[pct-l] Re: More about tents and tarps

[jmertes@gte.net (John Mertes)]

Resending since the previous time came through garbled.

Richard Winterstein wrote:

> This sounds like a good system but I'm curious about one thing.  How
> do you
> have your ground cloth attached to the tent floor?  Is it removeable
> (in the
> field) so that you can store the tent and the ground cloth
> separately?  Even
> after letting the ground cloth dry in the sun and shaking it clean,
> there's
> bound to be some dirt and debris stuck to it, no?  If the ground cloth
> and
> tent aren't separable, I'd be worried about some of this stuff rubbing
>
> against the tent fabric as I jam the whole unit into its stuff sack.
> Or is
> this really not as serious a problem as I'm imagining it to be?

Richard,
    I used a piece of lightweight paint drop cloth, very thin, since it
is only a vapor barrier.
    I cut it to the shape of the tent floor and about 1" smaller all
around than the tent floor so portions of the cloth wouldn't stick out.
I attached it with strips of filament reinforced strapping tape: long
piece of tape, stick one end to one side of plastic, pinch the middle
portion together lengthwise  to adhere tape to itself and then through
the tent ground loop; then stick the remaining end to the plastic.

I've only used my tent a little and so far I've not noticed a problem
with stuff getting in between the tent floor and the ground cloth. Will
pay more attention to this just in case.

John