Buying a Tent

Tents vs. Tarps

Tents can be your most important piece of equipment when you're faced with heavy weather. Although a tent can be more of an encumbrance than a necessity in parts of the country where rain seldom falls (such as the desert), your tent still affords some measure of privacy—and in some cases, protection against critters—as a payoff for lugging it around.

Here's the good news: Thanks to synthetics, tents aren't heavy like they once were; modern lightweight fabrics can make “lugging” a misnomer.

Tarps, in contrast to tents, are heavy pieces of coated nylon that you can make into a sort of tent-without-a-floor; all you need are some ropes and a bit of ingenuity. Store-bought tarps are 10 or 12 feet square and have grommets (eyes) at the corners and edges. These are where you attach ropes leading from anchor points such as trees, branches, and stakes in the ground. You may want to carry both a tent and a tarp, but this (of course) is a weight question that depends on whether you're car camping, backpacking, or canoe camping. On some trails, you may not need a tent or a tarp. Land managers in many places provide lean-tos for campers.

Since tarps require some thinking about how to set them up—and where to find those natural anchor points to suspend them from—they are favored by more advanced campers and hikers. A tent, on the other hand, is for every kind of camper—weekender, wilderness wanderer, or canoe camper.

Borrow A Tent The First Time

Before buying a tent, lay your hands on the fabric. As with all camping gear (except hiking boots and clothing), you should try to rent or borrow a tent to gauge performance and features.

A tent may very well be the biggest equipment purchase you'll make; it is certainly one of the most important. Tents come in all shapes and sizes, designed for many different—sometimes specialized—purposes. Some tents easy to pitch, some tents near impossible.

And then there is size.

Take tent capacity ratings with a grain of salt and make sure to crawl inside with your fellow campers. Backpackers would never lug along a four-person tent, because the tent would take up an entire backpack. But if you're car camping, any tent is fine as far as weight.

With all this in mind, try out several sizes and styles of tents before settling on one particular type. Renting or borrowing several types of tents should help you with the decision.

Setting Up Your Tent

Always pitch any unfamiliar tent before heading off on a trip. Chances are that if you leave in the evening, you'll end up setting the tent up in the dark. You'll want to have some idea of the tent's operating principles in advance—especially if the tent has more poles and attachments than you know what to do with.

A quality camping gear store will have a number of tents set up, and will allow customers to crawl inside the tents to try them out. This is a good time to ask if you can take the tent down and pitch it again. Every salesperson should oblige, and this is a great way to gauge how fast it will take to set up the tent in the real outdoors, imagining that it is night and you are tired and hungry.

Instructions that come with tents can be bewildering. There's nothing like hands-on experience setting up the tent to make up for those mystifying diagrams and tangled directions that fall far short of clarity.

Waterproofing Your Tent

Most tents are double-walled. The inner canopy is made of breathable nylon, while the outer fly is coated for waterproofness: The rainfly and the tent itself. The purpose of the rainfly is to protect the tent and its contents from the elements. Typically, you'll have to set up the tent by running interlocking aluminum tubes that are shockcorded together through sleeps or hooks along the outside of the tent (this sounds more complicated than it is). When done correctly, the mass of tent fabric will magically take shape and become what you'd expect to see: a portable cottage/tent with an entrance and tent windows.

You place the tent fly over the top the tent and stake it down at several points along the ground. Crisscrossing poles support the fly and hold it about 2 to 4 inches off the tent. This arrangement effectively creates a region of airspace that offers a little insulation, allows condensation from inside the tent to escape, and prevents rainwater from migrating through the tent's fabric into the tent.

The tent's fly is really the waterproofing system in nearly all tent designs. The tent itself is the undershell that contains everything else.

Choosing a Tent

When it comes time to buy a tent, you'll be able to select from several shapes and sizes. Modern-day tents feature a system of crisscrossing poles that act as the “ribs” for the tent, a waterproof fly, and several anchoring pegs that hold everything together when the wind rises.

Evaluating tent designs can be a little daunting; many will have similar features but look completely different when erected. Most tent designs, however, are variations on the following five configurations.

The A-Frame Tent

This tent is becoming outmoded as newer, sexier-looking dome tents take over the market. Experienced campers, however, swear by their reliability in the face of bad weather—in spite of their old-fashioned design, which features two sloping sides falling away from a rigid center pole, a design that catches the wind but sheds water quickly. This design offers less interior space for the size than more contemporary designs of tents but offers more interior height. A-frame tents are often lighter in weight than domes because there are often fewer poles. A-frame tents tend to cost less than dome tents, and this may be only one of the reasons to choose this tried-and-true tent design.

The Dome Tent

This style of tent is by far the most popular recreational tent around. It offers plenty of floor space and is designed to ride out heavy winds. Dome tents tend to be a little harder to pitch than A-frame tents, because three or more flexible poles have to be threaded in just the right way through a number of sleeves or clips. The whole operation only becomes obvious after the tent has been erected. Some manufacturers color-code the tent sleeves, and this helps. In bad weather, having practiced pitching your tent beforehand will be a dress rehearsal if you have to set up your tent quickly.

Dome tents are here to stay, however, for several reasons. They offer maximum room for their size and weight, and their crisscrossing poles make them extremely rigid—therefore good tenst for windy conditions.

Dome tents are classified as freestanding, meaning you can pitch the tent without using guylines and stakes, attaching these after the tent is up. Freestanding tents also offer the added convenience of portability; you can set the tent up in one location and move it—in one piece—to another (within a reasonable distance) if your first camping site is too rocky or uneven.

"Freestanding” does not mean leaving your tent unstaked. At the very least, staking is required to help pull the rainfly taut (and therefore rainproof) at midpoints on each side of the tent. Bear in mind that an unstaked freestanding tent can become airborne when hit with a good gust of wind.

The Hoop Tent

This hoop tent tent design may have been the precursor to the more adaptable and improved dome tent. Designed for use by serious backpackers (and others who opt to shed the weight of heavier tents), the hoop tent is a usually cylindrical design with curved sidewalls. Hoop tents are lightweight because they only use two poles but are a bit less spacious than dome tents or A-frame tents.

Some of these tents feature a fold-back covering that permits occupants (in pleasant weather) to see the sky through extra-big panels of mosquito netting. Although this tent design can withstand high winds, some models with sloped entrances encourage rain to migrate inside.

Bivy Tents and Bivy Sacks

Bivouac (or bivy) sacks are one-man “tents” that typically exist in the domain of the serious hiker. These “tents” resemble narrow tubes that have the unfortunate reputation of sealing in body moisture because the walls of the tent aren't allowed to “breathe” as they do in other tent designs. Bivy sacks and bivy tents often have a large hoop that supports the front end, keeping the fabric off your head.

Besides the breathability problem, there is also no room for camping gear inside the tent; gear left outside could be soaked in a downpour. In this case, you'll have to cover your camping equipment with some sort of rainproofing—in the form of plastic garbage bags or under a rain poncho, or tarpaulin.

“Bivy” sacs have no supporting ribs. In effect, the bivvy sac is a form of sleeping bag cover that offers some waterproofing and wind protection (not insulation). There is even less room inside these types of “tents,” which have the unfortunate nickname—and rightly so—of “body bags.”

Family Tents

Last, but not least, are family camping tents designed to accommodate up to six people. These are made more for car campers; they're less practical for backpackers, cyclists, or those traveling by canoe. These weighty tents are really more like the equivalent of a log cabin with apartment-size rooms and “windows;” they weigh between 20 and 30 pounds. Some family tent models are made from a cotton/polyester blend, others from a nylon or polyester, and still others from canvas.

These tents are meant for campers who plan to stay at the same site for longer periods of time.

Tent Vestibules and Tent Features

Many tents come equipped with vestibules. A vestibule is essentially a tent's front porch. It is designed to protect camping gear from the elements and can offer a canopy under which to cook in foul weather. (Never cook inside a tent.) A vestibule also gives you somewhere to put your shoes—a place that is not inside the tent, but not outside either.

Most tents offer mesh storage pouches that are good for storing small personal items like watches, compasses, and small flashlights. Just don't forget to remove those things when you stuff the tent back into its sack. Many manufacturers include a small loop (not to be confused with tent poles) in the mid-center of the tent that you can use to suspend a flashlight.

Even if weather isn't a problem, insects sometimes are. Well-built tents feature finely woven insect netting in their roof panels, entrances, and end panels. Depending on the time of year and location, a tent is valuable as a shelter from the elements and an impenetrable barrier to mosquitoes and black flies. Such netting lets you see your surroundings while holding off the invasion of biting insects.

Tent Groundsheets

Although the bottom of your tent is made of reinforced material that is thicker than either its rainfly or tent walls, the forest floor is an abrasive place. To prevent accidental tent punctures from rocks and the like, lay a plastic ground cover under the tent's floor. This groundsheet should be cut to fit the shape of the tent floor—as big, but no bigger. A groundsheet that peeks out from the edges of the tent will channel water underneath, and no degree of waterproofing will stop water from seeping inside. You can buy material for groundsheet at both outdoor equipment and hardware stores. Plastic from hardware stores is perfectly fine and often cheaper.

Tent floors should be made of the same type of tough, waterproof material used in the first six inches of the tent walls (nearest the floor) to form a sort of plastic “bathtub” shape in the bottom of the tent. Lighter-weight tents have ground-level seams that are sealed with waterproof tape. The rest of the tent will be made of non-waterproof taffeta. Seams on the tent floor will be “sealed” with lengths of waterproof tape. But check: Some manufacturers don't seal the seams and you'll have to do it yourself. Remember to examine a tent's wall seams as well. Tents are manufactured with bound and lap-felled seams. Bound seams are created by stitching through a layer of material folded over two other pieces being joined; they are the weaker of the two types.

Lap-felled seams are created by placing the two pieces of the fabric being joined over one another, then folding and stitching them together. Better quality tents are made using as many lap-felled seams as possible, and have bound seams when more than two pieces of material are joined. Generally speaking, lighter, better tents employ lap-felled seams, which are flatter than bound seams.

4 Season Tents

Tents are designed for use in specific seasons; ask yourself in which season(s) you plan to use your tent. Three-season tents are designed for use in spring, summer, and fall. Four-season tents are manufactured with the worst weather in mind, but ventilation will not be so good in warm weather. Such heavy-duty tents have more poles and extra waterproofing to withstand blistering winds and raging rainshowers and snowstorms. They are also quite a bit more expensive than the three-season variety; a 4-season tent may be overkill for weekend or summer camping unless you plan to do your camping in snowy conditions.