A marquee is a word used to describe a number of differing types of temporary structure. A marquee is essentially a tent commonly used for events and, temporary storage. There are a variety of differing designs and sizes. A marquee can be anywhere from 3 metres in width to over 50 metres.
Modern engineering advances have allowed these the size of these structures to grow vastly over the past twenty years. One of the major advances has been in performance textile manufacture. The majority of modern marquees are made from a high performance PVC. The standard, non black-out marquee cover is made from 650g/sqm material. Black-out covers tend to be made from a heavier weight material - up to 1000g/sqm.
PVC has a number of advantages over the more traditional fabrics:
It is inherently anti-fungal. Traditional canvas marquee covers could not be stored away for the winter if wet.
It can be joined using hot air plastic welding techniques. This allows easy and rapid manufacture of strong and reliable joints. PVC is also easy to repair.
Modern marquee material is also fire retardant.
The ‘bread and butter’ of the UK marquee hire industry is based around aluminium frame marquees. These structures use a modular aluminium frame composed of highly engineered aluminium extruded beams. These are light weight, strong, stiff, and relatively cheap to produce. The sections are typically hollow box profiles with a 2-4mm wall thickness. Marquee manufacturers carry out extensive CAD design and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) of these beams to ensure the structures are capable of withstanding the wind-loading that are typical over a marquee hire season in the UK.
There are other types of marquee on the hire market:
Pole - These can be subdivided into either traditional, or ‘tension’.
The difference between the two types is a subtle one. Both types use ‘king poles’ these are the central poles that hold the marquee canopy up. The traditional type of marquee must have both guy ropes from the top of the wall poles, and the king poles. A tension marquee when does not require king pole guys. The roof canopy acts as a “guy membrane” holding the central poles in place. Tension marquees are generally capable of withstanding a greater wind-loading over their traditional counterparts.
Saddle-span - These are a very modern type of structure. They have a pair of elliptical aluminium truss arcs - between which a PVC fabric cover is suspended.