Converting a Tunnel tent to freestanding - Anyone done it? Any advice?

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pjclinch
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Re: Converting a Tunnel tent to freestanding - Anyone done it? Any advice?

Post by pjclinch »

Gattonero wrote:I see myself not obsessed by weight but maybe obsessed by not been somewhat a masochist? Why on earth would I deliberately carry 15kg of equipment on a 20kg bike when I can have bike+equipment within 20kg which saves me a lot of effort especially going uphill?


I have a 20 kg touring bike and ride it round a place with hills, so am I masochist? Well, it has a comfy padded chair, full suspension, a heads up view of where I'm going and no weight on my arms and that means I can ride for hours longer on bumpy back roads in much greater comfort than something half the weight and I'm entirely willing to spend weight on that, even if it makes getting up the hills harder.

And cycle camping tours can be mostly about the riding, mostly about the camping or anywhere in the line between. If they're more about the camping then it makes good sense to pay more in weight for a better camping experience.

We all have different preferences and compromise points, and consequently we'll be wanting different things for cycle camping.

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Re: Converting a Tunnel tent to freestanding - Anyone done it? Any advice?

Post by Gattonero »

pjclinch wrote:
Gattonero wrote:I see myself not obsessed by weight but maybe obsessed by not been somewhat a masochist? Why on earth would I deliberately carry 15kg of equipment on a 20kg bike when I can have bike+equipment within 20kg which saves me a lot of effort especially going uphill?


I have a 20 kg touring bike and ride it round a place with hills, so am I masochist? ...


Been speaking for myself there :wink:
My 20kg bike+camping gear setup is for a steel bike with all the comforts I like to have: Brooks Cambium saddle (not a lightweight thing), hubdynamo (Son 28, again is not the lightest), mudguards, Carradice Bagman and so on. Plus a tent I can sit up inside, and cooking equipment and all that. All very reliable stuff.
I just don't see why I'll have to make the weight of the bike and the equipment 50% more of what is already a good&trusted setup. I could have built my front wheel with p/g spokes and a heavier rim so to think that the wheel would last me 49 years, but in 25+yrs cycling I've never broke a spoke so I have built my wheels with triple-butted 2.0/1.5 spokes.
Having some performance road bikes (ironically, one of the lightest is made out of steel, none of them is made of carbon) that are quite light, the difference with another -much heavier- bike with a similar setup is brutal. On the big picture you shave 100gr here, another 200gr there and here it comes that you're moving a smaller mass uphill: gravity is a harsh mistress :(
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Re: Converting a Tunnel tent to freestanding - Anyone done it? Any advice?

Post by horizon »

I think I said on another thread (a long time ago!) how ironic it is that we argue about 10 kg for comfortable camping (and it really is comfortable) while a fully loaded car camper might arrive on site with over half a ton all up.

But I digress. Cycle camping is lightweight and within reason, that has to be the aim in order to make it viable. Low gears and strong bikes (and legs) give us a bit of leeway and I'm happy at around 35 kg (15 for the bike plus 20 for the gear) but I also think that those who get it down to 20 kg all in deserve my respect.
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Re: Converting a Tunnel tent to freestanding - Anyone done it? Any advice?

Post by pjclinch »

Gattonero wrote:I just don't see why I'll have to make the weight of the bike and the equipment 50% more of what is already a good&trusted setup.


You don't have to because you've already spent the money. Someone else looking for kit, with less money than they'd like to have to spend, will have to cut some corners. They may decide to cut them by adding weight rather than reducing strength.

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Re: Converting a Tunnel tent to freestanding - Anyone done it? Any advice?

Post by Gattonero »

pjclinch wrote:
Gattonero wrote:I just don't see why I'll have to make the weight of the bike and the equipment 50% more of what is already a good&trusted setup.


You don't have to because you've already spent the money. Someone else looking for kit, with less money than they'd like to have to spend, will have to cut some corners. They may decide to cut them by adding weight rather than reducing strength.

Pete.


That is the decision I took before spending my hard-earned money (I don't have a money tree): buying a small and heavy tent to keep for 35 years, or buy a lighter one, quite possibly more spacious, that would still last many years? And so for the rest of the kit, you know, some people likes to spend £50+ for seeing a football match and think it's crazy to buy a small titanium pot, and I think the other way round. We all give priorities to different things :)
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Re: Converting a Tunnel tent to freestanding - Anyone done it? Any advice?

Post by yutkoxpo »

Op here, braving the waters again!

PH wrote:
My tent in inner first, so I remove the fly , give it a shake and stuff it into it's own stuffsack. I've never bothered wiping anything.
Sometimes if it was particularly wet,I'll drape it over something like a garden bench when I stop for lunch, as long as it's not actually raining it'll be dry in 10 min. More usually, when I get to the next campsite I'll put the tent up leaving it empty and as open as possible. Then go off and have a shower or whatever and by the time I get back, even if it isn't bone dry, it won't be damp enough to be of concern (To me)


And that’s fine…. For you. I’m finding that this tent is not drying out in this weather. This tent is getting progressively wetter. Wet walls are not an issue on their own. A wet floor is! And wet walls transfer the moisture to the floor when packing up.
Therefore, it’s all the more important to reduce the water retention as much as possible.

As I have said already, my priority expectation from a tent is to keep me dry. Other people have different expectations. A tent that is wet for one night is not that big an issue. A tent that gets wet and stays wet for several days is. For me.

My other tent never had such an issue with condensation so multi-day camping at this time of the year was not an issue.


PH wrote:If it were me, I'd use the new tent more before reaching any conclusions, but in the end if you have a tent that you're not getting on with, there comes a point when taking the loss is better than putting up with it.

Agree! Although I’ve been using the tent now for 9 months. And that was the reason for my initial question. To revert to the tent I know and trust and I was trying to find out if anyone had overcome the one disadvantage of it - not freestanding.

horizon wrote:
Or put both up in the garden or on a local campsite next to each other for the weekend. But otherwise, yes, I would also say persevere.


I’d thought of that, but, of course, one tent would be without me and my heat generation so I don’t know how useful an experiment it would be. And trying to round up a a willing volunteer to test the comfort of a tent at this time of the year is not the easiest task in the world :-)



Sweep wrote:Wow this thread has moved on.

Look forward to reading reccos of cheap tough tents.


It certainly has! :-)
I’m not going to go into the weight of what I carry because I may be ostracised from these forums :-))

In terms of a cheap, tough (but heavy!) tent, my old tunnel is a Coleman Coastline. It is heavy, but damn tough. Change out the fibreglass poles for DAC type (which is what I’m thinking) will make it lighter & probably stronger. I picked mine up for Euro 45 and find it unbelievable value for money. Pitched correctly it’s brilliant in windstorms and waterproof.

It’s big & roomy, but only a single door at the front. I will not cook inside the tent, so cooking in the porch in inclement weather is not ideal.

I see the advantages of your ionsphere, but I don’t think I could sleep night after night in one of those. I’ve sat out many nasty evenings & nights in relative comfort in my tent and am willing to carry the extra weight to allow that. I remember a few years ago cycling down the west coast of France and I kept meeting up with a French cyclist with a tiny one man tent. He became progressively crazier with every passing day :-) I’m not sure it was all down to the tent or the fact that we kept bumping into each other which meant that heavy old me was travelling the same mileage as ultralight him! :-)

Anyways, thanks to all who have contributed.

Frank
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Re: Converting a Tunnel tent to freestanding - Anyone done it? Any advice?

Post by horizon »

HobbesOnTour wrote:
Anyways, thanks to all who have contributed.

Frank


We haven't finished yet! :D

HobbesOnTour: you have effectively laid down a challenge to the forum to discover why one tent is more (and indeed very badly) affected by condensation than another. The factors we have touched upon (or not) include:

Amount of ventilation
Size of tent
Material
Prevailing weather conditions
Season
Change in day, evening and overnight temperatures

I don't know how you've managed to come to your conclusion without some sort of controlled experiment, which as we know is almost impossible to perform. So you've gone by your general experience with both tents. I think that's fair enough but it makes jumping to a conclusion about your new tent premature.

If I am wrong (that is, I reckon it's due to different prevailing condtions) then it gives us something to find out - with great interest in fact. We need to know!
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Re: Converting a Tunnel tent to freestanding - Anyone done it? Any advice?

Post by yutkoxpo »

horizon wrote:
We haven't finished yet! :D

HobbesOnTour: you have effectively laid down a challenge to the forum to discover why one tent is more (and indeed very badly) affected by condensation than another. The factors we have touched upon (or not) include:

Amount of ventilation
Size of tent
Material
Prevailing weather conditions
Season
Change in day, evening and overnight temperatures

I don't know how you've managed to come to your conclusion without some sort of controlled experiment, which as we know is almost impossible to perform. So you've gone by your general experience with both tents. I think that's fair enough but it makes jumping to a conclusion about your new tent premature.

If I am wrong (that is, I reckon it's due to different prevailing condtions) then it gives us something to find out - with great interest in fact. We need to know!



:D :D :D

Sorry, Horizon, but as the title says, the challenge is to come up with a system to make a tunnel tent free-standing! :D
That system should be easy to replicate, strong and suitable for bike touring! :-) A bit like the discussion above about light, strong & cheap, my tests have left me with 1,5 of the 3 :-)

Frank
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Re: Converting a Tunnel tent to freestanding - Anyone done it? Any advice?

Post by Sweep »

HobbesOnTour wrote:I see the advantages of your ionsphere, but I don’t think I could sleep night after night in one of those.

Frank


To clarify what I said upthread I think, I don't intend to use it night after night or have to sit out any bad days in it - I intend to use it for rides of maybe no more than 3 days or 3 nights, essentially as a thing to kip in. I have other tents.
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Re: Converting a Tunnel tent to freestanding - Anyone done it? Any advice?

Post by andrew_s »

HobbesOnTour wrote:In terms of a cheap, tough (but heavy!) tent, my old tunnel is a Coleman Coastline. It is heavy, but damn tough. Change out the fibreglass poles for DAC type (which is what I’m thinking) will make it lighter & probably stronger. I picked mine up for Euro 45 and find it unbelievable value for money. Pitched correctly it’s brilliant in windstorms and waterproof.

This one?

If you want to make it freestanding, as in usable with no pegs, the obvious way would be to have a flexipole along each side between the main front and rear pegging points, probably threaded behind the main poles, and with a loop between the longways pole and the lower crossways pole to tent link to keep it down.
It wouldn't be anything like as wind resistant as when using proper pegs, and there'd be the weight of two long poles to be added.
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Re: Converting a Tunnel tent to freestanding - Anyone done it? Any advice?

Post by NATURAL ANKLING »

Hi,
horizon wrote:I think I said on another thread (a long time ago!) how ironic it is that we argue about 10 kg for comfortable camping (and it really is comfortable) while a fully loaded car camper might arrive on site with over half a ton all up.

But I digress. Cycle camping is lightweight and within reason, that has to be the aim in order to make it viable. Low gears and strong bikes (and legs) give us a bit of leeway and I'm happy at around 35 kg (15 for the bike plus 20 for the gear) but I also think that those who get it down to 20 kg all in deserve my respect.

I often toured with 35kgs (5kgs was packed lunches :) ) Over Dartmoor......thats off road and the whole weekend, even with a large proportion of road work, I would average 7mph over 120 miles.

Its not like walking with camping gear, last I walked the West Highland Way with 53Ibs dry weight :?
Cycling is easy with weight especially if you are on your own whats the rush.
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Re: Converting a Tunnel tent to freestanding - Anyone done it? Any advice?

Post by pjclinch »

HobbesOnTour wrote:And that’s fine…. For you. I’m finding that this tent is not drying out in this weather. This tent is getting progressively wetter. Wet walls are not an issue on their own. A wet floor is! And wet walls transfer the moisture to the floor when packing up.
Therefore, it’s all the more important to reduce the water retention as much as possible.


It's pretty clear my idea of just ignoring it won't work for you, but given what you say above I still don't see why you feel the need to mop the fly every day. if you've dismounted the inner then packing it away on its own won't get it Properly wet from the fly, so I'd dismount the inner, give the fly a good shake (this works best with the poles still in, a nice feature of a free-stander) to get the worst of rain/dew/condensation off and pack that in a separate bag. Pitching, fly up first, give it another shake, then hang the inner. Using a footprint should reduce the condensation issue on the floor (very thin floors on cold, wet ground are going to be prone to condensation because Physics), and then if the floor is still a little damp you can reserve your wiping firepower for that. With this as a general operating procedure there's no need to spend an extra hour towelling down the flysheet, just to carry a wet towel.

HobbesOnTour wrote:My other tent never had such an issue with condensation so multi-day camping at this time of the year was not an issue.


So what is the new one that's giving you so much trouble? If we knew what it was it would probably be easier to comment usefully.

HobbesOnTour wrote:In terms of a cheap, tough (but heavy!) tent, my old tunnel is a Coleman Coastline. It is heavy, but damn tough. Change out the fibreglass poles for DAC type (which is what I’m thinking) will make it lighter & probably stronger.


I'd say it will make it substantially stronger, and might make it lighter.

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Re: Converting a Tunnel tent to freestanding - Anyone done it? Any advice?

Post by yutkoxpo »

andrew_s wrote:This one?

If you want to make it freestanding, as in usable with no pegs, the obvious way would be to have a flexipole along each side between the main front and rear pegging points, probably threaded behind the main poles, and with a loop between the longways pole and the lower crossways pole to tent link to keep it down.
It wouldn't be anything like as wind resistant as when using proper pegs, and there'd be the weight of two long poles to be added.


Thanks for the reply!

Yes, that's the one.

I actually tried something similar to what you suggest. I used 2 poles from an older tent, ran them down the side, attached them with heavy duty elastic to the tunnel poles and tried to bind them front & rear - that was not easy.
The idea was good, but I reckoned I'd really need a sleeve along the bottom of the flysheet, on both sides, and that is beyond my skillset.

I also had a stab at running a pole over the top from front to back, but that wasn't good at all.

I tried these things last year in the local park. One guy came over lookig at what I was doing, spied the begs in their bag and started to explain to me how to use them! He told me it would be much easier if I used them! :-)

I have set it up without pegs a couple of times "in the wild", but I've seen 3 year olds build lego with better structural integrity :-)

Frank
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Re: Converting a Tunnel tent to freestanding - Anyone done it? Any advice?

Post by yutkoxpo »

pjclinch wrote:
It's pretty clear my idea of just ignoring it won't work for you, but given what you say above I still don't see why you feel the need to mop the fly every day.


Pete, with all respect, I don't see why you feel the need to keep harping on about the breaking down of my tent. I've always wiped down the fly of my tent, to keep it clean if nothing else.

pjclinch wrote:With this as a general operating procedure there's no need to spend an extra hour towelling down the flysheet, just to carry a wet towel.

When I mentioned the time it took, I was referring to the whole process of breaking down the tent. I don't spend an hour wiping down the fly. While the inner can be removed separately, it is not particularly easy, especially not on frosty mornings with cold fingers.
And I don't carry a wet towel - I wring it out,

pjclinch wrote:So what is the new one that's giving you so much trouble? If we knew what it was it would probably be easier to comment usefully.


This thread wasn't supposed to be about the new one, it's about the old one!

Frank
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Re: Converting a Tunnel tent to freestanding - Anyone done it? Any advice?

Post by Graham O »

This is a long thread and since it diverts into condensation I can't be bothered reading through it all, but assuming it's not already been said, to make your tent freestanding, you really need a couple of poles going from left front to right back and right front to left back. This will push out the 4 corners, but the distances are greater than left to right, so your existing poles will be too short. If you fitted a straight extension to each end of the flexible poles you could make them the right length. Put these extensions into the pole sockets on each corner and you may get a flat groundsheet.

Make an "attachment union" to hold the 2 poles where they cross over, (just some webbing could do it). I'm assuming that your Coleman tent pitches fly first and you'll need to arrange a new way of attaching the fly to the poles, but that's easy enough. It may not be strong enough for a strong wind, but because you are using the original poles, you can use it with pegs and transverse poles where you can put the pegs in, but have the option of freestanding on hard surfaces.

Will it work? None of us will know until you try it. :D
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