How I Built Shock-Absorbing Volleyball Flooring with Hevea Wood

So I finally got sick of seeing volleyball players at our community center rubbing their sore knees after games on that concrete-like floor. Decided to try building proper shock-absorbing flooring myself using hevea rubberwood. Total experiment mode.

First thing I did? Went to the salvage yard and grabbed some discarded industrial rubber pads. Thick black slabs that used to be under factory machines. Hauled them home in my pickup truck, smelling like old tires. Washed them with hose water and dish soap until they stopped leaving black marks.

The messy part:

• Measured our court space wrong TWICE (damn tape measure kept retracting)
• Cut the rubber pads crooked with a box cutter – ended up with zigzag edges like jigsaw pieces
• Found termite holes in the hevea wood planks I ordered online. Had to fill them with wood putty that dried lumpy

Assembling this beast took 3 whole weekends. Started by laying those rubber pads on the concrete like giant puzzle pieces. Slapped wood glue on top, then positioned the first hevea plank. Got glue everywhere – my dog stepped in it and left sticky paw prints across the living room carpet.

Biggest headache? Those special shock-absorbing connectors between planks. Instructions showed simple snapping sounds easy. Reality: I hammered those plastic pieces so hard my neighbor yelled through the wall. Ended up modifying them with a heat gun to soften the plastic before they’d fit. Melted two connectors into blobs accidentally.

Finished last Sunday sweating buckets. Tested it by jumping straight up and landing – knees felt like they landed on marshmallows. Actual volleyball test? Ball bounced weirdly high the first few hits, then settled nice. Players say it feels springy but stable. Still looks kinda Frankenstein with those lumpy putty spots and melted connectors though. Would I do it again? Hell no – but now we’ve got court that doesn’t destroy joints!