A new sports hall called the Life Arena, built in Uppsala, Sweden, has been fitted with a high performance InstaSport SP18 sprung sports floor. A resilient, impact energy absorbing system, it uses special, environmentally friendly, sports cradles, manufactured from recycled rubber crumb, that have a 60 year guarantee.

This high standard system meets the requirements of EN 14904 and achieves the highest A4/C4 category for area elastic and combined elastic sprung flooring, which protect athletes from injury.

Timber battens were placed in the rubber crumb cradles and the versatile system could then be accurately levelled and adjusted to the required floor height, overcoming any uneven areas in the sub- floor and avoiding the need for messy levelling screeds. The sprung undercarriage was then overlaid with 18mm plywood and finished with a Graboplast Extreme 8mm sports vinyl floor covering.

Designed, supplied and rapidly installed by Velox Track & Field AB, this 1,100m2 sprung sports floor is extremely durable, requires very low maintenance and will help all those using this impressive new facility to avoid injury. It will host a variety of different sports, in particular floorball, a type of floor hockey with five players and a goalkeeper, which is very popular in many countries and originated in Sweden in the early 1970’s.