The floor in the men’s locker room has been in an increasingly bad way for a few months now with soft patches of flooring appearing. These obviously pose a safety risk to bowlers if the floor was to give way, and it certainly did flex a fair bit.
Initially Jim Winter suspected a water leak, possibly behind the sinks in the men’s toilets, however no evidence could found.
The decision was made by the Executive Committee to rip up the floor to replace the rotting floor substrate and identify the cause of the softness. It turned out that rising damp directly onto an unprotected chipboard floor was the problem and that there was no water leak under the floor contributing to the problem.
The ground was covered with a black polythene sheet to protect against raising damp. The floor joists were replaced with new tanalised beams and tanalised plywood, not chipboard, was used for the flooring.
A vinyl top surface was applied later by a company specialised in that task and an air vent was added to allow the underfloor cavity to breath.
