Drying out the soggy tent

[74slackbladder]

So the inevitable happened and we had to pack up our nice shiny new tent in the rain. When we got home, I got it out and laid it out on the grass and let it dry in the sun. My super-anally-retentive mother seemed very alarmed about this and that it wasnt enough to do that adn it needed putting up properly (with poles etc, one assumes)
Have I trashed my new tent in doing this or is she remembering the heavy canvas tents of old that would really suffer if they were not 100% bone dry when put away?

I've always managed to pack away my tent when bone dry, but if it was me, I would fully erect the tent to dry out.

Our tent is too big to set up in our narrow garden. I tend to drape it over the washing line/slide/chairs/airers to keep it off the ground as it dries. I've never had a problem with any residual moisture in 15 years of camping.

I think your mum must be thinking of canvas - my dad's tent went horribly mouldy after a damp incident.

We just dry ours out on the lawn, or over slide/tables as above. Just make sure it doesn't go out until the grass is dry and back in before it gets damp again and keep turning it etc. Also make sure you don't snag it on something if you are dramping it over stuff, we made a small hole airing it at my parents house on a garden seat.

Never had a problem with it being mouldy, polyester should be fairly mould resistant anyway.

I got our outer dry yesterday but sadly didn't get the inner tent out to air so will have to try and do that asap (weather permitting!).

I think it'll be fine, we've just hung ours over the bannister in the past and it's been OK.

It should be fine,try and keep it off the ground and turn it regularly.
Ephiny.... I read your post as " dried it over the hamster"

We currently have ours semi spread out in the attic room! It isn't large enough to spread the tent out but am assuming it will dry out (wasn't obviously damp when we got home but it had rained in the night before we left), and I keep going up to move it around. Just going to leave it there until we go again in a few weeks!

It's canvas btw...

we semi erect ours in the garden to dry out - its a outwell montana 6 so just put in the front and back poles and peg a few lines out - gets all the air inside those plastic windows.

We had a two day drive back from france with a wet tent in back of car the other week.

We've never yet managed to pack our tent away bone dry... All sites we've been on want us off the pitch by 11am and even on glorious days there has been morning dew/condensation on the tent. We usually just lay it out flat in our garden for an hour when we get home.

Its a pain having to get off pitch by 11am or midday so what we tend to do when we camp in Uk is book an extra night so we have option of taking down tent day early if weather looks crap on actual last day or give us time on a day to let tent dry out and take it down later in afternoon.