Fabric Testing and a Few Surprises

All ripstop fabrics. Do you have also plain weave fabrics to test as apparantly the presence of ripstopthreads has a negative impact on a HH ?

I do have some but not coated only dwr like pertex

In the ones i tested,
Some leaks were on seams and some not, just random i think.

Do you have a link to the type of fabric you are thinking of ?

Hi Gary,
Thanks for testing these. Something you did not test for was resistance/recovery to stretching. Perhaps by weighting one side with 100kg, then testing?? This is always a problem with nylons. The stretch around any poles/guy-outs when used for a month. I recoat my sleeping tarps to help avoid these leaks. Many do not.

Note: It is not surprising that the silnylon showed jets almost at the same time as beads. The silicone coating is highly elastic, but when it breaks it is like popping a bubble. It just fails all at once.

The ground sheet is typical, around 10000HHmm. As I remember this was also reported by Exped several years ago for their tent floors. I agree, it is good stuff, but heavy. Probably not suitable for the typical UL camper.

The Crystal35 is typical of cheap PU fabric. I believe there is a minimum thickness for acceptable film strength. Thinner will leave almost none at the ripstop threads after rolling. I can almost discern a pattern of leaks similar to the ripstop threads, but more testing is needed to be confident. Perhaps a distribution analysis might be clearer.

A stretch test is a good idea,
Will have to think of an easy way
Weights good idea, but i need to maybe measure my pyramid tent to see what forces are on the guy lines when pitched.

:)

something like http://www.extremtextil.de/catalog/Groundsheet-Nylon-PU-coated-90-g-sqm::460.html (can't get clickable links to work and don't see why directly). Perhaps heavy for some but for others ok.

^^^
“can’t get clickable links to work and don’t see why directly”

The BPL parser is easily confused.

Use Tiny URL to get a short alphanumeric linkable string, “http://tinyurl.com/kjqjkpd”, which BPL can handle.

http://www.extremtextil.de/catalog/Groundsheet-Nylon-PU-coated-90-g-sqm::460.html>

…end drift

Thanks. I know the wright syntax and I've done it dozens of times, so I thought it wouls be like always: easy. But not this time apparantly.

> The Crystal35 is typical of cheap PU fabric.
IF the coating on Crystal35 is shiny and only on one side, it could also be acrylic. That coating is used to stabilise very light fabrics, but it is not meant to be used as a waterproofing at all. I haven't seen the Crystal35 stuff, so I don't know.

Cheers

polyethylene seems pretty waterproof

why don't they bond polyethylene to nylon?

Roger, In the test reports you will see that it is a PU coating and both sides.

"something like http://www.extremtextil.de/catalog/Groundsheet-Nylon-PU-coated-90-g-sqm::460.html (can't get clickable links to work and don't see why directly). Perhaps heavy for some but for others ok.

Edited by Woubeir on 05/11/2015 09:09:50 MDT."

Got some offcuts of that lying around if you want some for testing.

thanks for the offer and it does look like great groundsheet
but I use the penne outdoors one and I have tested it to 10000hh 90gsm so this is ok for me and uk sourced.