Industries
Pole Pads and Wall Padding for Parks and Recreation
Your courts sit unattended in weather nine months a year, and the person who finds the failure is usually a resident with your director's phone number. We build padding for that reality and quote it in a format your purchasing office can drop straight into a requisition.
- Shipping
- All 48 contiguous states.
- Installation by our own crews
- New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, eastern Pennsylvania, plus the Austin and Houston markets in Texas. Coverage detail
Outside our installation markets we ship the product for installation by you or your contractor. Coverage states are New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, eastern Pennsylvania, the Austin and Houston metros in Texas.
The pad has to survive with nobody watching it
A gym pad gets wiped down after practice and looked at by a coach twice a week. A pad on a neighborhood court gets sun, rain, a freeze-thaw cycle every few weeks in winter, a string trimmer at the base every mowing cycle, and whatever a group of teenagers decides to do to it on a Friday night. Nobody brings it inside and nobody logs the damage, so the first report you get is a complaint, not an inspection.
For unattended municipal courts we point departments to the 18 to 18.5 oz vinyl tier instead of the indoor baseline, and the reasoning behind each weight is laid out on our pole pad materials page. What matters more for your budget is planning the replacement cycle before it happens: pads on public courts get destroyed on someone else's schedule, not yours, so the department that buys two spares up front turns a slashed pad into a same-day swap by a crew member instead of a new requisition three months later.
- Order spare pads on the original PO so vandalism is a maintenance task, not a procurement task
- Full-length hook and loop closure means a pad comes off its post without pulling the post or hiring a contractor
- Darker stock colors like Black, Navy Blue and Forest Green hide dirt and marker between cleanings
- Foam-only wall pads avoid plywood backing that traps moisture in unsheltered locations
- Watch the bottom 12 inches: trimmer line, irrigation spray and standing water kill pads from the ground up
What your risk manager will actually ask for
Parks departments carry public exposure that a private club does not. Your courts are open to anyone at any hour with no waiver, no supervision and no sign-in sheet, and in a claim the question is rarely whether padding existed. It is what the department knew, when it knew it, and what it did next. That makes your paperwork trail as load-bearing as the foam.
ASTM F2440 is the impact attenuation specification written for indoor sports venue wall padding, and we explain the numbers behind it on our materials and standards page; treat it as a reference point on an outdoor court rather than a pass/fail test, and note that we do not claim our products are certified or compliant to it. What we will do is put our actual construction in writing so your counsel is working from a spec sheet instead of a marketing claim.
The rest is process. NFHS basketball calls for at least 3 feet, and preferably 10 feet, of unobstructed space outside the boundary lines, which on many older park courts is the finding that drives the padding decision in the first place. Photograph each post before and after, attach the images to the work order, and put the pads on the same inspection form your crews already use for playground equipment so the record builds itself.
- Get construction specs in writing before your risk manager asks, not during a claim
- Add pole pads to the existing playground inspection round so damage is logged on a schedule
- Measure boundary clearance at each court; posts inside the 3 foot line are the ones to pad first
Quotes built for your bid thresholds and PO calendar
Most departments have a dollar line where the process changes: informal quotes below it, three written quotes above it, formal sealed bid above that. Padding a handful of posts often lands right on that line. We break quotes out by court, by site and by line item so you can see exactly where you sit, and we have no objection to a park system phased across two fiscal years to keep each purchase in the simpler lane. If your finance office needs the padding classified as capital rather than operating, tell us before we write the quote so the line items are grouped the way your coding expects.
The other constraint is the calendar. Board or council approval, then a purchase order, then delivery, then your crew installs before the spring league starts. Stock items in our 16 vinyl colors generally ship in 2 to 3 business days once the PO clears, which means the long pole is almost always the approval step and not the product. Custom printed pads with a department seal or park name add proof and production time on top of that, so start the custom printed pole pad conversation before the budget vote rather than after the PO is cut.
- Line-item quotes by park so you can phase purchases across fiscal years
- Stock colors ship in 2 to 3 business days once the purchase order clears
- Custom printed pole pads start at $373.99; decals with application start at $119.99
- Ask for the quote grouped to match your capital versus operating coding
- Padding carries a 1-Year Limited Warranty
Build a post inventory once, then reorder from it forever
Park infrastructure is inherited. The backstop posts at the field your department absorbed from the school district are not the posts on the original site plan, the tennis net posts at one park will not match the ones three miles away, and the person who would have known retired in 2011. Guessing from a drawing is how departments end up with pads that will not close, so measure the posts you actually have and follow the method on our post measuring guide.
The part worth your time is doing it as a system rather than one court at a time. Walk every park once in the off season, record each post by location with a photo and a size, and you get three things at once: an accurate budget number, a reorder list your successor can use, and the chance to standardize. If eleven of your fourteen courts take the same part, you stock one spare size instead of four, and a damaged pad in August is a shelf item rather than a lead time.
- FT75 fits 4 in and 5 in square posts, from $254
- FT78 covers 6x6 posts at $307; FT79 adds the gusset pad at $402
- FT80P is a 6x8 pad only at $291; FT80 is the 6x8 pad with gusset at $436
- FT77 base and gusset pad from $146 for posts already damaged at the bottom
- Send a park-by-park list with photos and we will confirm parts before you commit a PO
Will these pads hold up to a full winter outdoors?
They are built for it when you specify the heavier vinyl tier we recommend for unattended outdoor courts. Padding carries a 1-Year Limited Warranty, and we will confirm in writing what our construction is for your specific sites so your maintenance plan is based on documented spec rather than assumption.
Can our own maintenance crew mount these?
Yes, and most departments do. The full-length hook and loop closure wraps the post and closes on itself, so there are no fasteners, no drilling and no special tools. Two crew members can pad a court in an afternoon, and a ladder is only needed if you are padding taller backstop or tennis posts.
How do we handle a pad that gets cut or tagged?
Replace the single pad, not the run. Each pad comes off its post independently, so vandalism at one post does not force a whole-court reorder. Buy one or two spares on the original purchase order and your crew swaps them the same day the report comes in, which also keeps the fix off your procurement calendar.
Can we put our department or park logo on the pads?
Yes. Custom printed pole pads start at $373.99, and pad decals with application start at $119.99 if you would rather brand stock pads. Artwork specifications and the proof approval steps are covered on our custom printed pole pads page, and the practical advice for a public agency is to start that process before the budget vote so proofing is not competing with your install window.
Start a quote
Send us the
measurements.
Tell us the post size or the wall run, the colors you need, and whether it lives indoors or out. You will get a written quote back with a real lead time on it.
- A written lead time on every quote
- Purchase orders and W9 on request
- A proof before anything is cut