Tent floors are not really necessary. I like one to keep bugs and rodents from bothering me. It’s sometimes nice to feel cut off from the world and be left un-harassed while I sleep.
I don’t need a tent floor to protect me from the wet ground I have a full length Z-Rest for that. Tent floors do a poor job at protecting you from the wet anyway because what happens is condensation rolls down the walls and puddles on the floor.
I was thinking, it might be best to make tent floors out of breathable nylon instead, so the water doesn’t puddle in the tent.
I have this travel tent that fits on the a single size bed. I use it when traveling to foreign countries. It has a breathable nylon floor. It weighs 1.9lbs (.86 kilograms) with aluminum poles but it doesn’t have a rain fly. I was thinking if a person rebuilt one of these with carbon fiber poles and lighter weight materials and made a fly for it, you would have this great light tent that would do for wherever you go. If the tent fly was also a rain cape that would be even better.
That’s what I’m always looking for–the ultimate gear. The gear package that you can walk out your door and away from your home, travel the world, and never come back to change gear.
The travel tent is pretty cool. How would it work with a tent fly from some other lightweight tent? It might require some unusual staking or rigging but I bet it would work.
Carolyn H.
Yeah, I think it might, but it’s hard to get your hands on a fly to try it out on.
I was hoping that one of the independent tent manufactures would start making it. Change the netting to light weight black, change the door so it’s on the side, make the poles out of carbon fiber,then have a fly that goes over it that makes a vestibule.
I’ve written to the company that makes the travel tent twice. The last time they wrote back and said that some people are using a tarp over it but they didn’t know what size tarp.
better solution to the condensation issue is just use a bugbivy and tarp instead of a tent. Ray Jardine has been advocating this combo for years. I designed my own tarp and bugbivy, which is closer to the designs at Mountain Laurel Designs than Jardine’s design. In particular, my bugbivy has a zipper along the ridge-seam instead of that unzippered entry that Jardine uses.
I don’t think a breathable floor is such a great idea. You’ll end up with a soggy mess every morning and be stinking of mildew in no time. Also, a breathable floor will absorb smells from outdoors much worse than silnylon. You might think that sleeping on a breathable surface, when used in a hotel room, is more comfortable than sleeping on a silnylon surface, but what if that breathable surface is all crudded up with horse piss and other stuff from being used outdoors? Anyway, you can always find something breathable to lay on top of the silnylon to absorb your perspiration when it is hot. For example, your sleeping bag.
Those travel tents are a neat idea, but too heavy for backpacking in the us. So there goes your one-size-fits-all idea. But a possibility that might work, at least for someone carrying an umbrella, is to make it so the bugbivy can be suspended from the tarp, when using with a tarp, or held it up with the umbrella when sleeping in a hotel room. I have yet to design a bugbivy that can be held up by an umbrella, but it is an idea worth pursuing.