I agree with Erich about 90%. A sprung floor is way better for your artists than covering a solid floor, and there are many floor solutions out there, but I do think he is a little hard on the hardboard (no pun intended), so I will come to its defense. In my experience as a TD of 30+ years, a true "theatre" floor will see not only the feet of the artists, but casters, platform legs, sawhorses, and the random tools and fasteners used to build and rebuild the magical place where we tell our stories. If the space is making art, it WILL get used and abused.
Consequently, my money has always gone to the hardboard solution. It is not very expensive, can be painted dozens of times, looks great, takes abuse, and a piece can be obtained locally and replaced by your students quickly and easily. The consultant for our new black box space tried to convince our architect to use a more expensive "professional" product for the floor, but once I demonstrated the level of difficulty and expense of replacing just one panel, it was a no-brainer to go with hardboard.
In the end, pick the floor that will serve your space the best. That may be a manufactured solution, or it may be something more along the hardboard line.
All my best :-).
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Tracy Nunnally
NIU - Professor/TD/Area Head
Vertigo - Owner/System Designer
ETCP Certified Rigger/Trainer
DeKalb, Illinois
Original Message:
Sent: 01-28-2016 12:18
From: Erich Friend
Subject: replacing stage floor
If you have a tile (VCT ?) floor it is likely that it is on a concrete slab base (correct me if I'm wrong), so this means that the floor has no resilience at all. This is very harmful to the performers joints and dental work (you crash your teeth together and can chip enamel when you dance or jump up and down). A soft floor cover like some of the padded vinyl surfaces they sell for practice gyms is generally NOT appropriate for stages because the scenery, platform legs, casters, and other point-loads damage the surface quickly. A properly sprung stage floor is designed to absorb the impacts from aggressive activity like dance and fight choreography while presenting a solid monolithic surface that will allow castered objects to move smoothly across them.
Some people will recommend a 'Masonite' floor deck (also sometimes referred to as 'meso'), however, Masonite Corporation has not made floor decking for over twenty years, and when they did, it was the "Duron WR" that was the good stuff used on professional stages. The current material nomenclature is 'Tempered Hardboard' (HB) and it come in five ANSI grades (Ref: ANSI A135.4-2004). The really cheap stuff they sell at the big-box hardware stores is the worst grade (5 - Industrialite), and it swells-up and flakes apart when it gets wet, so it doesn't last too long on most stage floors and is a poor investment.
Buying the good stuff (Grade 1 or 2) requires some planning, as it must be special ordered. Sierra Pine makes a product called Medite II that is very good Grade 2 hardboard. You typically want a 1/4" thickness product.
Simply laying a sheet of hardboard on top of a concrete floor is not a preferred solution, as it does not provide any resilience for the performers. However, building-up a floor to have a suspension and staggered layers of underlayment can create a floor that is about 4" thick, so it may affect how the transition from the adjacent rooms to the stage is accomplished. The 2010 ADA requires 1:12 ramp for this type of transition, so this means you need a about a 4 foot long ramp to make the elevation change meet building code.
There are some shallower solutions, but most of them fail to maintain a good level surface when presented with point loads. The build-up of the various floor layers and the final finish is all important, so so a project like this may require the involvement of a Theatre Consultant and and Architect to fully satisfy all of the design requirements and produce a set of documents that the School can put out for bids. Simply asking a bunch of contractors for a 'stage floor' will get you ten different responses and evaluating the merits of each would be difficult. Schools tend to buy the cheapest thing offered without any regard as to whether it meets the actual needs of the end users, so this is why I recommend doing it right and getting a proper deign in place so all of the contractors are bidding on the same thing.
If your administration balks at this potential cost, remind them of the hundreds of thousands of dollars they spend on the acres of gymnasium, weight room, and athletic fields. A few thousand square feet of stage floor is inconsequential in that regard, and the protection of the performing arts students bodies is every bit as important as it is for the athletes.
(Insert shameless plug here) We can provide this type if design service if you are interested.
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Erich Friend
Theatre Consultant
Teqniqal Systems