A Treatment for Silnylon Tent Floors

[Jim Wood]

A question that comes up frequently on backpacking forums is how to deal with the three primary problems associated with silnylon tent floors and ground cloths: slipperiness, low water resistance and poor durability.

Just published, a new article discusses a single do-it-yourself treatment that solves all three problems at once, transforming silnylon from a generally poor choice for tent floors into an excellent replacement for the heavier polyurethane coated fabrics that have traditionally been used for this purpose. It even works on other silnylon-based products (like stuff sacks) to improve strength and water resistance.

You can find it here: http://jwbasecamp.com.

Jim Wood

[Frank Ramos]

for you do-it-yourselfers, the 1.9oz (before coating) silnylon available at http://www.seattlefabrics.com is much tougher than the regular silnylon, and also less slippery. I made a bug-bivy from this stuff myself (similar in design to the one at http://www.sixmoondesigns.com/ultralight/myo_Meteor.asp except with a bathtub floor and without a zipper). I believe Sixmoondesigns offers this same heavyweight silnylon as an option on their tent floors.

[Jim Wood]

I actually purchased one of the original Europa tents (with the 1.9oz black silnylon floor) from Six Moon Designs, but still found the floor to be unacceptably slippery.

I attempted several cures, including sanding the surfaces and painting stripes of SilNet onto the floor, but nothing really helped much. I eventually cut the original floor out of the tent, and using Velcro patches sewn around the perimeter of the remaining 8″ skirt, converted it into a one with a removable/replaceable floor. Since then, I have tested several floor fabrics in the tent and like the treated 30D silnylon one the best.

If I’d known then what I know now, I would have just left the original floor in the tent and treated it with the process described in the article.
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