Archive for the ‘Dance Floors’ Category

How to lay a marquee dance floor

Monday, April 11th, 2011

Before I start on marquee dance floors I should mention that this week we have a 4x8m and one of our new 9x12m DIY Marquees for sale on eBay.

Nearly all marquee dance floors go together in the same manner using a brick type pattern for strength:

  1. Plan the position of the dance floor carefully. Often you can decide which way to lay the boards (across or down the marquee). If you think the customer might want to increase or decrease the size of dance floor at a later stage then orientate the boards accordingly. So  you only have to add or remove rows rather than lifting the whole floor to alter the size.
  2. Lay the first two or three rows of boards down and then stop: check the dance floor is square and going to fit in line with your desired position.
  3. Ensure there are no gaps between the boards, once the whole dance floor is laid it is very difficult to go back and change it
  4. Similarly pack up the boards as each row is laid to avoid any bouncy gaps underneath. It is a nightmare trying to pack up a bouncy dance floor once all the boards are laid
  5. Once all boards are down it is time to lay the edging. Firstly put the sides of the edging on – this is laid in the same way as the boards. So if the last row put down was big-big-small then your edging should be laid as small-big-big to continue the brick pattern
  6. Once both sides are fitted any corner pieces of edging can be put in and the gaps at both ends filled using the remaining edging.
  7. If you’re a bit short of edging then leave it off on the side facing the DJ/Band

All of this may seem common knowledge but to others it could prove interesting. I remember going on site to find one lad so frustrated with the hour that he’d spent trying to edge a dance floor that he was in the middle of hacksawing a piece down to fit. Once I’d shown him how it was supposed to fit blood pressures were lowered and the hacksaw was put back in the van!

Thanks for reading

Spencer

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Marquees on sand

Monday, June 28th, 2010

There are times when you’ll be asked to put marquees up on all sorts of different surfaces, one of which is sand. There are a couple of things to be aware of:

Anchoring the marquee down. If the marquee is going up on a sand school then the ground will probably be solid enough under the layer of sand to take marquee stakes as if it were on grass. If it’s on a beech then the soft sand will go deeper so you need longer stakes, more of them or heavy weights.

Dance floors. If you put a dance floor down on sand or even on top of carpet with sand outside eventually the sand will work its way on to the dance floor. From experience I know that’s a bad thing. We didn’t even consider the implications of doing a large wedding marquee on a sand school until we went to pick the marquee up afterwards – the sand had been walked in to the marquee and on to the dance floor. Throw in 150 people strutting their stuff and the effect was like sandpaper scratching our lovely parquet dance floor all night! An expensive lesson learnt.

If you are offering a dance floor in a marquee near sand then use one that can be re-stained (wooden dance floor) or incorporate in to the price re-lacquering the top surface.

Thanks for reading.

Spencer.

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