Three cardinal sins of a dance party! Part I - AIR

Many things have to go right to have a successful party, congress, event of any sorts. There is promotion, sales, artists, venue, accommodation, transport, and a million little things that can go wrong. Nevertheless, if you make some mistakes, but generally speaking make an honest, hard-working effort to make people happy, then all will be forgotten, forgiven and you’re the hero of the day. Right? Well, not really…

Some things are not so easily forgiven or forgotten, it seems

From the smallest party in a crampy bar down the street to the largest congress venues there are, what I would call, three cardinal sins of a dance party that mustn’t go horribly wrong if you want most of your guests to come back for more - MUSIC, FLOOR, AIR!!! Not that complicated, or at least it doesn’t seem to be. Get a good sound system and a good DJ - music is fixed. If you are so unlucky that the flooring at your venue is unsuitable for dancing, there are several, neither perfect nor cheap options to fix it, but it can be done (more about that some other time). Then we get to the air… We sort of take it for granted, don’t we? It’s everywhere, there is always plenty of it, it cannot be depleted and last but not least, it’ free. Well, from the perspective of event organizers it’s hell. It can be acceptable when there is an hour or so of heat overload during the ‘rush hour’ on the dance floor, but anything more than that is a serious problem.

Wherever you go to book a venue, the owner always says that their air conditioning system has withstood all kinds of crowds; weddings, techno parties, business conferences, concerts, basketball games… Well, get ready to meet the dreaded salsa dancers.

Out of pure necessity or despair of organizing a salsa event in Rovinj during summertime, we have unwillingly become experts of sorts when it comes to body heat and vapor emission. Technically speaking ;)

To get an idea of what you’re dealing with, let’s just say that every person sitting calmly in a room can be represented as a single old fashioned 100W light bulb, heat-wise. Make them walk around and occasionally move to the groove, it’s two 100W light bulbs. Get them salsa dancing and it’s approximately three 100W light bulbs. That’s a lot of light, but more importantly a lot of heat. For an average party of 300 people that’s 900 light bulbs in a room the size of a basketball court (430 m2)! Not counting all the light and sound equipment.And then there is the humidity; an average person perspires water during light exercise (let’s say that’s what dancing is to most people) at a rate of about 0,7 litres an hour. To get back to our party, that’s about 210 litres of water created in an hour, trying to vaporize. No wonder they always tell us to drink a lot of water…That is one of the reasons why high class venues with top class floors and air conditioning cost so much, and most of the times that’s still cheaper than getting to an old hotel with poor air conditioning and paying extra for floors and air conditioning.

For us unlucky ones, what are the options? We’ve tried everything ;) 

From opening the windows and doors, to portable home air conditioning units, to dozens of air dehumidifiers, to three, then five, then finally nine 400 kg, 32 kW industrial grade air conditioning and chiller units that pump cool air at the rate of 6.000 m3 per hour per unit. And it helps a lot, but it is never enough, salsa dancers can never be beat! There is a physical limit to what technology can do before you realize that you simply have to limit the number of participants or invent more space at no matter what the cost, or expect the agonizing decline.

So, what can we suggest to an aspiring organizer looking to find a venue for his or her next ‘cool’ dance party?

• look for rooms with high ceilings, for the hot air to rise and escape
• calculate the area of the room to at least 1,5 m2 per person
• science is your friend ;) always ask for technical specifications of the air conditioning unit at the venue and use the web calculators to estimate if there is need for more
• keep the price of bottled water reasonable, people really need it
• ventilation is just as important as cooling, or the humidity will be unbearable
• alcohol speeds up the dehydration process, keep an ambulance car or a doctor nearby for large events
• cutting costs is possible for many things, but don’t get cheap on MUSIC, FLOOR and AIR

This is just a short summary of what we’ve learned and keep learning from our mistakes, so hopefully someone can avoid making the same ones.Feel free to comment, I’m sure this is a hot and humid point of interest for many people…
Danijel

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/number-persons-buildings-d_118.html

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/metabolic-heat-persons-d_706.html