 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
About Us
Tumer H. Eren and Classic Turf
"I found it hard to believe that in this day and age, we couldn't put in a tennis court that would last," Eren said. "I kept fixing the same courts year after year. I felt I had two choices: get out of the business, or come up with a solution. In 1984, I began to think that if I could coat some rubber with water-based acrylic, I'd have a winner."
Over the next eight years, after much trial and error with different glues and acrylics, the Classic Turf System was born. Eren uses prefabricated rubber made from the highly desirable "buffing rubber" of truck tires, which is delivered to the Classic Turf headquarters in Woodbury, Conn., in 4-foot-wide rolls, in thicknesses from 4 mm to 12 mm.
From 1993 to '97, Eren manually installed his system entirely on-site, spreading glue on the subsurface, rolling out the rubber, adding adhesive, a layer of silica sand, then three acrylic polymer coatings. "It was a difficult, labor-intensive, expensive process, and you couldn't control the weather," he says.
Then, in 1997, Eren started prefabricating the rubber, adhesive and silica sand "grip" layer in his factory, inventing his own equipment to do the job quickly and, more importantly, under controlled conditions. Now, the prefab rolled rubber is delivered to the site, laid out on the court (using manual machines that Eren designed, which cuts the time to minutes), glued together, then coated with the acrylic polymer system.
Eren says he perfected the last part of the process in 2002 when he found the right glue to join the rolled sections of prefab rubber. "Over 14 years, I tested 80 or 90 different sealers before I found one that worked properly," he says. The sealer he uses moves with the rubber after it cures and has the properties of the rubber when it comes to adding the acrylic coatings on top of it.
With normal court maintenance and resurfacing the top two coats every five years, Eren says he guarantees the Classic Turf surface against peeling, cracking and delamination from the surface for 25 years. He adds that because the whole system uses only 10 percent polyurethane by weight, the surface doesn't get sticky in extremely hot weather, which has been a complaint that rubberized surfaces have had to content with in the past.
Eren, who plays tennis two to three times a week on his own Classic Turf court, says that he'll call clients to make sure they're satisfied, or he'll stop by to visit his installations whenever he's traveling. "I take a quick look at my tennis courts to make sure there are no problems," he says, adding that courts he built 11 years ago "don't have a scratch on them."
Manufacturing
Due to the vastly increased interest in Classic Turf products in recent years, Classic Turf Founder and President Tumer H. Eren recently expanded the original 11,000-square-foot main factory, which was built in 1996. A new warehouse and storage facility, adding an extra 4,000-square-feet, opened in January 2005. The new warehouse can store more than 600 rolls of Classic Turf prefabricated rubber products, which means that orders can be filled and shipped immediately.