Tent hack : convert a double wall tent into a single wall one

[Pierre-Yves C]

Hello,

I’m wondering if anyone ever tried to convert a double wall tent into a single wall design.

It may seem like a weird project, but as I keep looking for the existing ultralight 4-man tent options (I think I’ve listed most of them, see below), and as I’m considering making my own Caffin’s style tunnel 4p tent, this idea occured to me when I found a somewhat lightweight, somewhat cheap Aliexpress option : could I hack this tent to make it single-wall, and therefore lighter ?

Of course, I’d need to think a lot about that, and that’d imply to change the fly design to add pole sleeves and find a smart way to connect the inner tent to it, etc…

The pros :

• Easier than making a tent from scratch
• Relatively cheap option

The cons :

• Would still be a lot of trouble thinking and modifying the tent
• Risk of definitely ruining a new tent
• Unsure about the potential weight gain
• Very uncertain about how it’d handle condensation

Has any of you done this before ?

Is it complete non-sense ?

Any suggestion on what (not) to do ?

Thanks !

 

[Pierre-Yves C]

My list so far of sub 3kg 4P tents :

• Tarptent hogback : 1,87kg | https://www.tarptent.com/product/hogback/#tab-id-2
• BIG AGNES Copper Spur HV UL 4P : 2,3kg : https://www.mec.ca/fr/product/5052-172/Tente-Copper-Spur-HV-UL-4-personnes
• MEC Volt LT 4P : 2,8kg | https://www.mec.ca/fr/product/5036-986/Tente-Volt-LT-4-personnes
• MSR Papa Hubba NX 4 : 2,91kg | https://www.mec.ca/fr/product/5064-121/Tente-Papa-Hubba-NX-4-personnes
• Fjellheimen Superlight Camp : 2,5kg https://www.helsport.no/fjellheimen-superlight-camp
• Nigor Guam 4 : 2,65kg | https://fr.nigor.eu/tentes/guam-4.html
• Marmot Tungsten ultralight : 2,6kg | https://www.marmot.com/tungsten-ultralight-4-person-tent-29480.html

PS : no, I’m not considering tipis and tarps.

[Franco Darioli]

You can just add or remove the inner from most integral pitch tents.

Some are easier than others, takes about 2 minutes with the Hogback.

This is the Hogback with a mesh inner , about 66 oz (1.87 kg)  :

without the inner looks exactly the same but you are down to about 40 oz ( 1.134 kg)

No modification whatsoever is needed to have the fly up by itself, in fact I can’t tell in that photo if the inner is there or not.

The inner is attached to the fly via rings and mitten hooks.

 

 

[Scott Nelson]

I wonder if you could buy large dome on eBay of decent quality from REI, or Eureka.  Maybe you could make the rain fly work with a footprint pitch.  I have found some tents on eBay to work on and make usable again.  The most suspect area is a moldy floor of course.  But floors are a two dimensional thing that are easier to reverse engineer than a complicated shape like a rainfly. -Scott

[Pierre-Yves C]

@Franco

I want to keep the bug protection provided by some kind of inner tent. When removing the inner of a tent such as the Hogback, you loose that. I’ve looked at the Hogback, but I dislike the tiny vestibules… however, this remains a very attractive product in the lightweight category !

—

For my potential project, my main concern is how much weight I could save… would it be worth the trouble ?

[Author]

Posts