how does a regular tent hold up at Burning Man?

[Lotus Eater]

Curious as to how a regular tent does at Burning Man?

[danibel]

What do you mean by "regular" tent?

You mean nylon? Tall? Backpacking? what? There are lots of kinds of tents...

[Token]

Same as an irregular tent.

Any tent that DOES NOT have mesh windows or top that can't be zipped up does worse than ones that can be sealed.

4-season regular tents do very well.

[tamarakay]

Yep yep seal the mesh and build some type of shade. Apply the rule of "don't bring anything to the burn you don't mind being destroyed"
Read the survival guide, then read it again. Without shade you will be out of the tent by 9 or 10. The sun is unrelenting

[Jovankat]

And get extra long stakes, regular ones will pull right out in the wind.

[Elorrum]

A regular tent can stand the week. Some campers have written of multiple returns with cheap wally world variety even. Mesh will let in dust... but there's a lot of that anyway, you might get used to it. You can put your bedding in a garbage bag each morning if you can't successfully seal things up. A full coverage rain fly can overcome some unsealed mesh.
Use all the tie outs and stake it well with long stakes, 12 inch spike nails, rebar etc. If its near ripping and flapping in a blow, collapse it until the wind relents.

[dragonpilot]

For my mesh I sat next to a cooler full of Coronas and spent about 4 hours stitching sections of blanket material to the outside of the mesh panels. Does an amazing job of minimizing the dust sifting in. Find a tent with as little mesh as possible. The worst that can happen is you'll spend more time stitching and drinking Coronas.

[Savannah]

Curious as to how a regular tent does at Burning Man?

The tent I used my first four Burns was just a common dome tent made of nylon (and because there was a rainfly, the dust did indeed come in sometimes, and it was not water-resistant enough; I did get mildly rained on once).

You can make an "ordinary tent" work if it is:

* water-resistant
* very little mesh, or has its mesh covered.
* & you buy at least 10" inch stakes (Coleman makes nice ones). The skinny little stakes that come with the average cheap tent are not going to cut it.

If you don't want to stitch your mesh closed like Dragonpilot, you can buy spring clamps at a hardware store (these are very smart to have anyway) and clip fleece blanket pieces over your mesh with the clamps, like AntiM does.

[dragonpilot]

And getting back on topic, my cheapo family-sized car camping tent has withstood 25+ years of camping, 8 of which were on the playa. And it's ready to go again. Besides staking down and guying out a tent, the weight of your gear inside the tent will also help hold it in place. Positioning the tent amongst other structures and vehicles breaks the prevailing wind which is usually from the southwest. No tent is 100% immune from the vagaries of the weather, but most sensible precautions will holdup to Mother Nature.

[Token]

I'm sad to say that technology has not improved tents over the decades.

Quite the contrary, they got allot worse.

Some of the highly regarded playa worthy tents, the Kodiak and Springbar, are more or less still built with tech from the 1950s.

[chuckularone]

I'm sad to say that technology has not improved tents over the decades.

Quite the contrary, they got allot worse.

Some of the highly regarded playa worthy tents, the Kodiak and Springbar, are more or less still built with tech from the 1950s.

The improvement tents have made over the decades is that the materials have become cheap enough to make them nearly disposable!

[robrob]

First year i had little more than a crappy little $50 dome tent. Had the time of my life!

(second year I did not use that tent, lol)

[Chowski]

I used the same cheapish tent for four burns and several regionals until it finally died in 2015 - mostly because the extra dusty conditions finally made all the zippers burst. I covered the mesh by hot-gluing on fabric to keep the dust out and washed and WAXED the zippers every year, before and after the burn using soap and vinegar and water, and White Lighting brand bicycle chain lube. I hear candle wax also works. ALWAYS wax (not wet lube, like wd40) your zippers - a product which repels dust. Once the zippers fail, your tent will be a dusty nightmare.

Shorter, wider, rounder tents tend to stand up better than taller, square ones, as they have less profile to the wind. Also, avoid those that have pop-out awnings. Those will get destroyed by wind.

[tatonka]

Had a litttle 3 man tent last year , zipper almost gave out , Patch helped me fix that . But the dust came right thru the nylon walls . Everything was covered in dust

[Wigwam]

You know, I have used a Springbar tent for the last 6 years. All canvas. It holds up extremely well, does not allow any dust and is very roomy. I had the manufacturer see an exterior flap in the window to replace the interior flap so that when I opened it, the dust that had collected inside the mesh didn't fall through. It's expensive for a tent, but well worth it.

[Ratty]

An emergency fix on playa is chap stick on your zippers.

[kpischi]

Hi there,

didn't want to open a new topic, hope thats ok

What do you think of this tent:
Should be big enough (probably way too big, but we don't want to store anything in the car since it's a rental), but i'm not sure about how we could get shade over it.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Ozark-Trail-1 ... 2/34109034

This should help with the mesh i think : 7 fully closeable windows

We are two persons flying from Atlanta (living in Europe) so we have to buy most stuff in SF and probably can't buy/test it before.
Anyone has experience with Ozark tents from walmart? Do they survive the winds on the playa? And can we use Rebar to stake it done?

Cheers, Kilian

[Ratty]

I've changed tents several times. I buy em at garage sales and make em work.

Can you secure the poles to the tie downs? (Are the poles in channels where you can't wrap a rope around them?)

How much mesh is on them? If you can't glue or sew something over the mesh, at least throw a blanket over it and secure it there with clamps.

bring a sheet to lay over your bed.

[NamasteWarrior]

Last year being my friends and my first burn we were prepared at the bare minimum. We weren't sparkle ponies, but we weren't sure what was gonna happen. Needless to say though, we knew it was going to get hot. Knowing tents with no mesh open are practically pressure cookers, we needed a way to keep ourselves from heating up too quick in the morning. The answer? Mylar space blankets taped to the tent. The tent when properly staked down with minimal hard points is really stable. Noisy, but stable. Using gorilla repair tape, to fasten the Mylar, that thing lasted the whole week plus kept us incredibly cool in the heat of day. My advice? Take rebar with you as stakes(don't forget the tennis balls) and Mylar the crap outta that thing.

[BBadger]

I would consider a smaller tent if you can swing it. That 16x16 tent with different sections is probably a bit large for only two people. It'll catch the wind more than a regular 2-4 person dome tent, and will be harder to cover with shade and guyline down. A 2-4 person dome tent will work pretty well and be easier to keep under control. See if you can get aluminum poles too.

Definitely make sure that you have everything staked down, and not just those crappy 9" camping stakes, but rebar or lag bolts or something that really goes deep into the playa. You can also use your vehicle as a wind-break.

If you go with mylar, as mentioned above, definitely get that gorilla tape or some other good quality tape that won't just lose its stickiness.

[kpischi]

Thanks for the replies !

The Mylar sounds good, we'll consider this.

Your probably right with the size of the tent, a smaller one would probably be better, then we could put some shade over it via the car.

But just to say, we're not in a Camp, so we probably need some more space for all the stuff we have (bikes, table, chairs, place to chill out in front of the tent under some shade , cooking, .... )
Maybe a little bit bigger tent would be better then.

Yeah we will go with the rebar, it shouldn't be a problem buying then at home depot or something like that in SF without
ordering them before ?

[C.f.M.]

I had an Ozark Trail tent completely collapse on me at Loveburn, in some light summer shower wind. Prior to that personal experience, I still wouldn't have recommended them due to other people's similar experiences. Cheaper pole and fabric material.

Looking through the pics I would definitely want to figure out how to stabilize it more. It looks like it might use a similar "instant pitch" pole frame to the Coleman Instant Pitch line, another one I've seen break too easily.

That's a lot of rope to tie down, too - and you will want to tie each one down. It will get battered by the wind. it'll swoop up under that rain fly and try to pull it out of the ground (and sometimes succeed).

The ceiling is full mesh, you'll want to cover that. And the vents it has - you think people are overstating the dust situation, but we're not!

It's also just pretty big. As I understand, though, you plan on using a lot of it for storage? Did you look into a smaller tent for sleeping and a monkey hut for hang-out/storage?

My favorite tent (aside from a canvas one), used it twice out there, Coleman Bayside. I LOVE the poled "D" door.

I currently use their Octagon 98 at my regionals and I love it - good shape for the desert, too. Too big for me to fly with, though!

tldr: "regular" tents work fine provided they're properly stabilized and made dust-proof(er).

There's a bunch of us here in ATL, holler if you've got free time and want to hang out!

[BBadger]

The big problem for you is that you're traveling by airline for the first leg of the journey and so you can't really build much while in SF. Also rental cars often don't have enough room for long stuff like PVC for monkey huts unless you get a pickup truck or something.

A carport would be excellent shade, chill space, and provide protection for the tent. They're just relatively large and there's no guarantee that you'll find one on the way. There are some lightweight kits you can order online such as from Shade King that are under 50 pounds that you could transport as luggage on your flight. I think they're under 5ft too, so they can be checked (verify this!) Might be worth the time and effort. You'd need to guyline them down or they'll break up. Might be an option.

For rebar, Home Depot or other stores might sell pre-cut rebar in lengths such as 24". I don't recall. Remember to buy a sledgehammer, and maybe some locking grips to pull out the stake after too. Remember that you need to find people/ways to dispose of or give away everything you buy.

[kpischi]

Hey there,

thanks for the replies and sorry for the late reply, have lots of stress at work and preparing for BM...

We've decided we go with a 12x15 Monkey Hut and one large or 2 small tents.
Since the 10ft PVC pipes probably won't fit into the car, can we go with 2 5ft and use a connector or a bigger pvc to connect them?

@ C.f.M. if you've got time that would be great, you could problably give some good advice and answer some questions we don't even know yet
Problem is we're working nightshift till BM ( ) so we've just got time from ~noon to 3.30/04.00 pm.
Do you maybe know some good stores to buy clothes? We've been to Psycho Sisters (got a faux fur ) , Rag-O-Rama and will probably go to oakland city market tomorrow.

Cheers,
Kilian

[BBadger]

Look at what ZigZag did with her MonkeyHut and using multiple connectors. You can also use a carport if you can find one. Their poles usually top out at around 78" (6.5ft) rather than the 120" of a 10ft PVC pole. Hurry and do it; you don't have much time to build and test your shade.

We don't know where you live to buy clothes. I would look at thrift stores in your area. You don't need to buy clothes for BM, especially typical "Burning Man clothes." Bring what is comfortable and decorative.

I would buy some lights.