Ok this is a bit of a silly question but one that's bothering me all the same. We only live in a small terraced property with a small yard out the back. We're going camping for the first time in September with an Outwell Hartford XL. I'm worried about if it's raining when the time to pack up comes and we have to put the tent into the bag wet. We have no room out the back to put it up to dry it out. What do you all do? Those of you in similar properties obviously....thanks.
we used to live in a 2 bed terrace,fortunately my dad had a big garden so we could dry it out there. It is important that you dry it asap as they can develop mould very quickly.
Either find a friend with a big garden and hope they will let you use it to dry your tent or open the tent up and drape it somewhere in the house and keep turning it to make sure it gets completely dry. The house we are in now has a huge room on the third floor which we can get the tent dry in. Other people on here have had to drape it all round the living room just to get it dry.
Most importantly enjoy the camping and worry about the tent when you get home.
Do you have a park local to you that you could put it up in?
I can just about put mine up in the back garden but without any guy ropes. If it's windy and I need to put the guy ropes up then I have to take it to our local park, which is fortunately only 2 minutes walk away.
I'm sure you will find your best way of dealing with a wet tent. Mine is that if I can't put it up in the garden (and tent takes up almost all the room), I drape it over the bannisters. It dries beautifully and on the next good day, I take it outside and roll it up into the bag.
I've never put mine up to dry it, but I have dried it suspended from the washing line, laid out on the patio and keep turning it, and last year due to weather it was spread out over the banister on the landing.
We live in a terraced cottage with no rear access so know where you're coming from.
We cut our trip this week short by a night because the weather was actually good on that day. I decided that the flysheet was dry and didn't want to risk staying the night and being forced to pack down wet.
The (sewn in) groundsheet was wet - we wiped it off with a towel and spread it out in our bedroom (the biggest room in the house). It dried in a couple of hours and managed to get it folded and back into the bed.
If the fysheet was wet, I would have had to put it up in a friend's garden.
One last thing to mention: MAKE SURE THE GUYS ARE DRY. This is easily missed but will lead to a mouldy tent - nylon guys hold a surprising amount of water!
As I had to pack all my gear away wet I decided to hang the first item on the line this morning, my outwell windbreak. It is now officially much wetter than when it started and the rest of the tent and canopy are spread out in the conservatory in a bid to dry them out asap. We're off again in 9 days lol! And no doubt the cycle will begin again!
------------- If you have a problem stressing you, sort it. If you can't, there's no point worrying about it coz it won't make a blind bit of difference!!!! Jules
I live in a terrace sans garden too but I managed to hang mine in up the garage using a combination of bungees, string and cunning.It was suspended like a giant manta ray with air flow on all sides. Dried lovely!
Well we had a small two up two down terrace with little back yard and the only way we could dry our tent was to have it in doors and keep turning it, bit of a pain but a friend of mine didn’t see the relevance of this until he opened his onetime used Vango up the following season and oops! mould city it was completely ruined .
You’ve got a big tent there though your gunna struggle, but it will be worth it and if you don’t know anybody who has the space you have no choice L
The way we do it is to buy some hooks from B&Q, then using one of the bedrooms place the hooks in the celling. Using the loops from the gound sheet hang it upside down, open the windows and let it hang there for the day. Take it own before bed, remember not to switch on the lights though!