The Heavy Weather/Front Porch Tent

Joined
Jul 26, 2021
Messages
40

The “Heavy Weather/Front Porch” tent aka the ravings of a lunatic:

A fortified castle for one, a fortress for two and a snug refugio for three – 4# 1oz all in weight (with poles, stakes, extra guyline and polycryo ground sheet) – the canopy + perm guylines only is 2# 3oz.

Project goal: A very generously sized one person (+dog) mid built for possibly gnarly conditions and dumping snow but with a large shady front porch for nice weather – basically a backpack/hunting tent for one++. 130cm nominal pole height (max of my normal hiking sticks)

Materials:

All from rbtr unless noted

1.6 silpoly (white), PU Coated HyperD 300 (blaze), 1.1 EcoSilpoly (dark olive), 1.0 Monolite (black), ¾” nylon webbing (rockywoods), ¾” + 3/8” GG, #8 YKK (zipper stop iirc), Lawson 2mm Glowire, Oralite reflective tape (rockywoods), CF tubes from Amazon (Arriss) and AliX and 3 cut down CF arrow shafts, 3 bra-ghooks (Amazon).

As always; don’t take any self-criticism as anything other than me making notes for myself for the next version, I think this turned out sweet.

Design elements: Fundamentally, it’s just a big rectangle with the door side kicked out a ways as a vestibule. (2.8m L x 1.47m W x 1.3m H - + .45m V).

Both sides of the vestibule have zippers and the entire thing below the seam/vent can be propped open with trekking poles to form a nice shady hang-out space.

All walls have a 20cm sod/wind skirt as well.

And then I really wanted to add some rigidity in case of snow/make it able to be left up without trekking poles b/c they need to go hunting but the tent might stay standing, so the CF poles run along what would be the front of the rectangle if there were no vestibule in the A configuration. Heavy snow in a mid will put those long walls right down to the ground, hopefully this will mitigate that somewhat. And then you can still add a trekking center pole for even more load bearing. There are a pair of Velcro straps near the peak to keep it aligned. The whole works can be pitched high (adjustable length cf poles) as well.

I figured that I would put in a fairly generous vent. The vent props open with another length of arrow shaft or can be Velcro’d/ghook’d closed for gnar mode.

All corner/peak tie outs are nylon webbing all mid-panel and sod skirt tie outs are just gg.

For this one, I sewed the HyperD reinforcements onto each panel corner (including the peak) before seaming and that seems to work awesome. Especially for the peak, I always hated the cone type after the fact reinforcement, it just seems so janky whereas this turned out so much cleaner.

Seams – Tera 80 90/14 needle

all of them are just a rolled hem that I fell down, dead simple to make (simple seam at 1cm, fold and iron on the stitch line, fold and iron again, clip and stitch that rolled hem, fold out flat and fell down the loose flap). I put the two seam line/felled side as the “wrong” side and it makes it dead easy to insert gg loops as you fell down that flap.

Closing the peak – there is not much info on the innerwebs about how to do this. This is my second mid where I’ve used this method, each panel top ends in a horizontal line that is 2x the seam allowance (in this case, 3cm on each seam so 6cm) and it basically closes itself like magic. I did inside out this one and run a bar across it, just to firm up where there was a small opening.

The sod skirt is just inserted into the second line of stitching on a wide rolled hem around the perimeter.

The dimensions ended up needing two panels seamed together for each primary panel (note, the horizontal seams deliberately do not meet on the main corner seams to keep bulk down). On the first mid I made (which is HUGE) I seamed two long pieces together and cut out each panel as a whole…which ended up being not as clean. This one I cut each out and then assembled before corner seaming. Which is more complicated to draw and cut but easier to sew/get clean.

In use:

Boy I’m happy with the thing but haven’t used it in any challenging conditions. I spent 6 nights in it on a recent mtn goat hunt and it was fantastic. I had quite a bit of condensation one night, a tiny bit another and 4 nights of zero condensation. Which is to say that as long as I’m pitching in the trees and there’s any breeze at all, no condensation. I imagine a night in front porch mode would be none at all. It is perfectly sized for me and all my crap, I put my pack at one end and still my sleeping bag/pad doesn’t touch the wall at the other end, I use the vestibule for cooking and misc items/rifle. I didn’t use front porch mode but it works fine in my yard and provides a lot of useable shade.

During the day, anything left in it will dry out including socks/laundry hung up near the vent.

Oh and it does not flap at least in normal winds (I had a megamid that was LOUD in the slightest breeze).

The reflective tape on the vent/front corners makes it easy to find at night for sure.

I can slip out to take a leak at night by just zipping down from the top and not popping the zipper g-hooks. (there is a bra g-hook at the base of each zipper to take the pressure off the teeth at the perimeter where there’s a lot of tension)

I picked up some of the nemo pegs with cord adjusters built in and they suck for holding power but are rad for quickly getting the length nailed. They are perfect for the back corner arrow setup.

Warts:

I’m now getting to the point where most of my screw ups are more happy little accidents as St. Bob would say..

I had spent a LOT of time unsuccessfully trying to come up with a way to eek a little bit steeper an angle on the edge against that back wall, turns out that probably needed quite a lot more cat cut because that seam ended up SLACK. Instead, a pair of CF arrows to the mid-seam guy out tightens up those seams just right and claws back a ton of space.

I like a lot of hang loops and am a bit haphazard about their placement, one of them on the front porch turned out to be placed precisely where it needs to be to prop my rifle up – safe, out of the way, handy.

It took me a few tries to get pitching it down, turns out that the two front door corners need to be done first (not quite taut), then the point of the vestibule and only then the back two corners. Occasionally I’ll still get a bit of a wonky slack pitch from one of the corner seams, no idea why.

For whatever reason, the wind skirts all ended up being way too wide and I need to slit the ones at the wall poles.

I had to redo my original zipper design b/c it was just stupidly complex and had too many small pieces, the current one really should have a wider piece connecting it to the corner seam just for ease of sewing but it works.

I added shrink fit caps to the CF poles and an going to try removing then bc it just doesn't work as good when the pole doesn't bite into the ground

Oh and it turns out that each zipper seam mid-guyout point is exactly where it needs to be to hook the door g-hook to if one wanted to keep one of the door sides totally open.

Fin

PS – I did this all in Sketchup and I won’t share it b/c I don’t have the time to edit all the things that are just wrong and my sketchup file is an absolute madman’s playground, someone that is not me would be beyond lost as to what is supposed to be happening when. Besides, I gave you all the dimns, plug those in, add some seam allowance and go.
 
Joined
Jun 26, 2017
Messages
447
Well that turned out pretty sweet! Gonna have to keep this in mind if I ever make one. Looks very versatile.

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