Upright tent pole diameter?

At Tarptent we have two types of poles for that use. The commonly sold 8.6mm , around 2oz in your size, they bend. The other is a 12.4 mm version, about 4 oz, hard to bend in your size .

Much of the answer to your question would depend on whether you want one piece or collapsible tent poles. Rigidity will come from larger diameter, but strength will come from wall thickness. A larger diameter thinwall pole will support as much as a smaller diameter thick wall pole, but will be more rigid and resistant to buckling. I would suspect that something in the 12 to 14mm range would be about right. If you want collapsing poles, I would look for a tent that you can buy replacement poles for and then modify those poles to suit your purpose. I just ordered a replacement pole for a Eureka Timberline tent for that purpose. It is a three section collapsing aluminum pole about 1/2" OD and sections around 20" long. One end of each section is necked down so that it will fit into the next section. I can use one, two or three sections and I can shorten the sections to make a pole of what ever length I choose. It isn't that easy to find telescopic tubing, so modifying an existing pole is often faster and more economical. I found mine on eBay.

Best source of tent poles I know is Tent Pole Technologies. http://tentpoletechnologies.com/ They carry aluminum, carbon fiber and fiber glass poles and will make poles to your specification from their stock of materials. Great service – I've bought poles and components and am very happy with the purchase. Of course you need to know what you want; if you post more details about your tent design you might get great ideas from folks here.

Thanks for the help all. As for my design, its just something I sketched up as a 2 man tent because I wasn't happy with the headroom and vestibule of A-frame style tents. I basically just stuck 2 poles at the head end, here's a couple of pictures. Feedback is always welcome! –

If you (or your partner) hike with adjustable trekking poles, your design looks compatible with them for the 110's. You *might* be able to use one for the 70 as well if there are two of you. You might also be able to use two poles in an A-frame at the foot of the tent and spare yourself 2 ground anchors.

Thanks, I'd love to use trek poles because it seems the easy option, unfortunately I do bike touring so it's just extra weight. I kind of want to reduce the number of stakes needed for this tent though, it seems pretty high.

>"unfortunately I do bike touring" or fortunately. Use the bike. Design the tent to use the bike as the "poles". The tent would have to be longer, but you'd save all pole weight and pole length/bulk. And you'd keep your bike dry. And you'd have easy access to your panniers without even off-loading them or getting out of your sleeping bag. I'm imagining the bike serves the purpose of your two 110 cm poles, leaving you just the 70 cm pole to carry. Or guy lines going further back could eliminate the need for a back pole. Like any tent design, mock it up in the backyard using blue tarp or 6-mil poly sheeting (sold as thicker painter's drop clothes – or be gentle with the 2- and 4-mil stuff) and duct tape. Play with jacking your seat all the way up or down (to avoid a valley between the handlebars and seat). Or do a nice job on the mock-up, beefing up the stress points with more tape and take it on a few trips. It'll look cheap, but you'll learn a lot and can fine tune all the dimension before you commit to purchase and sew silnylon or cuben.

Thanks, that's a pretty neat idea. I'm going to grab some cheap blue tarp to play around with soon, at the moment I'm doing string models in the back garden. I'll have a play around with my bike and see if I could make that work too.

Like this?

Thomas, "I kind of want to reduce the number of stakes needed for this tent though, it seems pretty high." I count 8 stakes needed for your design. Take a look at the Tarptent Double Moment. http://www.tarptent.com/double-moment.html stands up with 2 stakes, works in the wind with 4. Given that you need to add the weight of poles and extra stakes with yours, the weight of the DM design becomes very competitive given the usable space inside the inner.(good headroom…) franco@tarptent

Does the 1.5kg weight of the Double Moment include the centre flexible pole?

When it rains, that flat roof you have is going to belly and fill up with water. This could be a problem, and is why you don't see that in many tents. That will happen even if it is sloping one way. Cheers

"Does the 1.5kg weight of the Double Moment include the centre flexible pole?" Yes, fly/inner/main pole/2 stakes BTW, now that Roger has pointed that out (not easy for me to do given my TT connection…) a typical problem with your design is water pooling on the roof panel. With a minimum amount of sagging water will start to collect there and add to the sagging therefore collecting more water.

Cheers guys. I'll have a little rethink on the design front.

Quick follow up question, does anyone have input on the minimum angle I should aim for to avoid pooling, or is it more complicated than that?

I've experimented with a number of tent designs but came back to pyramid