Serving Together to Reach Boys and Girls with the Gospel of Christ

The Electra-Tarp Awana Game Floor

As I begin this post, I need to disclose that I did not acquire the game floor to evaluate it for the website. Our church opted to use this option in our facility. These are my personal observations from our use of the game floor and are not geared as an endorsement, nor promotion, of this product. I am a customer and I am receiving no compensation for this evaluation.

We laid the game floor out when we received it to give it a quick look and to make sure it would fit in the area we planned on using it (picture to the left).

Yesterday, we used the game floor for the first time in a club setting.

The clubbers were excited to see it (whether it was this tarp, or a regular game floor they would have been excited as we have not used a "game floor" for years) as well as the game guy. Overall, everyone is very pleased with the tarp. The comments on the tarp are from a single use to this point and I will probably add additional reviews as we use it more. For reference, we had (5) T&T clubbers and the (10) Sparks clubbers using the floor during gametime.

General Comments:

The tarp does have some weight to it. Ours is 35' x 35' and weighs around 200 pounds
The game floor is 30' x 30' (3/4 scale) allowing a 30" area outside the square for the clubbers to stand on the mat, on their line. Generally the team line is near the edge of the tarp unless other wise requested (as I did).
We used (3) people to put it down and we folded/rolled it up with (2) people
We purchased the tarp lifter to lift the folded/rolled tarp and we then placed it on a small dolly to move to where we store it currently, which is under a table. It was easy to handle and maneuver that way.
"Bunching" and "shifting" - there was a little bunching off the tarp during gametime with the Sparks and the tarp did shift a little bit. Electra-Tarp did provide vinyl tape to help secure it to the floor which we did not use. We will look at using it next week and see how that goes. The tarp can be purchased with velcro in the corners to help secure it on carpet. I opted not to get velcro in the corners.
The tarp was easy to adjust and removing the bunching was also easily achieved.

Answers to FaceBook questions:

The following are answers to questions/comments posted on our FaceBook page.

Amaris asked, "what does something like this cost?"

Depending on the size of the tarp, the material you select and options with painting, you can expect to pay in the neighborhood of $2,000 - $3,000. You can get a rough estimate on their website.

Vicki asked, "How does it compare to the carpet velcro strips? As far as price, durability and labor?"

When you purchase the velcro tape from Awana, your cost is approximately $250, or about 1/10th of the price of the tarp. With the tarp, you lay it out and your done... with the velcro tape, if you pick it up each week, you have the lengths cut, but need to position it and line it up each week. It would take longer to put the velcro tape down each week.

If you leave the velcro tape down (which I did at a previous church), then you do not have the set-up time. The carpet around the velcro will fade, so after a while if you pick the velcro tape up, you will clearly see where it was on the carpet. Velcro can stay on the carpet for years, though is can shift slightly as people lift it and move it some and smaller pieces (foot markers along the diagonal line) are easily unlodged by vacuum cleaners, etc. I cannot personally attest to the durability of the tarp now as we have had it less than a week.

Nathan said that, "We tried this concept with an indoor/outdoor carpet we'd lay over the sanctuary carpet--our biggest problem was "wrinkling" which tended to trip the kids (not a good thing)."As noted above, it did "wrinkle" a little and was easily removed. To my knowledge, no clubbers tripped over the wrinkles and they were on the edges where the clubbers were standing. We had the tarp "loose" on the carpet. Next week we plan to secure the corners with the vinyl tape that Electra-Tarp provided with the tarp. They did offer velcro in the corners to help secure the tarp which I opted to not use.

Again, overall, everyone was very pleased with the game floor tarp from Electra-Tarp.

For more information about Electra-Tarp, please visit their website (Awana Game Floor Page) at: electratarp.com

If you any other questions, feel free to post them below and I will give you my honest, unbiased, evaluation of the tarp.

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