Heating Volleyball courts in the winter....(sand)

Wilkesp

Hi All! We have an 18k Sq Ft. Volleyball Dome in Wisconsin. 3 courts...A Bar and Concrete. We use in floor heat for the concrete space to keep all the players feet warm off the court. Now that we are in winter...we are having some chilly sand! The air temp inside the dome is 70 Degrees. Any thoughts on how to heat the sand so it isn't so chilly? Underneath our 14 inches of sand is just dirt...with landscaping fabric separating the sand from the dirt to avoid contamination with dirt and clean volleyball sand....so any thoughts or ideas would be helpful!

Jamie Hall

First and simplest thing to do would be to push the sand to one side, make sure the dirt is really flat, put in 2" of rigid foam (blue board), then fabric and relay the sand. That would at least break the thermal path to the dirt.

If that didn't work, the only thing I can think of is run tubing on top of the blue board and run it as a radiant floor.

Ironman

Jamie Hall said:

First and simplest thing to do would be to push the sand to one side, make sure the dirt is really flat, put in 2" of rigid foam (blue board), then fabric and relay the sand. That would at least break the thermal path to the dirt.

If that didn't work, the only thing I can think of is run tubing on top of the blue board and run it as a radiant floor.

You may need some type of conductive material, such as concrete or aluminum plates, to conduct the heat to the sand.

The sand itself will be a poor conductor because it's porous.

Gordy

At 14 " of sand it will be an energy hog to give some real noticeable results with radiant. I would say at 30x60 plus dimmensions times how many courts? Would be cost prohibitive for the comfort given.