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Tennis court


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Is it for you or your guests?

If its for your guests I would do some research before you do anything because if nobody uses it you cold have wasted quite a bit of money. Mind you if you did build it and nobody used it you could convert it for keeping chickens in [;-)] .

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We just this year looked into this on behalf of some friends with a second home. I was astounded by the prices quoted for a piece of flat, hard ground with a net slung across it and a spot of chain link thrown up around it: three companies came up with costs ranging from €38k to €50k.

A lot seems to depend on the surface - the cheapest was for "new" type with a porous concrete / polymer surface. Clay - I believe - is more costly.

We made an arrangement with a local tennis club for our gite guests that seems to work rather well: the club are pleased to get a little extra revenue and it is something we can offer at no cost to us.

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You have to protect the tennis court from winds.  Friends of ours put one in and found they could not use it.  They planted leylandii all around it to afford some protection but these have took 4 years to grow before the court bcame protected.
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Just to add my bit....we have a tennis court which was here when we bought the property & it is very well used, but mainly by gite guests.  The websites we use to advertise the gites have very few properties with tennis courts, so we attract a lot of 'tennis families' who return year after year to have almost unlimited access to a good court.  It is used more than the pool by our gite guests as a whole as it can be played on all year round, but (& this is a big but...) I would say it would in no way justify the expense quoted to install one, especially if you are only offering B&B - it does get used by our B&B guests but only because it is there - to my knowledge in 5 years none of our B&B guests has come to stay because of the court, whereas our regular 'tennis families' do...... It is possibly a factor in atttracting our regular B&B guests to return as it is an additional facility - we also offer tennis coaching from a local tennis pro who lives in the village & offer tennis racquets & balls for hire.

If for your own use then maybe a good idea, though once you get busy especially in the season you will find that the only time you enter the court is twice a year to clean & apply anti-moss solution - a process that takes a long time - having played a lot in the past I was never fully aware of exactly how big a court is until I came to clean & treat one....... When we lived in Dubai 25years ago we used to play on a daily basis, now its a couple of times a year & never between May & October when we are busy - no time & guests using it all the time........

We in addition offer giant chess (incredibly popular) & table tennis - just as well used as the tennis court & far less expensive.......

I would suggest that if you have a public tennis court nearby then advertise your property as having access to a court & see how much demand there is before you make the decision to install one & Oh yes the wind break is necessary - choose your location carefully.........

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[quote user="Pads"]Dont most french villages in france have local tennis courts ??? We have one in our village and every other village in a 30 km area..and we are very very rural...[/quote]

Our village also has two tennis courts, well maintained, about 400m from us.  So I guess it's not that unusual.   I see we coughed up this year for new nets out of our council taxes.  In four years not a single guest has ever taken up the offer of tennis racquets that we bought thinking they might want to use the courts.  Lazy sods.

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Doing a bit of investigative work for another thread I discovered that indeed a tennis court could contribute towards getting 4 epis with GDF or 4 Keys with Clevacances if you don't already have a pool. So perhaps it might not be such a stupid idea (well perhaps not stupid but you know what I mean) as I first thought, sorry about that. On the other hand if you are not going for one of these gradings then I could find better things to spend my money on unless I was going to use it a lot myself.
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