Tarptent question

[Franco]

I don't disagree with that.
In fact several times over the years I have pointed out in various forums that indeed you can get misting by penetration and that I have done contradicting various TT owners that stated it never happens. (of course what they mean is that it never has happened to them...)
It does but only when the rain velocity (wind driven or large drops) is enough to do so , and that is seldom not all or most of the time...
Franco

[Singletrack]

By no means do I dislike Tarptents, it is just the opposite. I have really liked all of the 5 Tarptents that I have owned. I know their limitations, and how to use it. Tarptents have allowed me to enjoy hiking so much more, due to how light they are, and the ease to setting up. I would not go on any hike without one.

[Camping Dave]

I took my new TT Rainbow out on a 3 night hike this week and on the last night we were in one of those "howling winds, driving rain" storms on the side of a mountain.

One thing I noticed is that a fine mist seemed to somehow come through the tent walls - at first I thought it was my imagination but I put my headlight on and could see the reflections of the mist. It was almost like someone was spraying a flower mister every few minutes or something.

It wasn't devastating and nothing go seriously wet but in the morning everything in my tent was damp even though no rain entered the tent directly. Condensation was not an issue.

Is this something unique to Tarptents? I've been through some serious weather, including a tropical storm, in my Lunar Solo/Duo and have never experienced this before.

UL manufacturers frequently, ahem, exaggerate the worthiness of their products. This tent is one example: so called waterproof fabrics that can't take the pressure of a good rainstorm. And advertising a tent with a 38" wide floor as a 2 person. Who are they kidding? They could easily buy fabric with better waterproofing but that might add two ounces and eat $5 of profit. Oh My!

You can fix the leaking yourself by mixing outdoor silicone caulk and mineral spirits and painting your tent. It will cost about $6 and take an hour. If you buy UL gear, suck it up and invest the time. Or you can buy gear made to handle tough conditions.

Caulk and spirits painting works: I camped in December under my home-painted Campmor ultralight silnylon 10x12 tarp. 4 adults and 12 scouts. Pounding rain Saturday night. Guess who was dry in the morning: me, and the guy with the marine corps surplus 7 pound dome.

[Franco]

"advertising a tent with a 38" wide floor as a 2 person.Who are they kidding?
It appears that also some here are selective with their quoting...
The Rainbow is listed as a 1-2 (note not a 2...) person tent.
With the floor fully up it is about 38" wide , however you can drop the floor (you still have an inch or two of "bathtub" to accommodate 2x 20" mats without overlap.
This is for people that either occasionally have someone else or like a compact (small footprint) shelter.
As for the fabric it is not about the cost. When you add PU to silicone you lose tear strength and you can end up with the same problem people have with delaminating or sticky fabric.
as usual you choose your poison...
BTW, I just posted a thread with my Contrail taking 4" plus of water between 8PM and 8 AM, it was still dry inside.
Not the worst storm but a bit more than a "good rainstorm"
And just for the record there are several MSR as well as Sierra Design (amongst others ) tents with a 1000/1200mm waterhead rated fly...

Franco

[RichardD]

I too have had a couple of incidences of misting in the Rainbow during heavy storms. I accepted the explanation that it was condensation being shaken free by the impact of the rain/hail. Now I am not so sure.
I have been in all night rains in the tarptent when no wetness penetrated, it only seems to happen in very heavy thunderstorms.

[ronmoak]

" When you add PU to silicone you lose tear strength and you can end up with the same problem people have with delaminating or sticky fabric.
as usual you choose your poison...
Franco

It's not clear just where you received this little fact. It doesn't come from my supplier. I've noticed no difference in strength between the my current silnylon and the older pure silicone only version. Nor will the silnylon we use either, mold, mildew or delaminate.

Now there is some ultralight fabric that has silicone coating on one side and PU on the other. You frequently see this in silnylon products that are seam taped. The Sea to Summit dry bags are and example. From our research, this material is only available in overseas production. It also does have a lower tear strength than silicone only coating.

I don't know if it is subject to mold, mildew or delamination. But I do have my guess.

Ron

[Singletrack]

It would be helpful to the consumer, now that we are becoming educated on water proofness of silnylon, that each and every company post their waterproof ratings of their tents.

[sir limpsalot]

all the posts seem to blow right by lightheart gear's statement that the sil-nylon they use is almost triple the waterproofness of other tarpmaker's material. if this same sil-nylon is available to every maker....why wouldn't it be used by smd or tt ? what's the downside?

[Franco]

Hi Ron...
I re-read my comments last night and realised that they made sense to me when I wrote them but I can see now it was a pretty sloppy way to describe what I meant...
By writing "adding PU" I made it sound (unintentionally) that I was referring to the fly material you use , apparently the same as TT uses for the floor.
As you probably know it wasn't my desire to state that TT is using floor material that is likely to become sticky or mouldy, in fact I used this point in several threads were people only see the "downside" of silnylon overlooking the benefits.
What I was referring to (or meant to...) was actually the type of silnylon that has an undercoat of PU (IE not mixed with the silicone ) . I have a tent like that and seen felt several of the type and they all feel slightly "rubbery" to the touch, something I cannot detect on the TT floors.
As a matter of fact I have stored for days (and probably weeks with the Contrail) my TS with a wet or damp floor and after 5-6 years (with the Rainbow) there is no trace of mildew or any sticky feel to it.
So my comment was not about that...
At the same time having asked for some technical explanation from Roger Caffin, he has been very vocal in several discussions at BPL about the effect of PU coating/undercoating , I received this lengthy but possibly useful reply .
Roger quoting a small part of my questions :
> You have mentioned several times (as others also have) that a PU coating
> weakens a base fabric but silicone increases the tear strength of nylon.
Yes, but the comment has to be put into context. It applies to a
comparison between silnylon and PU-coated fabrics, where the terms
means specific things. I will try to explain.
Silnylon is a double-coated nylon fabric. During coating the polymer
has a low viscosity and wets out the fabric from both sides. It would
be as appropriate or more appropriate to call it impregnated. I often
suggest that you think of silnylon as a silicone polymer film which
has been reinforced with nylon fabric.
Classic PU-coated fabric means a fabric (nylon or otherwise) which has
a film of fairly high-viscosity polyurethane polymer coated onto one
surface of the fabric. The PU polymer is not embedded INTO the fabric:
it really only bonds to the surface of the threads.
When silnylon is stretched in a tear test the load goes into the
silicone polymer as well as into the threads at the point of tear, and
the polymer spreads the tension across multiple threads, rather than
leaving the load on the 'last' thread. For this reason we often find
that the tear strength of silnylon is higher than for the base nylon
fabric.
With a PU coating the action of the PU bonding to the surface of the
threads seems to localise the tension even more than in a bare fabric.
The strength of the PU coating seems to buffer surrounding threads
from the load. This leaves a PU-coated fabric often less
tear-resistant than the base fabric.
But all that is for traditional fabrics. Some of the newer coating
technologies have bypassed the limitations of traditional PU, by using
PU polymers with much lower viscosities which wet out the fabric.
Also, a way has been found of first coating one side of a light fabric
with silicone so it goes part-way into the fabric, then coating the
other side with low-viscosity PU so it too penetrates the fabric, to
the silicone layer. This is how we get what are called Silicone/PU
fabrics.
An advantage of the PU coating is that it has a higher pressure rating
than silicone. The latter is actually slightly porous. And you can
tape a PU face on the fabric as well. What we need is for a good
source of Si/PU fabrics, similar to the current source(s) for
silnylon. The fabric is actually available from several coating plants
in Asia, but they will only sell in 1,000 yd rolls. A peculiarly
Chinese mind-set problem.
In addition, people are also experimenting with co-polymer blends in
place of straight silicone (or siloxane). You can get anything you
want done in 10,000 yd rolls...
I would LOVE to get some light Si/PU fabric for my next tent .. REALLY!
Cheers
Roger Caffin (PhD)
Senior Editor for Technology
Online Community Manager
Backpacking Light

Part of the problem ,I perceive , with several of the comments at BPL from the resident "experts" (apart from Roger...) is that some material referred to as "silnylon" may not be anything like the sil we are discussing here but just nylon mislabelled by some vendors, in a similar way people discuss Cuben, Spinnaker and even Tyvek when there are many versions of each.

So, sorry if I have given the wrong impression but I hope this clears that up.
Franco

[HeartFire]

LightHeart Gear does state the waterproof rating of our fabrics on the Specs page.

"Standard gray Solos have been manufactured for us using a different sil-nylon than the custom tents. The gray fabric in these tents has a higher waterproof rating than the Cordura® brand fabrics I use to make custom tents. The manufactured tents have a waterproof rating of 3500mm of water, the colored fabrics have a rating of 1000mm water. Both fabrics are highly waterproof, but all sil-nylon can mist under some conditions"

Judy - LightHeart Gear

[Camping Dave]

all the posts seem to blow right by lightheart gear's statement that the sil-nylon they use is almost triple the waterproofness of other tarpmaker's material. if this same sil-nylon is available to every maker....why wouldn't it be used by smd or tt ? what's the downside?

Profit. But Franco will probably have another14 paragraph post, this time about how material selection doesn't affect profit, another 14 paragraphs of excuses and justification that nobody has enough time to read.

[ronmoak]

Profit. But Franco will probably have another14 paragraph post, this time about how material selection doesn't affect profit, another 14 paragraphs of excuses and justification that nobody has enough time to read.

Short and sweet. The silnylon available from US mills does not have the same degree of coating as silnylon available overseas. If they did, everyone would be using higher rated fabric.

Bottom line a foreign sourced tent will have a higher rating than on sourced and produced in the US.

Ron

[Singletrack]

Short and sweet. The silnylon available from US mills does not have the same degree of coating as silnylon available overseas. If they did, everyone would be using higher rated fabric.

Bottom line a foreign sourced tent will have a higher rating than on sourced and produced in the US.

Ron

Thanks Ron, Interesting. So we have TT at 1200mm, Lightheart at 3500mm. What would be the rating of say, your new Skyway? By the way it looks nice.

[ronmoak]

Singletrack,

The Skyscape canopy will be 2000+ mm rating. I found some 3000+ rated material however, according to my manufacture, there are still some quality issues with the higher rated stuff. So even though it has a higher rating and lower cost, we're staying with the proven fabric.

For those who haven't figured it out. The Skyscape will be produced overseas. It's our first overseas product. For the last 10 years we've used a single domestic source for production. I still plan to keep most of our production in the US. However, we've reached a point where it's playing Russian Roulette to rely on a single vendor. If something happened to them, we be totally out of business within a few months.

Its been a hard but necessary decision to move some of production offshore. I've resisted it as long as possible. I'd love to see more production capacity in the US, regrettably it's just not there.

Ron

[10-K]

LightHeart Gear does state the waterproof rating of our fabrics on the Specs page.

"Standard gray Solos have been manufactured for us using a different sil-nylon than the custom tents. The gray fabric in these tents has a higher waterproof rating than the Cordura® brand fabrics I use to make custom tents. The manufactured tents have a waterproof rating of 3500mm of water, the colored fabrics have a rating of 1000mm water. Both fabrics are highly waterproof, but all sil-nylon can mist under some conditions"

Judy - LightHeart Gear

Judy - are your manufactured tents produced offshore?

[10-K]

Singletrack,

The Skyscape canopy will be 2000+ mm rating. I found some 3000+ rated material however, according to my manufacture, there are still some quality issues with the higher rated stuff. So even though it has a higher rating and lower cost, we're staying with the proven fabric.

For those who haven't figured it out. The Skyscape will be produced overseas. It's our first overseas product. For the last 10 years we've used a single domestic source for production. I still plan to keep most of our production in the US. However, we've reached a point where it's playing Russian Roulette to rely on a single vendor. If something happened to them, we be totally out of business within a few months.

Its been a hard but necessary decision to move some of production offshore. I've resisted it as long as possible. I'd love to see more production capacity in the US, regrettably it's just not there.

Ron

I hate to hear that Ron... one of the (many) reasons I like to purchase from guys like you is because of the "Made in USA" factor.

[Singletrack]

Singletrack,

The Skyscape canopy will be 2000+ mm rating. I found some 3000+ rated material however, according to my manufacture, there are still some quality issues with the higher rated stuff. So even though it has a higher rating and lower cost, we're staying with the proven fabric.

For those who haven't figured it out. The Skyscape will be produced overseas. It's our first overseas product. For the last 10 years we've used a single domestic source for production. I still plan to keep most of our production in the US. However, we've reached a point where it's playing Russian Roulette to rely on a single vendor. If something happened to them, we be totally out of business within a few months.

Its been a hard but necessary decision to move some of production offshore. I've resisted it as long as possible. I'd love to see more production capacity in the US, regrettably it's just not there.

Ron

From your pictures, it appears that the Skyscape is a double wall shelter, with the fly, and the completly mesh inner wall. Is this correct?

[sir limpsalot]

Ron, I appreciate the move to a higher quality source. made in the U.S. loyalty shouldn't be a sacrifice made in the level of performance. People may gripe at this type of switch, but the competion may well spur U.S. manufacturer's to step up their game...much like japanese cars entering the market. all things being equal, or even slightly more expensive, i'll by american: but american buyers should never have to settle for an inferior product. i, for one, don't figure i'd be real happy getting wet in my american made tent made from lower quality materials.

[ronmoak]

From your pictures, it appears that the Skyscape is a double wall shelter, with the fly, and the completly mesh inner wall. Is this correct?

The Skyscape is not a true double wall tent. The center canopy panel is a single piece of fabric. Over 80% of the canopy is seperated by an interior wall.

[10-K]

Ron, I appreciate the move to a higher quality source. made in the U.S. loyalty shouldn't be a sacrifice made in the level of performance. People may gripe at this type of switch, but the competion may well spur U.S. manufacturer's to step up their game...much like japanese cars entering the market. all things being equal, or even slightly more expensive, i'll by american: but american buyers should never have to settle for an inferior product. i, for one, don't figure i'd be real happy getting wet in my american made tent made from lower quality materials.

If I'm not mistaken the Lunar Solo and Duo are made in the USA and I've never gotten wet in them and Ron himself has said in this thread that with the silnylon he's using now he hasn't had any reports of misting.

I absolutely would say without a doubt buying a "Made in USA" Lunar Solo and Duo is not settling for an inferior product.