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Looking after your marquee
Looking after your marquees is a fundamentally sensible idea for running a marquee hire business. The longer a marquee lasts the longer you’ll have a return on your investment before phoning those lovely DIY Marquee people to order a new one.
The biggest factor is keeping your kit dry. Putting PVC away wet will age it a lot quicker than necessary whilst obviously any metalwork kept in a damp environment would become tarnished far quicker.
It’s PVC that needs the most looking after. If it’s consistently put in an abrasive environment then it can obviously wear through (parents who have been to an old soft play area will know that one) but the most common way is the coated layers of the fabric breaking down with dirty water getting inbetween and drying – this leads to black marks left inside the PVC which is impossible to remove.
If you see old marquees at country fairs etc then they will often have this ‘black spot’ in their walls and roofs.
How to avoid this aging:
- Start off with a good quality PVC. For example there are 101 different version of 500gsm, the one we use shouldn’t become brittle or break down as quickly as the cheaper end of the 500gsm PVC range. This is the same across the whole range of PVC materials, going for a good quality fabric will save you money in the long term
- Don’t put the PVC away wet if you can avoid it and certainly don’t keep it stored for a long time when damp
- Don’t fold the PVC in the same place every time. A waterproof coat will leak first on the inside of the elbows, this is because it is forever under stress creasing and re-creasing in the same place. If you keep folding walls and roofs using the same fold lines then that is where the layers will crack first and you’re aging your marquee prematurely – use different fold lines or roll them up.
Thanks for reading, and remember – look after your marquee
Spencer
