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Uplighters and marquee spotlights are becoming more popular but require a professional to fit and so unsuitable for the DIY market. Similarly buying lightweight globe lights whilst excellent in small walkways or gazebos are not powerful enough to light marquees of any serious size as each bulb is limited to 25 watts.

Options for marquee lighting. There are many different marquee lighting for sale and each come with their own pros and cons. The most popular option in commercial marquee for sale are chandeliers (gold or otherwise), they give a good quantity and quality of light and from an erectors point of view relatively easy to fit which means they can also be used and fitted by any domestic user.

Strings of festoon lighting offer a perfect solution for those wanting to light any size of marquee. They give flexibility in the power of lighting supplied but can also be used discretely behind an interior roof lining. They are available for sale with a dimmer system and can usually take any dimmable bulb up to 100W for greatest flexibility.

DIY Marquees commercial marquees for sale have the most useful interesting tips on how to go about erecting a marquee, looking after your marquee and loads of information on general marquee maintenance.

Following (always useful) feedback from customers DIY Marquees have introduced a marquee tool section. This enables them to become more of a one shop stop for start up or existing marquee hire companies.

Keep a look out for further tools which will be added soon.

They are particularly proud of the marquee stake puller that could be a great help when dismantling marquees, unlike most stake pullers it is also very light so fits in nicely with their marquees that pack down to surprisingly small volumes.

Should you require any tools that are not listed please contact DIY Marquees who will design/source them for you.

Have a look at this interesting article I found on HOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU CLEAN YOUR MARQUEE?

The obvious answer is whenever it needs it so maybe a better question would be how often should you expect to clean a marquee.

A marquee is far more likely to get dirty when being erected/dismantled rather than when it is actually up. If you’re careful when erecting and especially when dismantling the marquee then you can usually get away with a thorough clean only once or twice a season.

There are however a few exceptions:

The dirtiest marquee I have ever had was one that was erected under some trees. When it rained all of the dust and grime was washed off the leaves down on to our lovely marquee. If you’ve got to put a marquee up under trees expect to clean it immediately afterwards.

Rain-skirts by their very nature will always get muddy in the rain, these should be given a wipe over on pretty much every job.

Traffic-film – eventually PVC can have a grey layer build up which is especially difficult to remove. It takes a long time for this to happen (a year or two normally) but at this stage it needs a thorough clean using a chemical. The material also needs irritating (gone over with a brush or similar) to get this off. Once thoroughly cleaned the PVC should be as good as new.

Tree sap is a nightmare to remove.

There are also some things that will never come out:

Petrol/Diesel can stain PVC. This will never come out so avoid them at all costs.

Ingrained mould – this affects many marquees especially those that are stored when still wet. PVC is made of many layers, if a marquee is put away wet or if cheap PVC is used then water can get inside the layers and create mould which will never come out. Incidentally this is one of the reasons we use better quality 500gsm PVC than available elsewhere, it takes far longer for the layers to break down in better quality PVC.

Some garden chemicals can stain – I was shown a marquee recently that had green stains around the rain skirt which seemed to have come from a chemical added to the lawn.

Better quality PVC always helps, we use a lacquer coated PVC as it is easier to clean and lasts longer than the cheap alternatives.

For more information on commercial marquees click here