As my wife frequently tells me I often repeat myself. This is true in blogging as well as general conversation (when limited to football and marquees there’s only so many things I can talk about). So if I repeat myself on here there’s a fair chance I’m being forgetful though sometimes it is intentional – some subjects are more important/essential when starting a marquee hire business than others so need mentioning again for more recent followers.

Theatre style seating is something you come up against now and again, often people have the legal wedding in a registry office the day before and then have a celebratory ceremony in a marquee on the day. But they’ll be looking to you as the marquee supplier to advise what space they need. Here’s what we used to allow:

For every chair (without arms): 0.5m wide x 1m deep. Most chairs (bistro, gilts etc) are 40-50cm square, you then leave a further 50cm at the front to allow for leg room.

For aisles: allow a path 2m wide (conveniently the same width as our red marquee carpet if you want to make a nice feature of it).

Here’s an example layout:

So of the 6×12m area you’ve got 12 seats on one side of the aisle (taking up 6m) and 8 seats on the other side (taking up 4m) leaving a 2m aisle down the middle – it’s off centre otherwise you’d have a leg at the end of the aisle on the way in/out!

This layout works better in landscape rather than portrait. If you imagine trying to have the same marquee with an aisle going the other way through the marquee it would only leave 2m (4 seats) on either side. 9m wide marquees work a little better that way round as you can fit 7 seats either side of the 2m aisle.

This may not be useful to you right now but keep the dimensions and ideas handy as you will be asked for this at some point through your marquee hire career!

Thanks for reading

Spencer

At the risk of educating my competitors I’ve heard several people recently describe how they (incorrectly in my view) put up gutters so thought it was a good thing to cover on here.

Several people tell me it’s easier to hang guttering using bungees rather than cable ties. Easier it may be, better it is not.

Even if you’ve got a good fall on it water is still going to weigh down a gutter, this pulls down the bungees in the middle meaning that middle section of the gutter holds water. When it holds water the bungees get pulled down even more, this continues until water overflows the top of the guttering. That is not a good thing.

Second point: You want to avoid getting kinks in a gutter, if you’ve got a kink in it water will get held up and sit in the bottom.  If you’ve got a 6inch high gutter with 2″ of water sat in the bottom then suddenly you’ve effectively got a 4″ deep gutter. Less than ideal.

The secret with hanging a marquee gutter (wake up competitors, this is the bit you’ll want to copy/steal) is to pull it out taught as you go along:

1. Lay the gutter out between the marquees with an equal length overhanging each end
2. Start in the middle of one marquee and cable tie tightly in place. Work your way out to either pulling the gutter taught and cable tying in place (leave the cable ties slightly looser towards each end to create a fall on the gutter)
3. At this stage you should have a gutter hanging down from one marquee.
4. Repeat stage 2 in the second marquee ensuring no kinks form as you go along.

Guttering is very easy to do, once you’ve done it a couple of times it will become second nature.

Remember good guttering is also part of planning – always avoid ‘T’ shape guttering as it never works. Better to have three marquees side by side than attempt two side by side with one across the end.

Thanks for reading.

Spencer.

Not marquee hire related, just general business related today.

We’ve been offered this occasionally in the past but the frequency has gone up recently so thought I’d pass on a word of warning:

Don’t accept a cheque for more than the desired amount and refund the difference. Even if the cheque has cleared in your bank account.

This sounds a bit odd and it might be that you’re never offered this so don’t worry.  If you do then just refuse. It’s a way of money laundering. At least I’m assured that’s the case, my knowledge on the subject is similar to the guys from office space (awesome film).

Thanks for reading

Spencer

For any reasonable sized event you need to supply a catering area, generally this is in the form of an additional marquee attached to the side or the back of the main marquee(s).

But there is another solution.

Say you’re supplying two 6×12m marquees with a 6×6m marquee to one side and need to add a catering area somewhere. You could actually supply three 6×12m marquees and partition one of them in half. This saves you work and looks a little neater from the outside.

Partitioning a 6×12m marquee in half is very easy, put solid walls on the side of the catering area and hang a 6m end wall where you want the partition (tie a rope across and support it in the middle to get fixings). In the non-catering area hang a standard 6×6m roof lining, from the inside this will just look like a standard 6×6m marquee.

Keep this in mind when you’re planning layouts etc.

Thanks for reading.

Spencer.