Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 22:14:37 -0400
Reply-To: David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Subject: Re: Bus Depot Side Tent...
In-Reply-To: <326529.91935.qm@smtp103.sbc.mail.ac4.yahoo.com>
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At 04:49 PM 9/26/2010 -0700, Phil wrote:
>I am considering buying this tent but before I do I'd like to hear from
>someone who has bought and used this tent. Did it meet expectations? Would
>you buy one again? What are some of the pros and cons of this tent?
Mine was delivered just barely in time for Buses by the Buoy (where I
lost my last remaining cat). For various reasons it's been a rough
couple of weeks, but I'll see if I can remember that far back.
Nota Bene: The site was hard-packed river gravel. The fifty or so
(really!) supplied thin steel pegs didn't have the slightest chance
of penetrating that stuff. Fortunately I had six very serious spikes
and a four pound hammer with me which held the tent up fine but
didn't fasten the edges to the ground. I didn't want to use the
floor anyway so as not to bruise it on the rocks.
Pros:
Excellent construction and good stout bags made out of black tarp
material, same as the floor. In theory everything fits inside the
large bag, but then the large bag weighs 80 pounds or so, in addition
to your having to fold the tent compactly to leave room.
Astounding versatility.
Contrary to what Bus Depot says, it's entirely practical for one man
to erect the thing. Takes a long time. If there were a lot of wind
it might be very different. The one thing I did different from the
instructions was to place the tent on the frame when the frame was
only six inches off the ground, instead of three feet. Striking it
(with two people) was easy. It's possible to fold the tent
reasonably well while it's still supported by the roof skeleton, so
you don't have to worry about picking up nasties from the ground.
Poles all have internal spring and wire so they assemble easily.
Poles all have color coded dots on them keyed to the
instructions. As the instructions say, "By the time the dots wear
off you should know how to do it, or you can mark them with a
marker." I found that putting it together once was sufficient for
the whole thing to make sense. Assembly is quite straight-forward
once you know where things go.
Instructions are brief but they work. One thing I believe they
failed to mention was that it's good to have all doors etc fully
zipped closed when erecting; otherwise the zippers may not want to go
all the way to the end in use.
Looks fairly weathertight when free-standing. No rain, so no experience.
The "privacy cabin" is made of light-weight loosely woven material
for air circulation, and has a large screened window that faces the
side of the tent. It is very easy to clip onto the poles, and very
easy to get mostly out of the way by clipping the ridge pole clips
onto the side pole. It's big enough to sleep in.
The roof is overhung about a foot in front, might be a help when
looking for your keys in the rain. Might keep the rain out of the
front window as well.
The two windows have permanent screens (lots finer than regular
screening, not so fine as no-see-um netting). They have clear vinyl
"glazing." The front one has curtains on the inside and the side
(possibly both?) has a solid canvas cover that zips down.
When erecting the tent initially it's easy to attach the joining
piece to the van gutter and then move the tent so the cloth is fairly
taut. The instructions suggest having that cloth taut to improve how
it works in the rain.
There are substantial flaps all around to attach the floor to.
The floor is made of stout black tarp material, appears very
durable. There are two extra pieces of floor and some short poles to
try to seal off the space under the van -- no idea how/if they work
since the ground was so hard.
Cons:
There's no fly! I managed to miss this little (big) detail until I
went looking for the fly to put it up and there wasn't
one. Systematically fixing this would involve complicating the roof
pole structure. Haven't looked/thought about how to improvise
one. Being able to open whole sides takes *some* of the curse off this.
When reattaching the vehicle to the already-erected tent it's going
to be pretty tough to get the connecting part taut. I haven't seen
any of this in the rain yet, so anything I say about that is conjecture.
There's a strip of Velcro around the entire inside of the tent, where
the floor attaches to the flaps of floor material that extend inward
from the tent sides. Unfortunately it's the hook side, so there's a
couple square feet of Velcro looking to make trouble unless the floor
is in. I managed to get it slightly involved with one of the
mosquito screens when striking, and of course it pulled bits off the
screen (didn't ruin it).
Screens do not open, and the fine-mesh screens restrict air movement
considerably.
The privacy cabin is big enough to sleep in. Possibly even for two
good friends, not sure. That means it takes up one whole side of the
tent when it's rigged (but see remarks in pros:).
The privacy cabin provides privacy, for some value of privacy. That
light cloth isn't transparent, but it sure isn't opaque.
There are hook-and-eyes at the bottom of several openings to keep the
integrity of the structure when various zippers are unzipped. The
bad part is they're made of soft aluminum, and at least two of mine
were crushed flat (as received) enough that they needed prying open
to be usable. Hard aluminum, maybe anodized would have been much better IMO.
The tent is so versatile that it has loops and toggles and stuff all
over it, making it look rather messy. The worst is if you raise the
front wall -- the curtains sagging down from the overhead are pretty
sad-looking. Also the front wall is heavy enough that even with a
lot of tension it's sort of saggy, and people about 5' 10" and up
will brush their heads on it.
You can't adjust the height of any of the open sides. This
contributes to the condition the instructions warn about, which is
that none of the open sides will withstand any significant wind or
rain. Variable-height poles would fix the sides, but the front uses
a structure that mirrors the roof line, so off-the-shelf poles
wouldn't work for it.
None of the open sides will withstand any significant wind or rain.
This is highly speculative, since a) it wasn't raining and b) I
didn't have enough Godzilla spikes to secure anything but the main
tent itself. But it appeared to me that the elasticized panels that
are supposed to seal the tent to the van sides would let in
significant rain. Since you can close either or both of the tent
door and the van door this probably isn't a big deal.
Somewhat speculative, since I couldn't drive any pegs to fasten the
edges down -- but reconfiguring the sides would likely require either
pulling or driving pegs at the edges, as well as rigging/unrigging
the pole guys. Leaving aside the edge question, it's a snap. But
those fifty tent pegs are supposed to go *somewhere*.
Point of interest:
This is a serious tent. Rigging and unrigging it for a two-day stay
seemed like too much work for us two old(ish) men. Of course if it
had been hissing down with rain we'd perhaps have thought
otherwise. Traveling as I do mostly alone or with one other person,
I really wish I hadn't bought it, because $400 is a large amount of
money for me at the moment and the ratio of work:use seems too high
for me. Unfortunately I can't give it back as a) Ron points out that
his return policy has been abused on this sort of thing, so he
doesn't want to see it again and b) the aforementioned cosmetic issue
where the mosquito net got caught in the Velcro. I'll give it
another try or two, but I think I'll probably want to sell it. But
that's nothing against the tent itself, just how it fits into my situation.
Overall judgment so far:
Serious, versatile, well made, quality materials, generally well
thought-out. Price seems perfectly reasonable for what you get. If
this is what you need, it will surely do the job for you. To me the
most serious flaw is not arranging so that an open side can be
secured against wind and made to shed rain. But for the sides (not
the front) some adjustable poles should take care of that, I think;
so it's really no big deal.
Hope this helps.
Yours,
David
