Following one of the warmest Springs on record, air conditioning hire company Andrews Sykes reports a sharp increase in enquiries compared to recent years.
The company has reported a recent 50 per cent increase in enquiries during the final third of April when temperatures soared to 27.8 °C in Surrey, on one of the hottest days since 1949.

To deal with the increased demand, Andrews Sykes has recruited an additional 11 members of staff. The warm weather was particularly good timing they say, as the company has launched the new PAC60 air conditioning unit.

Steve Reeve, sales director at Andrews Sykes said: 'There are no industry wide figures available for portable air conditioning hire but as we have the biggest range of equipment, it is highly likely that these statistics are representative of the UK as a whole.

'The UK's air conditioning hire market is gradually becoming less seasonal but there are clearly peaks in activity, such as this spike in April. With global temperatures rising; more industry sectors requiring a highly controlled indoor environment and a general uptake in air conditioning as a whole, the hire market is now less reliant on a hot summer for all of its business. Of course we do benefit during summers such as the one in 2006.'

Andrews Sykes say they have received three distinct types of query:

Emergency call outs - when organisations switch on their in-built air conditioning for the first time after winter to discover faults or inefficiencies that need to be fixed. Renting portable air conditioning then seems the quickest option.

Contingency planning - the unseasonal temperatures have alerted organisations to the possibility of a long hot summer and so they are putting contingency plans in place (such as the option to hire equipment at short notice) to maintain suitable working conditions.

Servicing - where air conditioning is a necessity rather than a luxury (as in some manufacturing or industrial settings) organisations are hiring portable equipment in order to undertake planned maintenance work, to ensure their in-built system will cope with conditions over the hotter summer months.