Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Tent Review:

Tracy and I wanted to have space when we went camping at Assateague Island, and while our old tent is still tops when it comes to blocking rain and being otherwise utterly bomber, it isn't big enough to hold a queen-sized air mattress and Afton's pack-and-play. In fact, it'd be a little cramped with the three of us, considering how much Afton thrashes around at night.
So, I bought a new tent: The Coleman Stockton 8. There's one problem. The only place that sells it is Walmart, and apparently, it comes from Coleman Canada, not Coleman USA. So, there is almost no information at all available about it, and just the few reviews on Walmart's website. We'll fix that problem right now.

Pre-camp summary:

Size: It's supposed to be able to fit "two queen air mattresses plus gear."

Strength: It uses 11mm fiberglass poles, so it won't be as strong as if they had used Aluminum poles, and the poles aren't all that thick, either. I'm iffy about how it'll take the wind.

Weather: Coleman touts it as having their WeatherTec system. We'll see.

Design: It's a dome tent with extra poles on the side stretching it into a tube. That's not a bad design, and in fact, is used in one style or another, by some pretty impressive tentmakers. One similar idea is this.

Review:

Okay, post-camp, I can give a few thoughts. First, although it is really big, it can't fit our Coleman air mattress in "portrait layout" in the tent. We had to rotate the mattress 90 degrees, and it stuck out into the center of the tent. Afton's pack and play fit it great in the other end.
Setup wasn't too difficult,although the pitch wasn't nearly as taut as I would have liked, and it looked (to me) like it was leaning to the front the entire time. Maybe if I had taken set up slower and paid more attention to it, it would have been okay. Or maybe not.
It held up to the wind just fine, and we had plenty of that. What it couldn't hold up to, though, was a long steady soaking rain. It rained from 11 pm until 8 am our last night, and the tent showed it. In a few places, the fabric was saturated and started soaking through, in a few places water spray was coming in around the rain fly through the mesh and onto the tent, and it was starting to puddle on the bathtub floor, but we were dry because we were on top of a tall air matress. 5 years ago, Tracy and I weathered a similar, but more intense, rainstorm in our smaller, also Coleman, dome tent without any problems at all. In that storm, we were the driest people in the campground. In this one, we weren't.

In summary, I could have just pitched it sloppily, but I don't think so. For large groups and mostly fair weather, with just a chance or two of short rain squalls, even fairly intense ones, this tent should do fine. If you really expect nasty weather, though, get something with more coverage on the fly, or higher sidewalls and less mesh.

6 comments:

Anna said...

Thanks for the info! We still need to get a tent for the camp-out next month. Any other 'reviews' or pointers on tents??

Joe said...

The type of tent you want is largely defined by where and what type of camping you intend to do. The main reason we chose this tent was the size. We wanted to fit the pack and play and our air mattress in it. If not for that, we'd likely have taken our 3-person dome, because it's so ridiculously weather proof. (of course, that means it's also really hot, and doesn't ventilate well.)

Sarah said...

Joseph, how do you feel about giving your favorite little sister your old tent? I don't have one...

Joe said...

I've actually got one I can give you. It's a 2 (one and a half) person tent. :)

Sonny said...

My wife and I purchased this tent for our three grown children, and unfortunately, it rained very heavy this memorial weekend and we had the same tent leakage. Wasn't enough to totally soak you, but enough to be annoying, and several drips. Have to say I was expecting better from coleman. I wanted to ask if you guys tried or found any fixes for this problem?

Joe said...

Sonny, I haven't found any solution for the problem, but I haven't been thinking too hard about it lately, since we've only been out when good weather was forecast.

I think a waterproofing spray like Nikwax would work well to deal with the fabric getting saturated, but with the size of the tent, it'd be expensive to treat the whole thing.

Oh, and a "pro tip" here: don't pull up the stakes by grabbing on the tent fabric and pulling. You'll just tear out the stake loop. Oops.