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

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

Post by yutkoxpo »

PH wrote:[
It's also possible you've just been unlucky, sometimes I'll get loads of condensation one day and hardly any the next without really noticing much difference between them.
Some days you're going to get condensation whatever you do or whatever tent you use, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth seeing if you can minimise it. I changed from a Coleman to a Terra Nova, the big difference was the Coleman had a large gap under the fly and on the TN it goes right down to the ground, this is a common difference between US and Euro designs. When there's some air movement, I'll lift the fly in a couple of places (Pannier pocking out does it well) unless the weather makes it a bad idea, I'm sure it helps.


The thing is that this is a consistent problem with this tent in comparison to my old one. in all seasons.
As regards to the fly down to the ground.... this one is designed to have the fly down to the ground....on one side, leaving a gap on the other. I've been told that this is to reduce the problem of condensation.

Like I said, I hardly ever had a problem with condensation in the Coleman. It's not a 4 season tent, yet holds up incredibly well on winter trips. Very wet winter trips!
Unless it was incredibly wet I could wipe down the fly, collapse the tent and fold/roll it in such a way that there was minimal transfer from the outer to the inner. Set it up the next evening and any dampness was quickly dissipated. The floor was so thick that condensation was never a problem.

With the new one, I can remove the moisture on the outside of the fly but can't access the inside of the fly without removing the inner. If I don't remove the inner then the water on the fly will soak the inner, such is the volume of water. Oh, and as pointed out above, trying to wipe down the inside of the fly is a wet job! :D

It's just very frustrating! I spent months researching what I thought was the perfect tent for me. The only bright point is that apparently I'm hotter than I thought 8)

Thanks fro the input.

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

Post by yutkoxpo »

pjclinch wrote:
All you need to do is rewrite the laws of atmospheric physics.


:D :D

pjclinch wrote:That might take a wee while, so in the meantime it's more a case of learning to live with it, as you have an excellent source of moisture (your good self) inside a watertight structure. Compare and contrast sitting inside a motionless car on a cold, damp day with all the windows up, and it's not long before the windows start to fog up. You can open them, of course, but that makes everything rather colder which isn't necessarily what you want.

But if you've got a film of water droplets on the inside of the fly... so what? The DWR on the inner means that when someone trips over a guy and lots of them come loose, you don't get wet. If the inner gets a bit damp it'll soon dry out to the point where it's not really an issue.


I agree.... until it comes time to pack up. I typically move on every day. If I was staying put than some moisture on the fly wouldn't be an issue.

pjclinch wrote: You can reduce condensation on the floor with an extra groundsheet, but as long as your sleeping bag stays on the mat it'll stay dry, and that's the really important thing.

I'm already using a groundsheet and it does make a difference. I do have a problem staying on the mat though :D

pjclinch wrote:The function of the tent is to keep you sheltered, which mainly boils down to warmth and comfort. No reason you can't have those even with condensation. Though I'd agree it's nicer not to have condensation, given a choice between warm and moist and cold and dry I'd take the former on a winter night.

This is where we differ. I'd prefer cold & dry on the basis that I can easily warm up. Drying up is more challenging.

pjclinch wrote:Venting is a Good Thing and does help, but it's not the Big Answer the wee diagrams with arrows in the brochures make it out to be (very much the same goes for "breathable" waterproof jackets, which have been disappointing users for decades now). Aside from cooling things down when you want to be warm there's also only so much you can do by opening holes. When the air outside is dumping moisture everywhere anyway, bringing it in doesn't necessarily help. If it's cold I tend to use the vents when cooking but close things up for sleep, because moving air just takes the heat away.

Wiping everything dry is just a way to get your cloths wet. Keep them for drying yourself. Unless you're in constant contact with the walls (and if you are I'd suggest that's maybe a poor choice of tent for winter camping) just let the condensation stay there, where it isn't actually getting you wet.

Again, all well and good until it comes tome to pack up! :D

Thanks for your input.

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

Post by horizon »

I kept my Force Ten (cotton inner, nylon fly, ridge) on the basis that it reduces or even eliminates condensation and stands up in storms. I was looking at buying a new tent for this year (nylon tunnel with porch) to address the problem of weight and space. But now I'm not sure.

I've never really bought into the new tents because I like cotton (though I'm under no illusions about its downsides). I've also had my share of pitching on hard stony ground in Spain and France but I'm still not interested in free standing or pop-up tents.

The beauty of cycle-camping (as opposed to hiking) is that it is still possible to use the heavier cotton. Ideally the cotton should allow moist air to evaporate but prevent the condensation from inside the flysheet getting into the inner. However, It's difficult camping enough in as many different seasons and weathers as possible to really assess what is best (I must admit my first thought about the OP was that he was camping in very different conditions (winter) from usual). But it maybe that we are really only talking about winter conditions or cold summer nights outside the Med. And to my mind, a tent should keep you warm so that makes extensive venting a non-solution.

My plan now is to get a reasonably priced nylon tunnel (e.g. https://www.leisureoutlet.com/tents/duk ... gLXqvD_BwE) and swap it for some short trips with the Vango Force Ten and try to get a sense of what works best. I'm probably faced with this anyway at some point as it is now almost impossible to buy a small cotton lightweight tent if I need to replace the Force Ten.
When the pestilence strikes from the East, go far and breathe the cold air deeply. Ignore the sage, stay not indoors. Ho Ri Zon 12th Century Chinese philosopher
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Re: Converting a Tunnel tent to freestanding - Anyone done it? Any advice?

Post by pjclinch »

HobbesOnTour wrote:
pjclinch wrote:But if you've got a film of water droplets on the inside of the fly... so what? The DWR on the inner means that when someone trips over a guy and lots of them come loose, you don't get wet. If the inner gets a bit damp it'll soon dry out to the point where it's not really an issue.


I agree.... until it comes time to pack up. I typically move on every day. If I was staying put than some moisture on the fly wouldn't be an issue.

pjclinch wrote:The function of the tent is to keep you sheltered, which mainly boils down to warmth and comfort. No reason you can't have those even with condensation. Though I'd agree it's nicer not to have condensation, given a choice between warm and moist and cold and dry I'd take the former on a winter night.

This is where we differ. I'd prefer cold & dry on the basis that I can easily warm up. Drying up is more challenging.


Just because you're in a tent with wet walls doesn't mean you're wet. As long as the tent is big enough that you can sit in free space (and that it's free-standing suggests it's a dome of some description so it shouldn't be impossible) then you don't get wet. As long as the inner walls aren't so wet they're continuously dripping on to you it's okay.
Its difficult to avoid the odd brush with the walls, but the sort of clothes you'd be in for winter camping shouldn't be in the business of soaking up the water and cooling you down.
The real problem with getting yourself wet is it tends to quickly amount to getting cold, but if the water is staying on the walls that's not an issue.

If it's pretty much impossible to stay clear of wet walls that in turn gets your personal clothing soaked, that'd be a problem to avoid. Do you have clear sitting/laying space?

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

Post by yutkoxpo »

horizon wrote:I kept my Force Ten (cotton inner, nylon fly, ridge) on the basis that it reduces or even eliminates condensation and stands up in storms. I was looking at buying a new tent for this year (nylon tunnel with porch) to address the problem of weight and space. But now I'm not sure.

These were 2 of the three main reasons for my upgrade.
horizon wrote:I've never really bought into the new tents because I like cotton (though I'm under no illusions about its downsides). I've also had my share of pitching on hard stony ground in Spain and France but I'm still not interested in free standing or pop-up tents.

Being able to pitch the tent where pegging was not possible was my third reason
horizon wrote:The beauty of cycle-camping (as opposed to hiking) is that it is still possible to use the heavier cotton. Ideally the cotton should allow moist air to evaporate but prevent the condensation from inside the flysheet getting into the inner. However, It's difficult camping enough in as many different seasons and weathers as possible to really assess what is best (I must admit my first thought about the OP was that he was camping in very different conditions (winter) from usual).

My trip last weekend was the spark for this thread. However, this is a problem across all seasons. My old Coleman functioned from -8 to 40 celcius literally from Holland to Spain and lots of Germany, winter & summer with nothing like the same issue as this.
horizon wrote: But it maybe that we are really only talking about winter conditions or cold summer nights outside the Med. And to my mind, a tent should keep you warm so that makes extensive venting a non-solution.

My perspective is that a tent should keep you dry & keep the wind & rain out. Keeping warm is for me & my clothing, not the tent.

Good luck with your new tent. I spent months researching mine before pulling the trigger.

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

Post by yutkoxpo »

pjclinch wrote:Just because you're in a tent with wet walls doesn't mean you're wet. As long as the tent is big enough that you can sit in free space (and that it's free-standing suggests it's a dome of some description so it shouldn't be impossible) then you don't get wet. As long as the inner walls aren't so wet they're continuously dripping on to you it's okay.
Its difficult to avoid the odd brush with the walls, but the sort of clothes you'd be in for winter camping shouldn't be in the business of soaking up the water and cooling you down.
The real problem with getting yourself wet is it tends to quickly amount to getting cold, but if the water is staying on the walls that's not an issue.

If it's pretty much impossible to stay clear of wet walls that in turn gets your personal clothing soaked, that'd be a problem to avoid. Do you have clear sitting/laying space?

Pete.


Hi Pete,

I think we're talking over each other here.
Other than the floor varying between damp & wet in the morning there is no issue with the condensation on the inner..... until it is time to pack up. The floor I deal with using a microfibre cloth.

There's lots of space to sit, lie & move around without touching any walls.

When it's time to pack up this is the process.....

Remove inner.
Wipe down fly (outside)
Take up groundsheet
Wipe down fly (inside) This is wet work! No groundsheet, me under the fly :D
Take down fly & pack up all components.

If I don't wipe down the fly it's very heavy and will soak me when I put it up later!

For example, last year I did a week long tour in Northern NL in February - very wet, windy & temperatures 0-5 celcius. Coleman was pitched daily with minimal extra work for dealing with moisture. Thick floor, so no groundsheet necessary, wipe off the fly on the outside and breakdown the tent all in one. Careful packing keeps the wet floor away from the inner.
Last weekend (not the first) with the new tent, very similar conditions in terms of weather & location, the extra work involved in breaking down the tent cost about an extra hour per day.

The difference in moisture levels between the 2 is huge!

You rightfully say that it's not an issue if I'm not touching the walls. True.
But it becomes a big issue when I want to pack up and move on.

Thanks for the input.

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

Post by horizon »

HobbesOnTour wrote: Keeping warm is for me & my clothing, not the tent.



This is an important point and I would welcome other views on it.

My impression is that warmth has shifted from the tent to the sleeping bag as venting has increased to deal with condensation from man-made fabrics. That means that weight has shifted from the tent (cotton) to the sleeping bag (3/4 season) - we could also throw in a footprint here as well! I don't like this idea as I think it's nice to have a warm environment in the tent. My suspicion is that this is marketing - a lightweight tent is the Holy Grail. Of course, this is based on the idea that cotton is warmer than man-made (which is a moot point) but I think venting is a real factor.

There will be people who say that they are never cold when camping or who only camp in warm climates so this will muddy the waters.

What I would like is three to four months of non-stop camping using different tents in hopefully different weather to be sure. But I think you've raised a key issue: whatever the hydrostatic head, rain is less of a problem than condensation. And for me, venting isn't the answer.
When the pestilence strikes from the East, go far and breathe the cold air deeply. Ignore the sage, stay not indoors. Ho Ri Zon 12th Century Chinese philosopher
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Re: Converting a Tunnel tent to freestanding - Anyone done it? Any advice?

Post by PH »

HobbesOnTour wrote:
When it's time to pack up this is the process.....

Remove inner.
Wipe down fly (outside)
Take up groundsheet
Wipe down fly (inside) This is wet work! No groundsheet, me under the fly :D
Take down fly & pack up all components.

If I don't wipe down the fly it's very heavy and will soak me when I put it up later!


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) I've travelled with someone who uses an all in one pitch, he'd pack it away as a sodden bundle, it'd still dry out in a short time when re pitched and left open (Though not as quickly as mine, because the inner would have become wet) We've done a couple of pretty wet Autumn Scottish tours and it was never a problem.
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.
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Re: Converting a Tunnel tent to freestanding - Anyone done it? Any advice?

Post by PH »

pjclinch wrote:
HobbesOnTour wrote:I'm off now to investigate how I can reduce the condensation!


All you need to do is rewrite the laws of atmospheric physics. That might take a wee while,


Didn't take horizon very long at all :wink:

horizon wrote:I kept my Force Ten (cotton inner, nylon fly, ridge) on the basis that it reduces or even eliminates condensation
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Re: Converting a Tunnel tent to freestanding - Anyone done it? Any advice?

Post by horizon »

PH wrote:
Didn't take horizon very long at all :wink:

horizon wrote:I kept my Force Ten (cotton inner, nylon fly, ridge) on the basis that it reduces or even eliminates condensation


What I would like is three to four months of non-stop camping using different tents in hopefully different weather to be sure.


AIUI (and I might not :wink:) cotton will allow warm, moist air to pass through whereas an impermeable fabric won't - so condensation will occur on the inside of the inner tent. The cotton fibres don't allow the water from the inside of the fly to enter the inner tent. That's the theory (not mine): cotton is breathable.

Now enter breathable man-made fabrics, people who seal the cotton of their cotton tents, less than 100% performance of cotton and so on. If the physics is wrong I take it back but the variables are huge and I cannot account for these.
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Re: Converting a Tunnel tent to freestanding - Anyone done it? Any advice?

Post by horizon »

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.


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

Post by pjclinch »

I have spent a lot of time in Force 10s over the years, and they are great tents, but... Aside from needing a team of trained porters to cart them about, it's important not to press the inner against the fly if the fly is wet, or you get wet, because the fly holds a lot of water. Surface tension keeps the water in the fly and thus the inner dry, as long as it's hanging clear, but a wet F10 weighs a lot more (if you can imagine such a thing...) than a dry one.
What it doesn't do is fill up with interior generated dampness to problem levels in summer, but if a wet-from-rain cotton fly isn't a deal-breaker I don't really see that a wet from condensation synthetic one need be either.

I've been using 4 season tents with down-to-the-ground synthetic flys and all-in-one pitching for nearly 20 years, in which time I don't ever recall bothering to take the inner out to wipe off the inside of the fly, even when it's been dripping. And it hasn't mattered. What I do do is give it a good shake before packing (very easy with a free-stander, even solo) and that gets the worst of the water off the fly (especially if it's silicone coated both sides). Since the inner has a DWR most of the drops that come off the fly roll straight off the inner.
Pitching it the next night doesn't mean getting wet, because I'm outside and it goes up in one. Once I'm inside I'm not leaning against the walls so I don't really care if they're a bit damp. No wet work is involved at any point, aside from if it's raining.

As for weight of a wet fly being a bit much, as with the F10 example, what do you do if it's raining? There are times you'll just have to pack a wet tent and it isn't actually traumatic if you do.

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

Post by pjclinch »

And condensation in winter in a cotton tent... A cotton flysheet is breathable, but that's not the same as "no resistance to water vapour". As the vapour heads through it'll be losing energy and it'll cool substantially as it gets to the outside, so one would expect a fair bit of it to condense in the fabric. So the fly will get heavier, and there's nothing much you can do about it except wait for it to dry. And good luck with that on cold, wet winter days...
Water will condense on flysheets, cotton or synthetic. And that'll be dew as well as interior-generated moisture. A coated synthetic sheet can be largely shaken dry because the coating means that the fibres aren't trapping the water. Cotton holds the water in its structure, so you can't shake it dry.

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

Post by horizon »

It's a nylon flysheet with cotton inner.


I've reflected a bit more on this and although I've camped in cotton, single skin, nylon, large, small, medium, domes, ridges, cotton dome, trailer tents, cotton inner/nylon fly, cotton fly on grass, hard ground, beaches etc etc in most weathers bar winter, I don't feel I have much to conclude. My two "takeaways" are hard ground (now solved thanks to Thermarest) and the need for more warmth. Other than that all the tents have performed adequately in the circumstances. What I don't have is very strong memories of .... condensation.
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Re: Converting a Tunnel tent to freestanding - Anyone done it? Any advice?

Post by pjclinch »

horizon wrote:It's a nylon flysheet with cotton inner.


No particular reason that'll have a hugely a different condensation performance to an otherwise-equal tent with a synthetic inner. Fine cotton fabric with a light water resistant coat isn't notably different in breathability from a fine nylon with a light water resistant coat. Where condensation will obviously appear is on impermeable surfaces, like a fully waterproof coated fly.

And as we see here, you can have two tents with equally waterproof flysheets where one gets much more condensation than the other. I'd suggest overall fly design is probably far more important than what the inner's made of. Interior condensation will be mainly from cooking (if you cook inside) and the occupants generating warm, moist air, and as it cools (particularly against a cold flysheet with a waterproof coating) the moisture will condense. Unfortunately, getting rid of the "moist" generally means getting rid of the "warm" too, which is a why a warmer 4 season tent tends to suffer more than a better ventilated 3 season one.

horizon wrote:I've reflected a bit more on this and although I've camped in cotton, single skin, nylon, large, small, medium, domes, ridges, cotton dome, trailer tents, cotton inner/nylon fly, cotton fly on grass, hard ground, beaches etc etc in most weathers bar winter, I don't feel I have much to conclude. My two "takeaways" are hard ground (now solved thanks to Thermarest) and the need for more warmth. Other than that all the tents have performed adequately in the circumstances. What I don't have is very strong memories of .... condensation.


Condensation generally happens when you've got warm, moist air that can't get out before it cools to the point it drops its moisture. That you're colder than you'd like to be might be associated with the venting of your particular tents?
I have strong memories of terrible condensation events not because they're so common but because they're actually relatively unusual, but when they happen it's... well, it happens, and you just get on with it.

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