying wall fixed equipment such as wall hinged basketball goals, we need to fix those to a solid structure, so if you are not taking blockwork to a suitable height (or if your blockwork is not of sufficient density), additional steelwork will be required in specific locations in the walls for us to fix to. It is important to ascertain the location of all wall fixing locations at an early stage. For an example of the fixing height of sideways hinged basketball goals please see the details for fixing points here.

Wall colour - Avoid white. Shuttlecocks are very hard to see against a white background and we would recommend a contrasting non-distracting colour such as a green or a blue is chosen for painted walls. In areas where a white background is required such as indoor cricket, we provide a white canvas sightscreen to highlight the cricket ball.

Sport England are not prescriptive on this matter but their guidance for badminton (the sport where wall colour is most important) is that colours with a reflectance value of 30-50% are found to give the best playing conditions - green (Dulux Colour dimensions code 30 GG 45/362) or an equivalent blue (86 BG 43/321) are suggested. Any doors or coverings should be finished in the same colour as the walls.

Dulux Colour dimensions code 86 BG 43/321 (approximate representation subject to differences in computer colour reproduction)	Dulux Colour dimensions code 30 GG 45/362 (approximate representation subject to differences in computer colour reproduction)

See the Sport England guidance note "Sports Halls: Design" for more advice.

Floor construction - The decision regarding floor construction is very important as it can impact on any equipment that you may be installing that requires floor anchorages. The strength of the slab and depth of slab is vital in determining whether the floor anchorages that are required for certain equipment will be suitable. For example, if you are installing certain pre-cast concrete slab flooring systems, there may be voids within the slab which may be located underneath a point that needs a floor fixing. If we drill into an area that has a void it may be that there is insufficient concrete to provide a solid fixing - for example certain gymnastics equipment requires a fixing strong enough to accommodate a fixing which will take a 300kg load. You may therefore need to fill in some of the voids to provide a solid area - this can be difficult and expensive to retro-fit. Please talk to Continental to discuss the floor fixings you will require and the floor you intend to specify.

To download comprehensive details of all our fixing types for your proposed sub-floor and finished floor system, and any provision that must be made in advance, please click here.

We can help alleviate your concerns regarding floor markings, locations of floor fixings, method of fixing, provision of suitable floor caps and bushing covers etc. - we can install your sports hall floor for you. We only install the best floor - Junckers - and you can find more information on our flooring systems here.

For a Sport England guidance note on the different types of sports flooring available and a discussion of terminology and recommendations for different sports please click here to download "Sport England - Floors for indoor sports"

Storage - storage space in the sports hall area is normally overlooked, or is the first item to suffer if budgets are tight. Please remember the entire purpose of the sports hall is to accommodate a range of sports and these all generally require equipment that needs to be stored. Once you decide on the sports that you wish to accommodate, we can advice on the space required to store the requisite equipment. We also have a range of storage trolleys, cages and racks that can help optimise the available space.