The clocks go back on the last Sunday of October, and every outdoor trade in Devon loses its evenings overnight. By half past four it is dusk; by five it is dark. Add the autumn rain that starts filling every trench and footing you have opened, and this is the time of year when jobs slip — not because anyone is working less, but because the site itself starts fighting back. The right power, lighting and pumping kit is how you take those hours back.
Power where there isn’t any
Autumn jobs have a habit of being exactly where the mains is not — the bottom of the garden, a barn conversion, a new plot before the supply goes in. A 3kVa Generator (from £30 excl. VAT) will run lights and hand tools all day; step up to the 6kVa Petrol or 6kVa Diesel (both from £55) for mixers, heaters and multiple trades drawing at once. For bigger sites and longer runs we also carry 10kVa and 20kVa sets — ask us about those.
Run your site tools at the proper voltage off a Transformer (5kVa 32A from £12.50, 3kVa from £5) with 110V extension leads from £3. And if you are plugging into a domestic supply on a renovation, an RCD adapter (from £5) is the cheapest insurance you will ever hire.
Light that actually lets you work
There is working light, and there is squinting-at-a-tape-measure light. A Flood Light with Tripod (from £8) turns the end of the day from the latter into the former — one at each end of the job and 4:30pm stops mattering. Inside, a Plasterers Light (from £10) gives the flat, even wash you need for finishing work. The full Site Electrics range has leads, lights and everything between.
Sizing a generator without the guesswork
The commonest generator question we get is simply “which one?”, and the arithmetic is less painful than people expect. Add up the wattage of what will actually run at the same time — not everything you own, just the simultaneous load. A couple of floodlights and a charger station is a few hundred watts; add a 110V transformer feeding power tools and you are into the low thousands; put a heater, a mixer and two trades’ tools on together and you want the 6kVa sets with headroom to spare. The catch worth knowing: anything with a motor — mixers, saws, pumps — briefly draws two or three times its rated wattage on start-up, so size for the surge, not the sticker. Undersized generators do not just trip; they brown-out and cook the very tools they are running.
If in doubt, ring us with a list of what is on site and we will size it for you in two minutes. It is a conversation we have most days of the week in autumn.
When the rain gets in first
Devon autumn rain is patient. It will find your open trench, your unfinished footing, your basement excavation — usually the night before the concrete is booked. A 2 inch Submersible Pump (from £25) will empty a flooded trench fast; the 1 inch Puddle Pump (from £15) then takes it down to almost nothing, which matters when you need to pour onto it. Keeping one on site through the wet months is cheap compared with a lost morning waiting for water to be bailed by bucket.
A pump is also only as good as where the water goes next — plan the discharge before you drop the pump in, keep the hose run downhill where you can, and check the strainer when the flow slows rather than assuming the pump has died. Nine times out of ten it is leaves.
The pre-clocks-change checklist
Worth ten minutes with a brew, ideally in mid-October: Is there power on site for the last two hours of every working day, or does work currently stop when the light does? Are the leads and transformers actually rated for what is being plugged into them, or has the setup grown by accretion since July? Is anything on site — trench, footing, excavation — open to the sky that should not spend a fortnight filling with water? And if the answer to the last one is yes, is a pump on site or a phone call away? Sites that can answer all four calmly are the ones still on programme at Christmas.
Plan the autumn, don’t just survive it
The trades who get through autumn well are the ones who set up for it in advance: power sorted, lights on site before the clocks change, a pump in the container just in case. If that is the kind of autumn you want, ring us on 01626 333823 or email hire@olympustoolhire.co.uk — or browse the full Tool Hire range online. We deliver across Newton Abbot, Totnes, Torbay and out towards Exeter and Plymouth, timed to your start on site. Dark evenings are coming either way; being able to see is optional extra we would recommend.
