Quick Help Needed – Sealing up my Xanadu

Hello Ian,

I seam sealed two Tarptents with the mineral sprits and silicone method and it was pretty painless and worked great. Here is the instructions from Henry’s site.

I mixed it up in a small plastic paint bucket and used a throw-away foam brush.

Mix some GE Silicone II Clear Sealer and mineral spirits in an empty tunafish can. Use a popsicle stick or screwdriver to swirl the silicone and mineral spirits together. It takes a little while to create the slurry. When you have made a paintable slurry, use a small paintbrush to coat the outside (top side) of the roofline seam. If your tarptent has a beak, also seal the seams at the apex, roof, and velcro patches. Pitch the Tarptent as taut as you can get it before applying the sealer and then leave the Tarptent pitched for several hours while the sealer dries. If you want, you can paint the other seams around the pullout points for extra strength.

I use the bottom of a soda can to hold the mixture. Some kind individual usually leaves one or two outside my place.
Franco

Isn't the Xanadu made of Epic? Are you sure it's a seam leak?

That rung a bell so I looked at the test report my brother-in-law did on that tent. It is half and half. This is from his report:

"According to GoLite the tent is made of what they call SilLite and Epic fabrics. SilLite is their name for silnylon which is silicone impregnated nylon. This fabric is very lightweight but does not breathe. Epic is a brand name of a silicone encapsulated polyester fabric from Nextec Applications Inc. that is supposed to be waterproof/breathable. The sides of the tent that have the doors in it are made from the SilLite fabric and the other two sides are made from the Epic fabric. The bathtub floor is made of 3000mm polyurethane coated nylon. GoLite says that it "generally" does not need to be seam sealed."

I know that he did not seam seal his but I only remember it getting wet once. (No leaks)

I thought I remember someone posting that their Xanadu leaked thru the epic. Who knows.

Cool, thanks for the help, guys. At the hardware store here in Nairobi I've found a tube of "Acetate Silicone Sealant," or something like that. Does it make sense for acetate to be in the blend? I may have gotten the chemical name wrong. But if I'm right, is this the kind of stuff I'm looking for?

On the same aisle in the store are their spirits, and this gives me a little more pause. I've found "mineral turpentine" (which is *not* what I want, right?) and "methylated spirits," which I'm pretty sure is straight denatured alcohol. I'm surprised that they couldn't show me any kind of paint thinner in the store, but maybe I looked in the wrong place.

So, what are acceptable options for the thinner portion of the slurry?

I also saw that some people have just used straight sealant without too much problem, smearing it into the seam with their finger or a brush, right? I could go for that, I suppose.

As for the Xanadu, the literature you guys found is right–half of the dome is Epic and the other half is Sil. However, when I've experienced the leaks, it's looked pretty convincingly like the problem is the seams. The panels don't leak. The drips all come from water beading up on the poles, actually. In the Xanadu the poles are inside the dome, mind you, and so they ride just under the roof seams the whole way, and I'm almost positive that's where the leaks are coming in. But if anyone has any experience with this shelter, please weigh in.

(I do remember that GoLite's "self-sealing seams" worked a lot better on my old Hex than on this new guy. That's disappointing.)