The easiest way to erect a marquee is on grass using a tie down kit to hold it in place but sometimes a marquee has to go up on hard surfaces. With our DIY Marquees (and indeed most quality marquees) this isn’t a problem as long as you fit groundbars. Groundbars don’t hold the marquee down but they do make it more rigid – imagine the marquee as a box, securing the bottom line makes it a much stronger and more rigid box.
When erecting a marquee on hard standing:
- Look around the site, if the marquee is to be erected on a patio often there are flower beds or other soft surfaces to gain anchoring points from and just use longer tie downs.
- Assuming there is no existing anchoring point the remaining options are heavy weights or drilling in to the ground.
- Drilling is usually only an option on car parks or old tennis courts (be sure to fill the holes afterwards with an appropriate filler).
- Concrete blocks or sand bags can be used as weights but my preference is water butts. These are light to carry round but you only fill them up once they are strapped to the marquee (this does rely on having a hosepipe on site).
- When using weights strap them directly to the marquee, having them a distance away just gives the weight room to drag slightly and then it’s lost most of its use.
Spencer