In 1996 as a director of CBC Marquees located in Bristol, I drew up the plans to build a machine to wash the covers of our Marquees.

The machine I built was powered by several electric motors driving the moving parts, brushes, wind up rollers etc through a series of belt drives and pulley wheels. This was then necessary as it was nearly impossible in those days to control the speed of electric motors and we needed to run at between 200-300 rpm.

We ran this machine for a couple of years, but I was egged on by my partner in the Marquee business to do better. The concept was good, but it was too complicated and prone to breaking down.

Back to the drawing board. I was fairly up to speed on hydraulics and explored the possibility of driving the working parts using this method.

Being in the business of hiring out marquees I was also well aware of how fragile the covers were. A pin prick in the cover would lead to wicking. (A discolouration in the weave, making the cover useless unless used with a lining.) For this reason I chose to use very pliable brushes with soft bristle to do the cleaning. Believing that short hard bristles would damage the protective covering. I still believe this to be the case and am still using the same brushes, some 80 machines later.