Padel Court Technical Drawings & Documentation Package: What Buyers Should Request (2026)

By PeakPadel Engineering Team · Published September 2026 · 11 min read · Updated: 2026-09-20

1. Why Does the Drawing Pack Decide Whether Your Project Stays on Schedule?

Most first-time padel buyers compare quotations on price, court type and delivery time. The professional buyers compare something less exciting: the documentation that comes with the offer. On a project that needs a building permit, a concrete base, a crane or a customs entry, the drawings are the difference between a four-week installation and a six-month argument.

Three things break without them:

• The foundation is poured wrong. The steel columns of a padel enclosure are fixed with base plates to cast-in anchor bolts. If the bolt positions, diameters and embedment come from a generic drawing instead of a site-specific one, the base plates will not fit — and the usual fix on site is drilling, shimming or re-welding. On outdoor courts the enclosure is a wind-loaded structure, so a foundation that is guessed is a safety issue, not just a delay;
• The permit stalls. Planning and building-control reviewers want to see court position, run-off distances, drainage falls, lighting columns, noise and wind data, and a design signed off by a locally registered engineer. A supplier's sales render cannot be submitted as a technical package;
• Delivery becomes a claim. Glass is cut and toughened in fixed sizes, panels are welded in jigs, turf is printed to a fixed court geometry. If the drawing set and the delivered goods are not revision-matched, the mismatch is discovered with the container already on site — and the argument about who ordered what costs more than the parts.

The good news: a competent factory produces all of this anyway. The buyer's job is simply to ask for it at quotation stage, when it is still free. Our padel court specifications sheet lists the acceptance values; this guide covers the drawings and documents that carry them.

2. What Should a Complete Padel Court Drawing Package Contain?

A full pack for a standard 20 × 10 m court runs to roughly 10–14 sheets plus certificates. The table below is the checklist we work to, and the list to put into your request for quotation.

Ask for the pack as a drawing register — one index sheet listing every drawing, its number, revision and date. It sounds bureaucratic until the first site query arrives and everyone can see which revision the crew is holding.

3. What Does the General Arrangement Drawing Show?

The GA drawing is the sheet everyone works from, and it should state the numbers that matter — not only the famous 20 × 10 m. The values below are the ones we put on every GA sheet, and the ones to check on yours.

Two checks that catch most problems. First, 40 mm matters: the GA drawing must be internally consistent — outer footprint, bolt grid and slab edge should all reference the same datum. Second, if your site is an odd shape, ask for the GA drawing on your own survey dimensions before you sign, not after. Multi-court layouts and constricted sites need the drawn steel and glass interfaces, which is why the same pack feeds the foundation design and the civil works tender.

4. What Must the Foundation and Anchor-Bolt Drawing Contain?

The foundation drawing is the sheet your civil contractor prices from, and the one the manufacturer cannot complete alone: it has to be developed into a site-specific design by an engineer registered where the court is being built, because it depends on ground conditions and local wind loads. What the factory must supply is everything that engineer needs.

• Reaction data. Post reactions, base-plate sizes and the maximum wind load the enclosure is designed for. Public construction guidance for padel is explicit that the manufacturer should state the maximum wind loadings applicable to the enclosure so the foundation can be designed around them;
• Anchor positions. A dimensioned bolt layout — centre-to-centre spacing, bolt diameter and grade, embedment depth, projection above concrete, and tolerance on placement;
• Base-plate detail in 2D CAD. Plate size and thickness, gusset or stiffener geometry, the rubber or EPDM pad that isolates steel from concrete, and the grouting note. This is the detail that sites most often improvise — and the one buyers search for by name;
• Foundation type and section. For permanent outdoor courts, public guidance in mature markets expects a cast-in reinforced ring beam or pad foundations — an above-ground or steel-plate base is not treated as acceptable for permanent outdoor installation. Typical sections are a ring beam of roughly 30–40 cm width with reinforcement, or a reinforced slab of 100–150 mm in C25/30-class concrete on a compacted granular sub-base;
• Drainage and ducting. Falls, outlets, and the ducts that carry lighting and control cables through the beam — these should be drawn on the same sheet, because they are poured at the same time;
• Interface schedule. What the buyer builds versus what the factory supplies, with hold points: set-out approval, bolt inspection before pouring, slab flatness before delivery.

Buyers who skip this sheet usually end up with one of two expensive outcomes: a slab cast level with no falls, or bolt positions that force the installation crew to slot, weld or shim base plates — an operation no anti-corrosion warranty covers. The padel court foundation guide covers the concrete work itself; the drawing set is what makes it buildable.

5. Which Structural Documents Do Permit Authorities Ask For?

Requirements differ by country and sometimes by municipality, but the drawing-and-data slice of the file comes from the manufacturer. The full application file — statements, access and parking, acoustic reports — is covered in our padel court planning permission guide; what follows is what has to come off the drawing set. Prepare it before you submit, and treat anything missing as a supplier gap rather than a paperwork nuisance.

Noise assessment, access and parking layouts, the planning statement and the visual-impact material complete the file but are site work rather than supplier documents — that is the part the planning guide walks through.

Note the split of responsibility, because it is where buyers lose weeks: the manufacturer supplies the product data — loads, base-plate geometry, glass schedule, certificates; the local engineer converts it into a site-specific design that carries professional indemnity. Buyers who expect the factory to sign off a foundation in a market it has never worked in are asking for a document that will not be accepted. Our wind-load guide explains the inputs that statement needs.

6. What Does the Lighting and Electrical Drawing Set Include?

Lighting is the second cluster of drawings that reviewers and insurers read closely, because it is where play quality, running cost and neighbour complaints all originate.

• Layout sheet: pole or post positions, mounting heights, luminaire count and aiming angles, drawn in plan and elevation — including whether the luminaires are mounted on the enclosure or on separate columns;
• Photometric study: a lux contour plan calculated on a defined grid. For padel, a grid of 1.0 m × 1.0 m (or finer) centred on the net line is the convention, with the results quoted as average lux and uniformity rather than a single peak figure. Recreational and regional club play is commonly designed around 200–300 lux average with 0.5 uniformity, with higher levels for competition;
• Glare and spill notes: shielding, aiming limits and dimming or switching zones, which is also what planning conditions for residential neighbours normally require;
• Electrical single-line diagram: supply size, cable and duct routes, breakers and protection, control gear, and the IP rating required for outdoor luminaires and enclosures;
• As-built update: an obligation to return the sheet with actual installed positions, which is what your electrician needs for future maintenance and what a warranty claim references.

Ask for the photometric file, not only the PDF — most lighting designers can hand over the calculation project, and it makes any later change (add a court, raise a pole, dim a zone) a one-day job instead of a survey. Our lighting guide covers lux targets and pole layout in more detail.

7. Which File Formats and Revision Rules Should You Demand?

Format is where good drawings become unusable drawings. The practical standard:

• PDF for every sheet — for permit submission, tendering, printing and site folders, scaled and with all dimensions visible;
• DWG/DXF for the sheets your own team has to coordinate — GA plan, foundation and anchor layout, base-plate details, lighting layout. Editable CAD is what lets your architect overlay the court onto the site plan, and what your contractor can set out from;
• Scales and details: 1:100 or 1:200 for the GA and site sheets, 1:20 or 1:10 for connection details such as base plates, door frames and glass joints;
• A revision table on every sheet — revision letter, date, description, author. Insist that any change after order confirmation triggers a new revision, that the superseded sheet is withdrawn, and that the factory confirms in writing which revision is being manufactured. This single rule prevents most delivery disputes;
• A drawing register plus a named contact for technical queries, and a shared folder that both sides update so nobody works from an email attachment from three months ago;
• Compatibility: ask which CAD version the files are saved in, and request a neutral export (for example an earlier DXF release) if your team uses different software.

8. How Do You Check Drawings Against the Delivered Goods?

Use the drawing set as the acceptance checklist on site. This is the short version of the inspection sheet we recommend buyers complete at handover; our installation and construction guide covers the day-by-day build sequence.

9. Which Documents Do Customs, Banks and Insurers Need?

On a container shipment the drawing set also does commercial work:

• Customs: commercial invoice, packing list per container, and a written declaration of what the goods are so the entry line is classified consistently — padel courts and their components are normally declared under the sports-equipment heading of the tariff, and it is worth asking your broker for a short pre-classification note if the duty rate is material to the project;
• Banks and grant bodies: technical documentation is part of the technical review when a facility is funded by a loan, a leasing company or a sports-development grant. A quotation with no drawings rarely passes that review — see our financing guide for what lenders ask;
• Insurers: wind-load data, glass standard references and the as-built lighting and electrical documents are what an underwriter needs to cover the enclosure and the public on it;
• Freight and site planning: weights and volumes from the bill of materials and the packing list decide lifting equipment, access and storage — one of the most common reasons a container sits on a port for a week.

10. How Do You Request the Pack Before You Pay?

Send three things with your enquiry and a competent factory can return a usable pack without a single site visit:

1. Site facts: country and city, site dimensions and a photo or plan, indoor / covered / outdoor, number of courts, and whether a surveyed level exists;
2. Environmental inputs: local wind speed or wind zone, snow load where relevant, seismic classification where applicable, and the ground conditions you know about (rock, fill, clay, water table);
3. Project envelope: budget range, target installation window, whether a roof, lighting or branding is included, and the name of the local engineer you will work with.

Then ask for the pre-order pack explicitly: a GA drawing on your dimensions, a foundation concept drawing with the anchor-bolt grid, a base-plate detail, the glass schedule, a lighting layout, the wind-load statement, the certificate list, and a drawing register that will be maintained through delivery. A factory that will not issue a GA drawing before an order will not produce a good one afterwards.

11. Padel Court Technical Drawings FAQ