Tent Condensation

Look at the Menu Bar above, over on the right end: Search

Type in Condensation and you will find this as the first hit: Condensation

After digesting the first article, and then the others, specific questions will result in specific answers.

Edit: OOPs… you’re not a member. Well, the answers will be waiting for the big fat red M after your name.

> What causes condensation inside a tent?
Moisture from you, wet clothing and damp ground, plus a fall in temperature.

> Are there some tents that are more prone to this than others?
Yes indeed.

> What design features help to prevent or at least reduce condensation?
Ventilation.

For more details, Greg's reply is highly commended. :-)

Cheers

Ventilation, ventilation, ventilation!

Campsite selection: if possible, avoid the following: low-lying places, river valleys, lakes and streams, out in meadows. If possible, pitch your tent under trees.

This is not always possible. During my trip to Wyoming's Wind Rivers last summer, I was down in a river valley (2-3,000 foot mountains on each side). The valley was pretty flat, so it had lots of boggy meadows. For three nights I was close to a lake. The trees, thanks to the bark beetle plague, were mostly dead and therefore not safe to pitch a tent under, forcing me to camp in meadows. At night the breeze stopped completely, so ventilation didn't help a lot. Lows were in the 30's, and it rained the last night. The one night I found a healthy tree under which to pitch my tent, there was no condensation at all. The other three nights–pretty damp! A lot of the Wind River Range is above timberline, so unless you camp on a knoll (not always advisable when there are thunderstorms in the area) you can have the same problem.

Solution? About the best you can do is take an extra pack towel (I used a couple of Handi-Wipes from the supermarket, just as absorbent and much faster-drying) to wipe down the inside walls of the tent. I try to do this before my 80-lb. mostly Labrador retriever wakes up and starts wagging his tail! I don't have to wipe the tent down if that happens, but I have a rain shower inside.

I also had no internal condensation while camping on Washington's Olympic Peninsula coast, one of the wettest places on earth. Again, I was in campsites in the woods under big (!) trees.

A good DWR (be sure it's highly breathable!) outer shell on your sleeping bag really helps. The expensive ones are made with such a shell. If you have a dog and get the aforementioned morning shower, promptly shake it off the sleeping bag, and it will have no effect on your insulation.

There are some good hints on the Six Moon Designs and Tarptent websites on avoiding condensation. The BPL articles mentioned above are excellent.

If you're a double-wall tent person, do not buy a tent with an outward-sloping screen door. With those, you have to zip the fly up tight in the merest drizzle, resulting in heavy condensation under the fly. At least in my experience with such a tent, this resulted in condensation from the fly dripping through to the inner tent, with puddles all over the place. You want to leave your tent door open except when horizontal rain is coming from that direction. At least with a single-wall tent, the condensation is accessible so you can wipe it off.

Is that yer problem Bucky? Well, get a Sham WOW! towel and yer problems are over. Watch this – two wipes on the inside of this tent and the condensation's vanished into the Sham WOW! For a limited time only $9.95 AND – if ya call within the next 5 minutes we'll DOUBLE the offer. That's TWO Sham WOWs! for only $9.95. But ya gotta call now. We can't do this forever ya know.

Eric

Wow ! By the time I called they had run out of stock.
Or was that a sham ?
Oh well, I will keep using my shelter to produce enough distilled water for the next day.
Franco

If there is dew on the ground in the morning, there is going to be condensation in your tent. Regardless of how much ventilation you have, if there is no air, ie. wind, moving the air, you will get condensation on those days. If you can, get out of the shelter without touching the sides. Leave it standing as long as you can. When the morning sun starts to warm it up, the condensation will disappear. If it is sunny at noon, hang it out to dry, and keep it hanging exposed to the sun as you hike until your shelter dries.

Sure enough, I did the search Greg suggested and the first article was: http://tinyurl.com/3y6ugz

This is a great article (with great illustrations, too). Just this article is worth the price of a subscription. Seriously — I would pay that much for the information (or just to see those cute frogs).