Court Drainage Systems in New Jersey

A road crowns in the middle so water runs off both sides. A court can't do that — a ridge down the center throws off ball bounce and looks wrong the moment you stand on the baseline. Instead, regulation courts use a single-plane slope, tilting the entire surface a consistent 1% from one end to the other or side to side. That's a small enough grade that players never notice it underfoot, but enough that water actually moves instead of sitting.

Getting that slope right is a surveying problem before it's a concrete problem. The sub-base has to be graded to that exact plane across the full footprint — usually 60x120 feet or more once you include run-off area — before a single yard of concrete or asphalt goes down. A base that's off by even a quarter-inch in the wrong spot creates a low point, and low points are where every drainage problem starts. Which base material you're grading for matters too — see our concrete vs. asphalt base comparison for how each holds up once the slope is in.

Not every lot drains the same way, and New Jersey has a wide range of soil and water conditions. Clay-heavy soil, common inland and in parts of North Jersey, doesn't absorb water quickly, so a dry well or french drain has to be sized larger than it would on sandy soil to keep up during heavy storms. Shore-area and low-lying sites often sit close to the water table, which limits how deep you can dig for a dry well before you hit saturated ground — those builds sometimes need a raised base or a tie-in to municipal storm infrastructure instead.

Flat lots are their own challenge. If there's no natural fall across the property, the base still has to create that 1% slope, which usually means more excavation and fill on one side than the other, and a longer run to get the water somewhere useful. And on any lot, stormwater ordinances in some NJ towns limit how much impervious surface can discharge onto a neighboring property — worth checking during permitting, not after the base is poured.