Joined: 06/5/2004 Diamond Member
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A wind speed rating may be an interesting idea but I don't think it will happen. I think they would leave themselves open to lots of complaints if they said a tent would withstand a particular wind speed and then it did not.
A wind speed rating is not that helpful anyway, cos it's really the unpredictable gusts, plus where you are pitched in terms of shelter plus how well you put the tent up, pegs/ground quality etc which determine whether your tent will withstand the weather. So I don't think it's realistic to expect the makers to come up with some definitive statement about windspeed resistance - it would be largely meaningless and there would be so many ways for them to get out of any responsibility for damaged tents it would not bring any benefits to buyers.
Manufacturers used to give a "season" rating for tents and I know when family sized domes tents first came on the market in the early 1990s no one was claiming suitability for anything other that summer lowland camping for them, i.e. 1-2 seasons (spring and summer). In fact I still have a Vango catalogue from 2003 which divides its tents up into different categories with family/lowland/2 season camping on one hand, and mountain/4-5 season on the other, for the small, high spec tents with alloy poles and hi-tech ripstop fabrics on the other.
It is only with the growth in popularity of family camping , and the availability of heaters etc that folks are starting to camp earlier in the year and later into autumn and winter in big family tents. And we are doing so in tents that have never been claimed to withstand heavy weather. So as consumers we do need to make sure we understand what we can reasonably expect of the products we buy and to ask all the right questions when purchasing. And with the extreme weather we have had this summer, sadly it is inevitable that some tents will fail.
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