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Your compressor stops. Production stops with it.
Or the shutdown is already booked, the overhaul is going ahead, and nothing on site will run without air for four days.
Both problems have the same answer. This post covers what air compressor hire includes, the four times sites need it, what having no plan costs you, and how fast a machine reaches your gate.
What air compressor hire covers
Air compressor hire means a temporary machine on your site for as long as you need it.
Our hire fleet runs from 5.5kW to 250kW. Electric and diesel. Oil lubricated and oil free, so food, pharmaceutical and clean manufacturing sites are covered too.
Every machine is fully serviced and PAT tested before it leaves us. Hoses, fittings and any adaptors you need come with it.
Here is the part that matters. We do not drop a compressor at your gate and leave. Our engineers position it, connect it to your distribution system, and commission it. They verify output pressure and flow before they sign off. Then they brief your team on the daily checks.
When the job ends, we collect it.
Four times sites need temporary air
Almost every hire call falls into one of four buckets.
1. Breakdown. Your compressor has failed and the line is down. You need air today, not next week.
2. Planned shutdown. Maintenance or an overhaul takes your permanent machine offline. A hire unit keeps the rest of the site running through it.
3. Project or peak demand. A production peak, a new line being commissioned, or a busy season pushes your system past what it can supply.
4. Bridging. You have moved site, or your new compressor is on order and has not arrived. Hire covers the gap.
If you are in bucket one right now, go to emergency and project compressor hire and call us. If you are planning ahead, keep reading.
What it costs you to have no plan
Two costs catch sites out.
Downtime. Every hour without compressed air is an hour of lost output. Missed deadlines. Customers you have to ring and apologise to. Most operations managers can put a number on that hour. Very few have a plan for the day it happens.
A spare machine. The other way to cover yourself is to buy a backup compressor. That ties up capital in a unit that sits idle most of the year. It still needs servicing. It still takes up plant room space.
Hire sits between the two. You pay for air only on the days you need it.
There is a third cost that is easy to miss. The rushed decision. When your compressor dies and nobody has thought about cover, you take whatever machine is free at whatever price. That is how sites end up with an undersized unit that cannot hold pressure. Our guide on what to do when a compressor breaks down walks through the first hour.
How fast a hire compressor arrives
For UK mainland sites we aim to deliver within 4 to 24 hours. The window depends on where you are and which machine you need.
Common sizes move fastest from our Nuneaton base. Larger units can take longer when demand is high, so tell us early if you need one.
If you hold a national contract with us, you get priority allocation from the hire fleet as part of your SLA.
Planned hire works differently, and better. Book at least two weeks before your shutdown and we reserve the exact machine you need, for the exact date.
Getting the size right
A hire compressor that is too small will not hold pressure. One that is too big costs more than the job needs.
Before we quote, we confirm four things:
- Working pressure. What the system runs at.
- Flow rate. In cfm or litres per second.
- Air quality. This decides whether you need an oil free machine.
- Power supply. This decides electric or diesel.
For planned hire we do this during booking. For urgent hire we do it on the phone and match from stock.
If you want a rough figure before you call, our air usage calculator gives you a starting point.
What happens during and after the hire
On longer hires we include scheduled service visits. Our engineers check the oil level, filter condition, condensate drain and operating parameters. You get a service record for every visit.
At the end we collect the machine and debrief your team.
If the hire covered a breakdown, you also get a condition report on your own compressor with a clear recommendation: repair or replace. That report feeds straight into a breakdown repair job, or a new installation if the old machine is past saving.
We have worked with compressed air since 1980. When The White Company lost a compressor, we had an emergency replacement running inside 24 hours. Read that case study.
Book a hire quote
Tell us what has happened, or what you have planned. We confirm the machine, the delivery window and a fixed price before anything moves.
No hidden charges for delivery, installation or collection on UK mainland sites.