Temporary Flooring | Bil-Jax TF2100
Chattanooga Tent & Event Solutions is growing with the Bil-Jax Tent Flooring System
Mike Holland, President, Chattanooga Tent & Event Solutions:
We’re a 90 year old tent rental company that covers mostly the Southeast, but also nationally and regionally. We do tents, big tents and flooring. We started out with doing a little bit of level elevated floor with a traditional 4 x 4 multi-stage build jack. That morphed into people wanting bigger tents, higher tents. So we bought the Strato system and we’re building tents on top of that.
The biggest issue that we had was that the tents were metric and the flooring was Imperial measurement. We had to drill the floor each and every time to match the base plate design of the metric tent. We had to build columns under that to transfer the load from the tent to the ground. Additional staking, additional bracing. Fast forward to October of 2015, we had a tent, a big wedding and a 25 meter by 25 meter on a strata floor. Problem was, is the strata floor a was 84 or 82 by 88. I got all kinds of rain and rain came on the floor, in the tent. That’s just by design. I couldn’t keep it out. The customer’s very unhappy. That was when I made the decision right after that job, literally two days after that job, I’m going to invest in the TF2100 product. Move for forward to April, which was our first job with that. We got into it, loved the system, and that’s allowed us to do so many different heights and construction levels and all that good stuff.
One of the biggest time savers with the TF2100 floor is the fact that it’s the first floor that was designed for the tent to marry to the floor. So the beam connections from east side to east side, regardless of the width, whether it’s a six meter wide, 20 foot or a 35 meter, 40 meter, which is up to 132 foot wide. That being said, the beams give you the stability to connect it. Now, then all it is is a scaffold base underneath. So we have gone from zero to 15 foot high with this product. It’s modular. We opted to go with a three and two meter system, which gives us versatility in doing five meter base sections and three meter base sections.
The biggest part that was a, you have the comfort level and the time savings, that you’ll have to build a column underneath leg. But also the fact that the tent finishes at the edge of the floor. So with a little bit of extension on your fabric side walls, the water runs off the tent right down to the ground, and you don’t have to worry about it on the floor. Period. The fact that the decks are encased with aluminum, keeps them good and rigid and in good shape. They slide together and click and lock as opposed to screwing down.
We can also, with the versatility of it, put up a floor that’s a 30 meter by 60 meter in the middle of a field and make it all four feet. Or I can go into a backyard and start at your door at six inches and go out to a 15 foot drop. That gives that versatility. There’s also been development of products that allows us to do bleacher seating, the different kinds of railings. There’s just so much we can do it. And it has added to the bottom line in two ways. One being able to do these custom floors, gets us more work. Other people don’t have this product. They may not know how to do it. It’s allowed us to broaden our floor inventory and income based on that.
All the engineering and the sales staff helped us build what we needed. If we needed something different and we’re a company that’s always going to need something different. We’re not inside of the box. We’re outside the box. With the engineers they have and the salespeople always listening to our needs, those in the industry who have this and those who may buy it, we’re looking for innovations. So some of those innovations might be able to be, well, I want to make a half a deck, or I want to have this type of decorative railing. They’re always open to that. So continuing to move forward with the innovations will allow us as an industry, which is continuously evolving, every day even seems like, that would be a good thing to have.
One thing this product is also allowed to do is not only floor more events, but it also has broadened the type of events we do. Now, we do the whole spectrum. We have noticed just, because of all types of flooring, but particularly this we’ve probably increased our flooring percentage on jobs, whether it’s a lay down floor or an elevated floor, from 15% to almost 40% of the work we do has some type of floor on it.
Learn More about the Bil-Jax FT2100 Tent Flooring System