Assistance with condensation in Zpacks Duplex

Your site selection sound ok at a glance. Have you seen TarpTent’s video on site selection? I’ve only spent three weeks in a Duplex but I only had condensation on one or two of those nights during storms with the doors closed up. I used a bandana to swipe the excess water off the interior.

My experience is that condensation is much worse camped anywhere near a creek if the campsite is at the same elevation as the creek.  Throughout the night, the air in the creek’s basin becomes very humid.  In some situations just being 50-100 feet above the creek bed will reduce or eliminate condensation.  I try to find sites 200-300 feet above the creek bed.

On occasion #3, the fact that the shell of your sleeping bag felt damp tells me the air was pretty saturated.

“My experience is that condensation is much worse camped anywhere near a creek if the campsite is at the same elevation as the creek”

That came to mind .

However, when the ground in the morning is wet but it hasn’t rained, the shelter fabric regardless of what it is, it will be wet too.

I carry one dedicated Super Chux (kitchen re-usable wipes) for that purpose.

At each end of the Duplex there’s a small mesh ‘bag’ where you can put things. Put something heavy in each so that each end of the Duplex sags a bit, which will allow even more airflow. That might help a little. Also, there’s a bungie line with a clip at the end where these end pouches are as well. When it rains, you can use this line/clip to clip to one of the door zippers to pull the mesh even further ‘into’ the shelter, helping to avoid rain getting in unless it’s raining hard and sideways and allowing you to leave a door or two open during many rain storms. This could help as well. Lastly, not only site selection, but shelter orientation, can make a difference. If there’s any wind, try to ensure you orient your shelter so that the wind is blowing through it instead of hitting one end or the other. This could also help.

Normally we have pretty good luck with condensation. The shelter remains dry or only slight condensation with venting of 2 or more doors. Trip before last in weather in the high teens to low twenties F with doors closed in an effort to stay a little warmer we scraped enough frost off in the morning to make  a snow cone LOL, no falling moisture though.

In drenching rain it can get to misting or falling moisture so we have to plan on wiping during the night. Not the best case scenario but I think management throughout the night is inevitable in some situations. Still wont be parting with my Duplex any time soon.

re: Orientation – I’ve found that pitching the head end into the wind and leaving both downwind doors open mitigates all but the most pernicious condensation. That said, owning a Duplex (or any single wall shelter) means also owning a good towel :)

The head end of the Duplex is denoted by the ZPacks logos sewn into the corners of the tent.  The head end has the outboard doors, i.e. the doors that overlap on the outside.  It is critical that the head end be pitched into the wind if you don’t want the downwind doors to billow out when they are cinched shut.  The mid-door toggles (on the new models or retro-fitted) while useful in higher winds, will not overcome an orientation opposite to that described.

Owners and shelters usually require some time to bond, as each have their own quirks.  Given some time, I’m sure the OP will come to love the Duplex as many of us have.

In environments with a high probability of condensation, such as a major midnight thunderstorm in the Sierra Nevada’s followed by complete clearing with a major temperature drop, I’ve found that with with all vestibule doors open, with no wind, and the interior insect mesh doors closed, you’ll get condensation to a certain extent.  But I’ve also found that the insect mesh impedes air movement and moisture flow, so if you leave the top portion of the mesh doors open, say six inches, this will reduce the condensation quite a bit as compared to leaving the mesh doors entirely closed.

Like others wrote, it helps to have a absorbent towel readily available for quick wipe-downs in the event condensation does occur.

The few times that condensation has been abundant, a simple cotton bandanna has sufficed for me.

In a gentle rain where large raindrops are not causing misting inside the tent, I’ve actually seen the moisture draining down the walls of the tent toward the mesh ends. Of course, one still has to avoid touching the tent walls, but the concept is IME not just a hopeful theory.

However, when the ground in the morning is wet but it hasn’t rained, the shelter fabric regardless of what it is, it will be wet too.

Franco’s is a very good point that is often overlooked… when the ambient air is very moist, everything is going to be moist, inside and out. If there’s dew it means things are going be at least damp. If there has been persistent fog (complete saturation of the atmosphere) everything is, or soon will be, completely wet.

Once spent a night on top of Robertson Mtn in Shanadoah NP.  Temps were in the upper 30s and the cloud ceiling was ~300′ BELOW our camp! Yeah. We were camped in a cloud.  We were wet. Least intelligent choice of campsite ever. Oh…had lots of condensation too :)

I’ve been a duplex and solplex user for a couple of years and concur with all the advice given here, and can add no advice.  I had an experience this spring while hiking the Arizona trail.  While hiking in a semi-arid grassland, I pitched the tent away from any water source, on a slight saddle with a mild breeze.  Perfect no-condensation conditions.  Sunny all day and the humidity was typically very low.  Slept with one door open on each side.  Awoke to find condensation.  I was very surprised and not very happy.  I walked down the trail ruminating on the downsides of single wall tents. A few miles later I ran across another hiker who was packing up his double wall tent.  I whined about the inexplicable condensation and he immediately exclaimed that he had also been surprised by a lot of condensation.

Something about the rising tide lifting all the boats in the harbor. Sometimes.

buy a HMG Echo II no condensation problems there

See a few posts above.

In certain conditions there will be condensation no matter what you’re using, even an open tarp.

One of the few exceptions to this is the ‘hot tent’ situation where there is a heat source inside a shelter that is vaporizing the moisture, along with venting to allow it to escape. Sometimes a small candle inside a tent can keep condensation at bay if the atmosphere around the tent is not too saturated.

If you have not experienced condensation it is because “certain conditions” have not been encountered!  :^)