We had a trailer tent back in 2004(ish) and only used it once from brand new before we upgraded to a caravan, we noticed the morning after our first and only night in it that everything was covered in condensation. Is this normal for a trailer tent or didn't we have enough ventilation, was it because it was brand new and needed using a few times to settle the canvas in? It was Sunncamp 400SE.
Had you weathered the canvas before you went away in the tt? All cotton canvas tents need pitched and given a long hard soaking with a hose before use...they will probably leak like sieves during this process, but after the cotton has dried out the weave will have closed up and the canvas will be watertight on the next wetting.
Cotton canvas tents don`t normally suffer from much condensation because the canvas can breathe. But individual objects can still have condensation on them on cold mornings.
Rather than condensation, if this hadn't been weathered as Val has said, it might have been dew that had seeped through. We recently weathered our brand new 400SE, and there was a considerable amount of moisture on the inside.
We used our brand new Raclet without weathering it and also our Conway Countryman and did not have a problem with moisture. And we used the Conway for the 1st time in October so you would have expected it to happen more then, but it didn't. It dried very quickly despite heavy rain.
We camped during that awful rain a month ago in our conway tt, and we had condensation most mornings on the windows and poles. I guess when it's cold and wet outside, and you have hot bodies sleeping, there is bound to be condensation. We are well chuffed with how our canvas held up - and how fast it dried when the sun came out. Other 'plastic' tents were not waterproof.
i think a lot depends on where its pitched ,youl get less condensation on a dry pitch than damp and ofcourse the difference to temperatures inside than out.
if its cold outside and lots of cooking and breathing (we wont mention other things) any tent will get condensation canvas or not.
and ofcorse the more you batten it down to keep beasties and draughts out the less air circulation there is to keep it dry
we have trigano and not got a problem although we bought second hand and the weathering had already been done. However thwy did shrink the canvas for us by not drying on the frame!!!
We have a combi camp and have never had condensation on the inside of the canvas. There is usually some on the inside of the plastic windows in the mornings but never on the canvas.