Warwick Township
Warwick Township budgets court work beside road work. Its 2023 capital program called for resurfacing the Guinea Lane pickleball courts and expanding them to ten, along with 2.61 miles of road repaving.
Local courts
Warwick Township calls itself the Heart of Bucks County. It covers about 11 square miles, with Warrington Township to the west, Warminster to the southwest, Northampton to the southeast, and Doylestown, Buckingham and Wrightstown townships across its northern side. Its villages include Jamison, where Almshouse Road crosses PA 263, along with Hartsville, Bridge Valley, Grenoble, Sugar Bottom, Traymore and Breadysville. Mailing addresses vary: the township’s own list of parks and facilities gives Jamison, Hartsville, Warrington and Furlong addresses as well as Warwick. Ace Court Surfacing takes on courts anywhere in the township, and calls from any of those addresses go to Bill Ferguson, based in Bucks County.
Guinea Lane came up again in the 2024 capital program, which called for new pickleball windscreens there. Your court needs the same kind of plan: cracks sealed before winter, color and texture renewed as play wears them, lines repainted before calls get hard. That’s our work, along with converting tennis courts for pickleball and laying out new pickleball courts. A tennis court of your own can host either game, or both, on the pavement it already has. Put any windscreens, fences, lights or new paving on the calendar ahead of fresh color.
Local conditions
The permit group’s reserved hours at Guinea Lane run April 1 through October 31. USTA Middle States calls the same months, April through October, the ideal time to begin court work. One coating maker wants surface and air above 50°F during a coat and for a full day after, and Warwick’s average lows clear 50°F only from May through September. Pick your court’s weeks off before the season starts.
Warwick requires a grading permit once impervious coverage grows by more than 1,000 square feet. The lines of one pickleball court enclose 880 square feet, but USA Pickleball’s minimum playing surface is 30 by 60 feet, or 1,800. Past 5,000 square feet, the township says a land development plan is likely to be required. Resurfacing and relining add no coverage; they go on pavement you already have.
The township’s yard tips for protecting its streams start with watering lawns no more than 1 inch a week, and a court beside a lawn gains from the same restraint. One coating maker warns that overwatering beside a court can build moisture under the base, and when the sun heats the surface, it can lift blisters through the acrylic. Set sprinkler heads so no spray reaches the court.
Start here
For Guinea Lane regulars with a tennis court at home: blended lines add up to two pickleball courts and keep tennis, or a full conversion gives pickleball the whole court. Both stay on existing pavement, adding nothing to the township’s impervious coverage count.
Warwick’s 2023 capital program listed the Guinea Lane pickleball courts for resurfacing. On a home court, cracks and low spots are repaired first, as coating makers require, then come textured color coats to their spec and new lines, including the kitchen (non-volley zone) lines.
For a court that stays tennis-only, the usual sequence is a wash, crack filling, acrylic resurfacer, sand-textured color coats as the coating maker specifies, and primed, painted lines, ideally in the May-to-September stretch when Warwick’s average lows stay above 50°F.
You could, but the township comes first. At USA Pickleball’s 30 by 60 foot minimum, one court adds 1,800 square feet of impervious surface, past the 1,000 square feet that triggers Warwick’s grading permit. The application asks for a site plan signed and sealed by a design professional, plus proposed stormwater controls such as a rain garden, infiltration trench or dry well. Once the new pavement is ready for coating, the court gets its layout, color and lines.
Yes, and the tennis lines can stay. USTA guidance allows up to two blended pickleball courts on a tennis court, one on each side of the net, painted 1.5 inches wide in a shade lighter than the court and stopped 3 inches short of the tennis lines. The tennis net generally stays up, and pickleball goes on portable nets set to 34 inches at center. When tennis is done at your house, a full conversion gives the whole surface to pickleball. Measure your court first; Bill is at 215-251-2984.
Borrow Warwick’s method: its annual capital projects, parks and roads included, draw on a five-year capital improvements plan. One acrylic-coating maker puts the standard resurfacing cycle for its surfaces at 5 to 8 years, and its care tips, such as clearing standing water and leaves, aim to stretch that. The same maker recommends a yearly spring inspection for new or reopened cracks, birdbaths, fading and mildew; here that follows four months of average lows below freezing. Logged over a few years, those notes tell the board when to recoat.