Tarptent DCF Moment coming soon?

[Jason Brooks]

It seems what Mole is saying is that if you wait an hour and tension again you are good to go, so in a lot of cases you wouldn’t have to go out in a storm to re-tension. If it’s storming when you set up you are still out of luck, I would think.

[Jerry Adams]

Another reason to not like DCF is Stephen seebers data that shows DCF does not absorb IR. If you’re camping under a clear sky, you can be 10F colder than if you used polyester or nylon

[Stephen Seeber]

Hi Jerry:  I appreciate that you take the time to read all of my articles.  However, I don’t think you can draw that conclusion from my article, particularly the 10F claim.  DCF does absorb IR, as described in the article.  Just not as much as nylon or polyester fabric. The critical difference is that DCF has higher IR transmission than the other two fabrics. I did suggest that when winter camping, one does not expose bare skin to the tent wall. This can apply to all tent fabrics but is more important (for my comfort) in a DCF tent. I wear a light neoprene face mask during the winter, which eliminates any exposed skin.  I use DCF tents year round.  As with other tent fabrics and constructions, the interior temperature of DCF tents, measured below the apex, will be within a few degrees of the outside ambient.

[Jerry Adams]

Thanks for that

Yeah, 10F was just a guess.  If I sleep under a totally clear sky with no tent, I’ll be 10F colder.

If the DCF tent has some absorption, then it would be less than 10F.  And if there were trees or ridges blocking some of the night sky it would be less

Still, this is one disadvantage to DCF, compared to nylon or polyester.

If you wear a neoprene mask, the outside surface of it would be cooled from IR radiation, so you would be colder, as compared to a nylon or polyester tent.

I find IR radiation to be very hard to understand, and your article made this worse

[Roger Caffin]

I find IR radiation to be very hard to understand,
Just think of it as very red light – which is an accurate description.
The big difference is that your skin can sense it, rather than your eyes.

HTH, Cheers

[Stephen Seeber]

Jerry: This discussion, if you want to continue it, belongs in the thread following my tent article. You can ask any questions, and I will try to answer them. The article has specific examples of interior tent temperature differences between pitching beneath open sky or a tree as well as various other scenarios.  There is a lot of data I did not include in the article because, as you point out, it is not very easy to read and is already too long.  There is a lot of data on tent comfort based on fabric, and the bottom line is that the fabric used in the various tents tested did not make much difference in interior tent temperature.

[Author]

Posts