Marquee Supplys. 63a

Tom Christopher · May 21, 2018

Afternoon all.

Been approached by a Marquee to carry out temporary supply's to Marquees. The owner was unhelpful about that the previous electrician use to do for a " Mains Tap " as he calls its.

They have a load of 16a sockets units made up with 30mA protection on each sockets.

My thoughts are as followed.

At the mains I would supply and 100A 100mA time delayed RCD with a 63a MCB feeding a 63a isolator. New tails into an iso block. The marquee company will get the cable into and through the has and plug in when required .
At the marquee side, I will connect into there consumer unit, I guessing I would not connect the earth and supply and Steak or TT earth to the consumer unit.

Thoughts all?

shaun1 · May 21, 2018

How permenant are these marquees? And where will you be taking the supply from?

Get hold of BS7909, and maybe discuss with someone who has experience of this kind of thing. There are lots of pre made distrobution units, or distros as they are known, for this type of thing. These can break the 63a down (single or 3ph) and give you 32a and 16a sockets. They tend to have at least some protection from water ingress. The things you describe as socket units may be these.

What is the marquee used for? What will you be powering up inside it? Will it have a floor. There are a lot of considerations to do with earthing and bonding if you are exporting a suply from a building into a field. Unfortunately these often get overlooked.

If its going in as a semy perminant feature you may be able to get away with using kit meant for perminant installs but be aware that there is always a lot of moisture in a marquee, even when it isnt raining.

SJD · May 21, 2018

If you will have traders etc. turning up for an event, bear in mind some of them might be bringing equipment that has issues.

For example, I helped at a food & drink festival for a couple of years, and the Chinese wok people always either overloaded their supply or had bad leakage that tripped it, or both.

Then there might be others that get upset at even a brief supply interruption, e.g. with equipment that takes a while to boot, and doesn't take kindly to sudden power down. So they go on a different feed to the wok cookers.

We always used distros, as mentioned above, starting from 63A 3-phase, and breaking down to 32A and 16A sockets. Plus lots of adapters to 13A sockets for those who can't cope with anything else.

buzzlightyear · May 21, 2018

could the marquee hire a generator. it would better .

Deleted member 105166 · May 21, 2018

Every event is different and will provide new challenges and frustrations. You'll be horrified with some of the wiring botches that caterers, traders and entertainers turn up with, which they'll want to connect to your BS7909 signed-off temporary electrical system. Caterers always, without exception, will bring an "extra urn" or similar that wasn't on their power requirements list (if you were lucky enough to have been given a list).

Bands and DJs will try to force the pins of their 13A white pvc supermarket branded 5m extension reels into your 32/1 ceeform sockets, if they get to them before you do to connect your 32-13 distro.

As already indicated, discrimination is most important to avoid taking out essential circuits, otherwise someone else's badly maintained kit will be the cause of you getting the blame for intermittent power to other users. Where the supply is a local generator, you'll want to pay more attention to load balancing than if you're hooking up to a DNO supply.

All that aside, doing temporary power can be enjoyable!