Top Tips for Tent Manufacturers

[Blu]

Dear Tent Makers,

We see you are still working in the silent zips, and while we don't want to distract you from that, we thought we would, like Tim Berners-Lee inventing the internet and giving it to the world for no personal profit or corporate patent, give you our ideas, free of charge. Being grabby with intellectual property is against the spirit of camping.

So, from the MN camping community, some top tips as to how we would find tents ever more usable.

1. Silent zips (passim)
2. Silent groundsheets. I sound as if I am walking across a field of crackly blown up paper bags crossing our tent
3. Dotted lines printed on the edges, showing you where to fold it up again (this tip could possibly feature in the Relationships Board, so much strife does folding-to-fit-the-bag cause on our family)

4.Something built into the seams that tells you when you might need to re-proof - a bit like how moth killing balls change colour when they have run out (from orange to white) (not that I have ever had a leaky tent- thank you Vango!)

1. The ability to zip 2 tents together - (like you can zip 2 sleeping bags together,) zip on extension pods or zip two tents together in case of massive family gathering, family extension, etc.

6.I would like tents to be properly inflammable.

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Silent zips would be so brilliant.

Anymore?

Silent zips and being universally zippable would be fab.

Bunting loops please (I tie mine haphazardly to guys and stays)

Definitely tents that go back in their bag! I maintain that putting up and packing away a tent is the biggest possible strain on a relationship. And how about tents with a built in carbon monoxide detector? Or tents that don't show the whole world a silhouette of your arse when you turn a light on.

Do you perhaps mean non-inflammable or are you planning to burn your tent to the ground in some special ceremony?

Oops- yes, non-inflammable!

But in years to come, when my noisy-zipped. crackly-ground-sheeted , lacking in bunting loops tent has made its final pitch I may like to have a ceremonial burning.

I'd like the Vango Lights Out Inner to actually make the tent darker.

Properly dark inners or equivalent to stop pesky children insisting it's time to get up at 4.50am

Ha cross post blu. Great minds...

Great thread. Maybe, as an extension of non-noisy groundsheets, they could be fleece carpet backed,so as to be warm underfoot without needing to buy a separate carpet (and guess at the size you need). They should all come with lots of hanging points so hanging a light up is possible in more than one inconvenient point in the tent. They need as many storage pockets as humanly.possible and a rail somewhere to hang tea towels/towels/wet socks etc to dry (our pop up has this and it is fab).

Love this thread. Would it be possible to add some kind of detector so that it gives other campers a mild electric shock if they try and pitch too bloody close. Am I going too far?

Can we keep optional noisy-as fuck zips for the sentimental camper who thinks the best sound ever was the metal zip on a massive canvas tent circa 1969?
I prokise to camp well away from the rest of you.

Sell the tent with 2 bags, one amazing small one to show the purchaser how compact the tent is and a big one so any normal human being without the strength of Geoff capes and the skills of a grand origami master can put the tent away

Khyam tried the zip on and off bedroom pod thing. It was called Rigipod and it was an expensive disaster
Anyone want to buy one?

Self drying (got one in the bath arm to pitch when I get home)

On the theme of self-drying, all tent material should be mould and mildew resistant in case a small bit of damp does get missed, and made of a material which bird poo simply slips off.

It would also be good if a special sound proof material could be invented which means you can't hear the snoring/shouting/singing/crying sounds from the nearby tents and they can't hear yours either. Ideally, however, it should allow a little gentle birdsong to penetrate but only after 8am.

hz - like a sort of inbuilt Taser?

I don't think that's going too far at all.

Pop up tent great, but could we have a pop down one please? You'd undo a catch and it would spring itself back into the bag.

I'd also pay good money for a tent with integrated camp beds; you'd unroll the tent and it would all just be there. Possibly customisable to ensure bag fits into different car boots.

My sister has just bought a blow up tent, it is pretty fantastic. So I would like a pound for pound trade-in from the tent sellers so we don't have the faff of selling on existing tent, please.

In addition to a fleecy groundsheet and a bazillion hanging loops of various sizes I would like:

1. the blackout fabric to actually black the light out
2. the number of 'men' to be based on the dimensions of actual full sized humans and their belongings, rather than emaciated pygmies who travel light
3. a self-inflating groundsheet in the sleeping area that can be deflated for tent packing