Today, I want to discuss "Pipe and Drape"... Pipe alone, or drape alone are ok things... Usually they are used for any variety of things... "Pipe and Drape" however is a far more specific thing... P&D is what we call a system of thin wall aluminum tubeing that hooks together on steel base plates, from which drapes hang... Sound ok right?... Actually, it sucks, because of several factors...
If, and only if, you use it for what it was designed, its ok. That means that you are hanging very light weight drapes on it, no higher than 16' high. There are 22' tall versions out there, but the the work of evil forces I won't comment on. The problem with thin drapes are they do not fully block light, and sound goes right through them. So clients want you to use veavy velour on the P&D tubing... Guess what that leads to?... Tubing bends since it isn't designed for those loads... Any little breeze can take your whole setup over in a slow motion domino effect... Mostly though it leads to annoyance from the people having to set it up... The added weight also often jams the gravity locked adjustments... This is a royal pain when you are trying to get all the drape nice and level... Apart from it looking like crap in my opinion, my biggest pet peeve with it, is that clients seem to think it should be almost free to rent... On average, you can rent P&D for around $14-$18 per foot. That's right... It gets rented by the foot... (16' is kind of a standard height) It also varies with height of the drape used, so it comes down to around $1.00 per square foot of drape... Think about that for a moment... Just to put up a 10' x 10' drape panel, with no fullness (that's pleats incidently) would cost you $100... Now, think back to a trade show or convention you've been to... How much drape do you see at those things?... Seems like miles of it right?...
One of my upcoming events just called and asked me to re-do the pricing useing P&D... They are doing this because they want to cut the cost of the event, which was high due to the labor bill... Of course, they already own all the scenery, so that was basically free except for a couple repairs here and there... Once they tell me what they want, I'll give them a price, and they'll be sitting just about the same place probably... The main difference is that now they'll have a crappy looking event... I hate doing "cheap" shows... Ugh...
Glad I read this. I was going to fork out a lot of cash to use P&D to support starcloths and backdrops but by the sound of it I'll stick with cheaper and sturdy lengths of 2" x2" timber and weights ! So what do you use instead ?
Posted by: tallboy at December 13, 2004 08:30 AMFor the most part, we use steel pipe and cross clamps like lighting booms, or if they want lighting in the same area, we'll go with truss. The truss gets pricy, but since you're doing the curtians and lighting support, it somewhat offsets... We're about to invest in some light weight trussing (around 9" square) so I suspect we'll be useing that for a lot of the soft goods from now on.
Good luck!
I just rented about 300ft of pipe and drape.
Cost me $2500.00 included setup and strike.
Used commando cloth....boy was it heavy !
But the pipes were the thin aluminim type, held down with sandbags. I did not see any bending of the cross bars what so ever. Pretty sturday to me..we went up to 12ft high. Using `16'ft drape at some parts.
12' is a very reasonable height for P&D... I have almost never had an issue at that height. Though commando might seem heavy, it doesn't hold a candle to the heavy cotton velours... I'm curious though if you had good luck getting the commando to fall nicely. My experience with it is that it holds any crease, and tends to wrinkle rather then falling in nice smooth curves when hung in fullness.
Posted by: Tim at August 2, 2005 08:55 AM