Time for a new tent?!?!

In one of our recent outings, I was putting up our tent and noticed that inside the rain fly a few of the seam seals had begun peeling. When oh no, it hit me. “I’m going to have to invest in a new tent and I’m not ready to have to do that research yet!” At the time, I figured it would be fine. The seals would last a while longer. Until, on that same trip it rained and water seeped into the tent from below our camping pads. This had never happened before and now I thought, “Great, I really do need a new tent…”

I’m one of those people who will research and look at something for days, months, even years before biting the bullet and making a big purchase. I do this because I’m trying to decide how badly I need or want something and determining if the quality of the item really meets the price tag. I never want to have to buy something more than once. I really want it to last, just like things did back when my grandparents were young.

Back in 2009, I was planning to set out on my first camping trip where I was the leader of the group and making the plans. Turns out that also meant I was going to be responsible for supplying the tent. For months, I did research because I wanted a quality tent that could hold 3 people and be light enough for spreading out weight among 3 packs. I settled on a Marmot Aeros 3P tent that I have now loved for 11 years and I am not willing to give up on it just yet.

That being said, on our last visit to REI I picked up a few items to test out.

The first Item was NIKWAX’s Tent & Gear Solarproof.

I read the directions and thought to myself, “This sounds way too easy, surely I’ll mess it up somehow.”

All I had to do was set up my tent, flip it over, wipe it clean, spray it

on, wait 2 minutes, and wipe off any excess. I let it dry, and because I am who I am, I thought, “what’s a second coat going to hurt?”. So, I repeated the process. Once the bottom was dry, I flipped it back over, put on the rain fly and gave that a coat too. I mean, it’s been 11 years, surely the rain fly could use some extra waterproofing as well. It was a super easy process, and took maybe 30-45 minutes out of my day from beginning to end.

The 2nd item was GEAR AID’s SEAM GRIP + FC Fast Cure Seam Sealant.

This one was a little more time consuming only because my current seam seals were peeling and the dry time of this product was much longer. I first laid out the rain fly on a table in the garage. I removed as much of the old dried out seal as I could with my fingernails and gave it a quick wipe with a damp washcloth. Once it was clean and dry, I just popped the brush top up on the bottle and quickly applied a generous amount of sealant over the area where the previous seals had been. The label said that the drying time is 2-4 hours.

So, I just left it laid out in the garage and let it dry overnight. The next day I went down, flipped to another section of the rain fly and repeated. Simple as that. Actual working time on this one was probably 15-20 minutes each day.

I look forward to letting you know how it works out the next time we see rain while camping.