The short answer to this question is 1 day….. but you might get lucky depending on your weather conditions. It seems the sun is more damaging than the rain but a combination of both is a killer.
As I’ve used these arch frames more and more Ive started to push my luck with how long they’re last. Stores like to take them in at night and put them back out in the morning. They seem to last 3 or 4 days no problem and I charge for the hire of the frame.
Some Tesco stores recently had the arches for 2 weeks inside
However – I did this 2 weeks ago, I got away with 8 poles because there were metal upright gates on both sides. The client wanted this to last 3 days – and it was going to be outside 24/7.
The first night there was a thunderstorm and I feared the worst but here it is at 8am the next day:
I repaired a few balloons and went on my merry way. Then the sun came out and it was really really hot. This is how the arch looked at 12.30 midday – the only balloons still in place were the ones I’d repaired that morning:
If I hadn’t inflated and tied all these myself I would have said they’d been done by a complete amateur. At first I thought maybe somebody had taken a pellet gun to them but there was a security guard sitting by the arch the whole time. He said that at about 11.30am when it started getting hot they just began to burst on their own (remember these are downsized to 8”).
I put this down to the fact the balloons were out in the elements for 24 hours. When stores take the arches in and out they are only actually outside for 8 hours per day.
Apparently this also happened last year in Italy at the Qualatex event. They made an arch with 16”, it rained, the sun came out and it was bloody hot and all the balloons burst.
But – an arch I made last Sunday was fine even though it was rainy & hot – this must be because the balloons were only there for 11 hours – I guess?
So the answer to this question is 1 day….. but you might get lucky depending on your weather conditions. It seems that the sun is more damaging than the rain but a combination of both is a killer.