Cable Ramp

[Dave22]

As many have said already don’t cut corners when it comes to safety, will be the organisers and responsible persons up in court if there was a problem, how about suitable access for wheelchairs and prams and your excess on your insurance would be far greater than a few hundred quid for the correct approved ramp.

 

As temp power and Pearcehire have both said 12per meter is alot, they both will offer you better prices.

 

Understand that your budget is tight is there any real need for a FOH? for what sounds like a small show, if you could save £100 on your LX and £100 on your sound budget without compromising the show thats the best way to go.

 

The cable mat is a bad idea, and I doubt the local HSE/council inspector will approve it either if they decided to drop by.

 

hope you get a suitable resolution and have a great show

[Just Some Bloke]

I've done lots of outdoor shows where we've used rubber mats for protection without incident. The main thing to remember is that during the set-up and break-down periods you'll need to put traffic cones or plastic chairs or whatever along both sides of the mats to stop people driving over the cables. During the event driving would be prohibited anyway, I hope, and there's usually some marquee you can knick some chairs from just to make it quite clear you can't bring a vehicle that way.

[MGLX]

I have used a number of home made ramps, mainly in the construction side of my life rather than events, but take a sheet of plywood, 18mm is fine, and cut strips of plywood getting narrow screw the pieces together ontop of each other to provide a ramp up and down, and then simply screw one section down on top. a very simple ramp. All it takes is a few sheets of plywood, screws, and a circular saw. HSE didn't mind seeing these around our site last year covering cable and pipe runs. We had them painted up with red/white spray paint and had a couple of stronger ramps made to take vehicle loadings- using 22mm ply and bolted down to the floor.

[ImagineerTom]

... and remarkably only twice as expensive (and no-where near as good) as just renting in the proper stuff in the first place.

[kerry davies]

... and remarkably only twice as expensive (and no-where near as good) as just renting in the proper stuff in the first place.

Cruel, Tom.

MJG has probably not noticed that it is an outdoor event and semi-permanent construction is unnecessary. In venues his suggestions are valid and probably the optimal fix.

[Stuart91]

... and remarkably only twice as expensive (and no-where near as good) as just renting in the proper stuff in the first place.

 

Certainly it's not worth ply construction for a one-off event, but for light duty indoors something like this might be a useful solution, and cheaper than proper cable ramp.

 

Of course, as Kerry says, the problem is that it won't last outdoors, especially if you don't use marine grade ply. And a home-made construction like this will instantly get the antenna of a council inspector twitching.

 

A few years ago I was hired to provide some PA for an outdoor show. I arrived at a local park at 8am, the event kicked off at 10am, but some of the crew from the charity organising the show had been there since 5am, building a modest-sized stage out of pallets and plywood sheets. I mentioned to them that we had plenty proper stage deck available for hire, and that the hire would have been cheaper than the wood they bought. "Ah, but we get to keep the wood afterwards" was the response.

 

There had been a few heavy showers over the course of the afternoon, so when I returned the wood had all started splitting and delaminating and was pretty much ruined.

[ImagineerTom]

Proper cable ramp for construction situations isn't especially expensive yet is designed to do the job properly and safely - as mentioned it only takes a bit of moisture for the ply to disintegrate and suddenly you've got a "safety" feature that's unstable, a trip hazard, non-rated and with a very real possibility of someone treading on a section of it that gives way and pushes a screw or nail right through a mains cable. If I saw anyone doing this on my site they'd be off-site immediately.

 

Add in to this the cost (18mm ply is £20/sheet for the cheep stuff and it wouldn't be salvageable) plus all the screws, tools, transport and time involved in "making" this solution and it's questionable if there's a cost benefit regardless of the massive safety compromise it represents.

[kerry davies]

Tom knows Johnboy, I think, and he would tell of the two artic loads of WBP ply I condemned when it "blew" overnight. We weren't paying retail price or even trade but the importer still had a little cry when we told him how much the dozen event specialist chippies were costing on top of his ply and transport costs.

[ImagineerTom]

At sportsday 2012 we provided structures but were (massively) undercut by a local joiners for flooring out the insides; I was surprised that we were undercut and even more so to discover that they were buying in brand new ply and making the flooring especially for the job. Ignoring our suggestion to treat the sheets with a good sealant and mount everything on raised up battens they instead created several thousand square meter's of floor by laying the ply straight on to some flimsy polythene on the ground. Talking to their boss (the ultimate east-end wheeler-dealer) he revealed that he was doing this job so cheaply (and incorrectly by not lifting the floor on battens) because he'd found someone else who had agreed to buy the "slightly used" ply sheets afterwards from him so essentially his only cost was a half dozen crew and some plastic; hence why he could undercut everyone.

 

Within the first week the floor began to pull apart (combination of the very wet weather and thousands of people walking in with wet shoes on every day) and we spent most of the summer patching it up. At the take-down in September Del-boy turned up with a crew to remove his floor and sell it on for a massive profit... we offered to loan him a spade and sweeping brush; I've never seen a grown man that close to tears. We reckon it was about £40k's worth of ply now reduced to little more than mulch.

[johnhuson]

Stories like that really make me smile. :** laughs out loud **:

[Owain]

a very real possibility of someone treading on a section of it that gives way and pushes a screw or nail right through a mains cable

or through someone's foot.

 

 

If the wound gets infected and the foot has to be amputated, compensation is £70-80k (probably more if it's David Beckham)