Power and Cabling Hire

Working out what power your show actually needs

The arithmetic is simpler than it looks. Every fixture and amplifier has its wattage on the label. Add them up, divide by 230, and you have the current in amps. A modern LED lighting rig for a school stage often totals less than a two-bar heater, and a standard 13A wall socket gives you about 3kW to play with. Plenty of shows genuinely can run from the wall. The catch is what sits behind the wall. Several sockets around a hall usually share one circuit, so six sockets is not six times the power, and the urn in the kitchen may be on the same ring as your amp racks. Older tungsten kit changes the sums quickly too: one 1kW fresnel draws as much as a dozen LED pars. So count what you are actually plugging in, and send us the kit list and the venue. We will tell you honestly whether the wall will cope or the show needs a proper supply. If you do not need a distro, we will say so.

One supply in, six protected ways out

A power distro takes one big supply — a venue's 32A outlet, single phase or three phase — and breaks it into six 16A ways. Each way sits behind its own circuit breaker, so a fault on one line takes out that line and nothing else. The three-phase unit adds RCD protection, which watches the whole box and disconnects in a fraction of a second if current leaks where it should not; that is what protects people rather than fuses. The single-phase unit relies on its breakers alone, and the safety section below says how we cover that. That is the real argument against the alternative, which is four-way blocks daisy-chained from distant wall sockets. A distro gives every part of the rig its own protected feed from one known point. Lighting and sound can sit on separate ways, so a lighting fault never silences a radio mic mid-scene, and when something does trip, the labelled breaker tells you where to look. How many ways a show needs is our problem, not yours. One distro covers most school and church rigs; bigger productions take more, and when a job outgrows our own stock we bring kit in from trusted suppliers, tested to the same standard.

Why hired cable comes coiled and labelled

A cable is the cheapest thing in a rig and the likeliest to stop a show. So every lead we send out is inspected between hires and labelled with its length. When something fails at seven o'clock on show night, you swap it in thirty seconds, because the crate carries spares in the same length. The crates are sorted by type: 13A for ordinary mains, 16A for stage lighting circuits, 3-pin XLR for microphones and DMX for lighting control. Two newer types sit beside them. PowerCON TRUE1 leads, from 1m to 20m with a splitter and the adaptors in and out, feed the LED fixtures that take their mains through Neutrik's black locking connector; and Cat6 etherCON network leads, with a metal plug that latches like an XLR, make the short hops between a digital desk, its stagebox and a lighting node. For both, contact us for pricing. Each crate arrives with a sensible spread of lengths and more than the plan strictly requires, because plans change once you are in the room. The labelling pays off twice. At the get-in, anyone on the crew can find a ten-metre XLR without asking. At the get-out, everything coils back into the crate it came from, the counts match, and you are home half an hour earlier.

The long runs: multicore and Tourcat

The sound desk belongs at the back of the room, where the operator hears what the audience hears. That makes the run between stage and desk the longest cable of the night, and there are two ways to make it. The traditional way is an analogue multicore: one heavy cable carrying many microphone lines, with a fan of connectors at each end. It still makes sense with an analogue desk or a simple rig. Digital desks changed the job. A Tourcat reel — touring-grade Cat5e on a drum — carries every channel of a digital desk to a stagebox in one slim cable, so a run that once needed a copper python now needs something the thickness of a mic lead. For the short hops at either end, desk to stagebox at the same side of the room or a laptop to a lighting node, the Cat6 etherCON leads do the job without a coil of spare reel on the floor. Lighting takes its own run: DMX from the desk to the first fixture, then daisy-chained along the rig. Two pieces of advice from long experience. Measure the run the way the cable will actually travel — along the wall and over the doorway, not the diagonal across the floor — then add some. And keep signal runs apart from mains runs where you can; where they must cross, cross at right angles rather than running side by side.

Safety, stated plainly

Most of this kit is as ordinary as a kettle lead. Anything with a 13A plug on it, you connect yourselves. The line we draw is at the venue's big outlets: connections to a 32A or three-phase supply should be made by a competent person — the venue's own electrician or technician, or ours — who can confirm the outlet is sound and the protection works before the rig goes live. A supply that size deserves one person who knows the installation saying yes. On the floor, the rules are simple. Any cable crossed by feet or wheels goes under a rubber cable ramp. We hire two-channel ramps by the metre, so tell us how far the run has to cross and we will count the sections in; they have a page of their own on this shelf. Runs on stage are dressed and taped with proper cloth tape. And nothing, ever, runs through a fire exit at floor level — go over the door frame instead, ramp or no ramp. Ramps and tape can come on the same order. Protection differs between our two distros, and it is worth knowing which you have. The three-phase PCE carries 30mA RCD protection as well as its breakers. The single-phase build is protected by its breakers alone, which guard the cable against overload but not a person against a leak to earth. So where one of its ways feeds kit that people will handle, or where the venue's own supply has no RCD, a 16A inline RCD hires as an add-on and sits in line on that single way. Whichever you have, the test button gets pressed before the show, not after a problem. If you would like us to look at your venue's supply before you book, ask. A photograph of the intake and the outlets usually answers most of it.

Hire rates

Rates are per day and exclude VAT. A longer hire costs less per day — tell us your dates and we will price the period exactly. Ask us about delivery and hiring with a technician. Where a line says contact us for pricing, we will quote it when you enquire.

Common questions

Also for hire: sound desk hire · pa system hire · radio microphone hire · stage lighting hire · smoke, haze and effects hire · wired microphone hire · stands, rigging and comms hire · av and video hire

Talk to us

Not sure which is right for your venue? Tell us about the show and we will recommend what suits it.

Call 0333 404 0621, email [email protected], or send us the details of your production.

Related: Theatre production · Dance shows · Live events · Venue support · Production toolkit