UKC

I bought a Black Diamond Stormtrack tent, a few years ago, after watching some online videos of people testing them in high-pressure car washes. It was intended as a do-everything hiking tent to be split between packs and carried everywhere - it fits three with a squeeze and feels capacious with only two, leaving enough room to cook a veggie stir-fry.

I know it will surely be more weatherproof in the snow than in the rain but its waterproofing has never been even adequate in the rain. Frankly, it has always leaked more than my old car-camping tent from the supermarket.

My wife was using it in Italy, over the last weekend, at their base-camp on a four-day climbing trip I was unable to attend, and she has now reported that it leaks even more than it ever did and is, in fact, unusable in the wet.

What can be done? Can I re-waterproof the fly-sheet or something? Should I just buy another tent for wet and rain and keep this for snow?

(I last used it, myself, in very wet weather on Dartmoor. It rained on us for five days straight and the tent seemed ok until the fourth night. By then, it had been pitched and struck in the rain several times and was soaked through so I wasn't expecting the waterproofing to work. Could this have something to do with it's present leakiness?)

In reply to Xharlie:

Few options

Chat to BD, see what they can do
Reproof it and tape all the seams
Buy a new one

No really permanent fixes for a PU coated tent. Silicone spray won’t work on PU. Time for a new one.

Tents only have certain amount of life in them. They degrade in the sun (UV rays) so I would suggest buy a cheap thick one for basecamp use (the thick cheap ones last longer, due to there thickness) and buy a separate light one for those moments you have to carry it on you back for a period of time. No point in wearing down a expensive tent, when the cheap one will do.

In reply to tjin:
I did suspect that the answer might be a separate car-camping and base-camp tent.

Any recommendations? I could buy it here (in England) if I could buy it within the next week, or in Germany. (I'm moving there, to stay, at the end of this very month) so recommendations for both markets would work. We have another four-day climbing trip scheduled for the very, very near future and I'm keen to make it a dry one.

EDIT: What's the PU coating? Is there any reason why it would flake off the fly-sheet? I have noticed a lot of little flakes of waxy stuff coming off the fly and that's been happening since day zero. I thought it was just an artefact of the manufacturing process.

In reply to Xharlie:

PU is polyurethane and in tents used to waterproof the fabric.

The white waxy stuff is the PU coating letting go. Leaving just a woven fabric behind, which explains the leaking. Some PU coated fabrics suffer from this issue, sometimes batch related. I have had fabrics from the same company, one started flaking really soon, while the other kept on going for a decade before I tossed it because of a broken zipper. Next time, If you see it start, I would suggest to contact the manufacture immediately. It’s a manufacturing defect. Not sure what black diamond will say if you used it for years like this. But you could try.

Unlike silicone, you can’t apply PU on a fabric without special equipment. So there isn’t a good home fix for it.

I don’t own tents which are sold in the UK or Germany. Although I did noticed the Aldi tent being pretty nice and durable (for basecamp use that is), especially for the price.

In reply to tjin:

Sounds like I got a lemon, then. I always thought that was strange but then, I didn't know. It's too late, now, to go wining to BD saying that the PU was flaking off from day zero but I won't ever buy another PU tent.

Expensive lesson.

In reply to Xharlie:

When properly used, PU coating will be just fine for a very long time. So you don't have to evade PU coatings, it's just a defect and should be covered by the warranty.

In reply to Xharlie:

I have emailed BD and asked them about it - I'll post their reply, here.

Even if there is a resolution to the problem with the Stormtrack, I think I will stop using it for car camping on climbing trips. Back in South Africa, I left a really heavy but cheap dome tent that I had bought from a large supermarket and yet it kept the weather out entirely. Weighed about 6 kilograms and was about 12 years old when I left it behind. I used to use that on climbing trips.

What should I buy? There's the Terra Nova Coshee 4 which would accommodate any amount of piled up gear and people and is £ 200.00. I've heard that Nordisk make good stuff - their Oppland 3 looks alright - a bit expensive. Vango are supposed to be good.