REPAIRS AND REFURBISHMENT

REPAIRS AND REFURBISHMENT

Any bubbles, tears or gouges in the synthetic surface should be professionally repaired as soon as possible,firstly for the safety of the athletes, but also to prevent acce erated deterioration of the surface.

After a number of years of use, typically somewhere soon after five years, it would be expected that an athletics surface would be in need of some repair or even complete renovation if usaae levels have been hiah. Naturally. the extent of wear which the synthetic surface experiences will depend upon the degree and type of usage.Use levels vary enormously from one facility to another.

In the case of porous surfaces, wear will be most apparent as a loss of the textured surface coating, leading to the resin-bound rubber crumb base mat showing through and becoming more exposed to increased spike damage and weathering effects. Naturally, this will first become apparent in the high wear areas of the track. If identified early enough, it may be possible to reduce the rate of further wear by the spray application of an additional textured paint coating. The areas to be repaired should be thoroughly cleaned andif necessary,high pressure washed and allowed to dry before the application of further textured coating.If significant damage to the base mat has already occurred then, at this stage, it would be best to cut out all those damaged areas down to the bitumen/asphaltic concrete and reinstate with fresh base mat before applying the new textured coating.

Non-porous systems tend to have a superior resistance to abrasive and spike wear. Composite systems with an upper surface of cast elastomer also have this characteristic, although once this upper layer is penetrated by spikes, wear occurs more rapidly in the underlying base mat than it would if the system was solid rubber. This is one of the reasons why an absolute thickness of at least 4mm is preferable for the upper cast layer of a composite surface.When the loss of texture has reached a point where the surface is in need of repair, the usual way of doing this is to grind off the upper rubber layer and qranular texture and apply a fresh flood-coat layer of polyurethane resin with overcast granules in the usual way.f this is done on a patch repair basis it is inevitable that the appearance of the surface will be very noticeably different on the repaired areas compared to the existing surface.

Not all repairs that are necessary will be due to wear.A surface may"harden' over a period of time to an extent where it no longer meets the dynamic properties laid down by World Athletics. In such a case, grinding off some of the thickness and over- topping with fresh surfacing may be an option. It is recommended that a trial area is installed first to demonstrate the acceptability of the technique in bringing the dynamic properties back within the specified range.

Another problem that can occur in tracks of some age is slight shrinkage of the synthetic surface away from the edge kerbing to leave a gap.If this occurs to any siqnificant extent, the full thickness of the surface should be cut back from the kerb a minimum distance of 75mm and fresh material re-instated to full thickness after the application of a suitable primer to the kerb edgings.

Eventually, the synthetic surface will have deteriorated to the point where patch repairs or a complete overcoat of cast resin or spray-applied textured paint are no longer adeguate to bring the facility back into good condition.When this time comes it is necessary to undertake the complete removal of the old synthetic surface and its replacement with new.