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We camped out in back garden on saturday night ( I forgot to book somewhere but in hindsight was glad due to weather). On sunday morning no leaks but a tent full of condensation and as it rained all day we were unable to air the tent as we would normally do. OH went in it at 5pm to find drips on his sleeping bag so decided to take a towel and wipe the whole inside of tent. At 8.30 pm the tent was wet again inside.

Could this still be condenstation or did he cause leakage by wiping the inside of the tent (campus indiana 8)? ( as some one at work told me when they had a canvas tent it leaked if you touched it whilst wet).

Would the winds we had force the rain through the fabric? it is a 3000HH.

We did get leakage at the zips on one end (ours can open up at the end as well as the 2 doors either side) so we now realize that we need to pitch this end away from prevailing wind.

We did also have leakage on the 2 doors at the bottom where the brass rings are to erect the canopy poles into. Does anyone know of anything we could bung these with to stop this?

Through the posts on this site we have picked up some great tips and are so glad we did not buy the tent and go away without having these dry runs (or not as this weekend was!). Tent is currently drying off in garage before we put up again next weekend as from reading other threads we may have to seal the seams.

I'm not an expert at all, but I'm almost 100% that if you touch the inside of the tent - or have something resting against it for example - the water will/can come through.

You could just have a tent they haven't 'proofed' properly and it's letting everything through

Not sure what tent you have, but you should still be able to ventilate it a bit even if it's raining - we kept all our window vents open, and the door during the day while we were about, and despite there being 6 of us + dog + yukky wet stuff draped over the furniture we didn't have any condensation.

We did have leaky seams though, I believe you can get seam sealant for them if you want to keep the tent, but if you are unhappy with this fault then you should be able to take it back.

The doors at the bottom - not sure on your tent, but on our tent with the SIG these are outside the tent, and if you don't have a SIG or a bathtub style groundsheet you can have the door outside of then it was probably just unfortunate that the rain drove water in there, but I guess you could stuff them with something if you wanted, maybe poke a small plastic bag through, or a bottle stopper?!!!! 

Don't have this tent ourselves but from the spec it looks midrange in size and price.

I shouldn't worry too much about the 'leakage', as you put it.

Without seeing how you erected the tent I cannot comment but assuming the panels were nice and tight and the base was pegged out as well as the guy ropes, it shouldn't leak.

You say the zips leaked. There is usually a thin 'flap' which lies on top of the zip on most tents to keep the moisture from penetrating the fabric of the zip. Sometimes they don't always lie right though. You need to make sure.

The inside wall of the tent will definitely get wet if you wipe it with a towel. Doing that or wiping it with anything allows moisture through the fabric.

You are wise to put the tent up for a dry run first, in your garden where you don't have to suffer it failing. But it hasn't failed you. I would just get out there and 'do it' from now on if I were you... enjoy it!

Thanks for the replies and advice.

Our garden does get very wet so I think that didn't help with the condensation build up. We had the window vents closed until the afternoon so that could have compounded the problem but we had no wet clothing in there nor had we cooked inside. We had the electic fan heater on for about an hour before we went in the house for showers.

It wasn't possible to leave the door open as the wind was driving the rain in and it was also running off above the door and making the ground sheet wet in that area.

We did have the guys out but as you can see from another of my posts we possibly didn't have them out at the right angle.

As I can see from other posts we were not alone in the leakage stakes this weekend which is a small comfort.