PUR Standards in Sport Floor Project Specifications

 
MFMA is advising the architectural and specification writing communities that the use or acknowledgement of DIN in project specification for sports flooring should be eliminated in favor of the PUR athletic floor standard.
 
In the past, standardization work in Germany was carried out by Deutsches Institut für Normung e. V. (DIN) through The Otto Graph Institute in Germany and other laboratories in the United States since its introduction. The DIN Standards originally replaced in Europe by the EN Standard have been replaced in North America by the MFMA-PUR and ASTM Standards.  The ASTM Standards and EN Standards provide performance standards for sports floors regardless of the surface material whereas the PUR Standards focus specifically on maple sports floors, the most popular sports flooring choice in North America.
 
MFMA’s PUR Standards focus on shock absorption, vertical deflection, area of deflection, ball bounce and surface friction, as well as the sports surface’s uniformity and consistent game play for a high-quality floor.  These standards have been adopted methodologies to ensure so that end users receive a reliable, well performing, athletic sports floor.  The MFMA PUR Standards utilize ASTM test methods when evaluating the performance and uniformity of a maple sport floor.
 
No one knows more about how a floor should perform and how it should be installed than MFMA members. As an organization representing the worldwide sports flooring industry, our goal is to balance technical standards with practical flooring system design to create uniform standards of performance for competition sports floors.
 
When a specific flooring system is a MFMA PUR Compliant floor, this confirms that it was tested on a strict pass/fail evaluation. MFMA will only allow the use of the term “compliant” as it pertains to PUR testing as confirmed directly between MFMA and the independent testing laboratory.
 
The PUR Standards identifies the performance standards and their optimal performance levels that matter the most for each activity. For example, playing basketball on a design more suited to aerobics activities is likely undesirable for its principle activity. The opposite is true if doing aerobics on a firm floor more desired as a fast surface with high level basketball response.
 
Different Standards for Different Sports
The PUR Standards have performance standards for basketball floors, portable floors, aerobics floors, dance floors, volleyball floors, squash courts, racquetball courts and handball courts.

Click HERE to find out more about MFMA Performance and Uniformity Standards.
  Back to top
For Architects