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Keep Your Wall Tent Cool in Warmer Weather
Wall tents are one of the best kinds of tents for extended camping stays, glamping weekends or outfitter trips because of their durability, ruggedness, and the ability to resist intense rainfall, heavy snow loads, and harsh winds.
Canvas tents are ideal for staying warm when spending time in nature during the winter months. What happens, though, when you want to set up camp during the summer time, when it can get excessively hot outside?
The good news is that there are a few things you can do to help stay cool in your wall tent during the summer, and you can also do these things without the aid of electricity.
1. Be Strategic About Your Location
Location is one of the most important factors when it comes to reducing the heat in a tent. Ideally, you should pitch your tent in a more shaded area where it will be shielded from direct sunlight. If this isn’t possible, the next best idea is to place your tent so it faces the breeze, which will help to make the tent feel more ventilated.
Finding a suitable location for your tent also has additional benefits beyond being able to stay cool, one of the most important of which is ensuring the longevity of the tent. Extended exposure to sunlight, wind or other weather conditions can more quickly affect the durability of the tent.
2. Set Your Tent up on a Tarp
This is a little known trick that you can use to keep your tent cool. Remember, not only can insulation be used to keep warm air in, but it can also be used to keep hot air out. By placing your tent on a tarp, you preserve insulation, which will keep the tent that little bit cooler.
3. Set up Your Tent in a Pit
Dig a pit around one to two feet deep into the ground with a height and width equal to the size of the tent. While this will take a fair bit of work, placing your tent closer to the cool ground will work wonders to reduce the temperatures inside the tent. This method, of course, is assuming that you don’t mind digging in the summer heat!
4. Choose Canvas Tents
Canvas wall tents are well designed to keep you warm during colder months due to their heavier, thicker fabric. This is especially true for army duck canvas, which is double-stitched for a more durable finish.
That said, canvas tents are also very adept at keeping you warm. Cotton canvas is a naturally breathable material, which allows for insulation inside the tent in warmer weather. This generally isn’t the case with synthetic fabric and so they are considered as the best wall tents for camping.
Canvas tents can also be treated with UV resistant treatment, which provides added protection against the sun’s rays. This not only keeps your tent cooler, but also protects against gradual degradation from exposure to the sun.
5. Extend the Outdoor Space With a Porch
Adding a porch on the outside of the wall tent is a smart way to increase the usable space of the tent, while adding an outdoor segment to the shelter. A porch, essentially, is a separate room added to the front entrance of the canvas tent. It provides extra space for hanging out, enjoying the weather while not being inside the tent or even cooking.
Wall tent porches are not attached to the tent, but rather overlap the front of the wall tent and are held to the ground with rope and tension adjusters. They’re a continuation of the roof and sidewalls of the wall tent.
6. Set up Reflective Emergency Blankets Outside the Tent
Reflective emergency survival blankets are designed to reflect heat away from you. By laying these blankets to the outside of your tent and securing them with duct tape, this will effectively divert heat away from your tent and also help to preserve insulation within the walls.
That said, it isn’t essential to use one of the shiny, reflective sun shades to keep the tent cool. A material as simple as a tarp can also be effective at keeping the rays out.
Whether it’s a blanket of the mylar variety or a tarp, protective covers usually perform best when placed at a height above the tent, usually 12 inches. The cover can be propped up by tying it to trees, poles or stakes.
7. Take Advantage of the Wind Direction
A cool breeze is one of nature’s ways of keeping cool in warmer weather. A good way to take advantage of a summer breeze is to face the door of the tent in the direction the wind is coming from and also set up the porch accordingly. That way, whether you’re inside the tent or hanging out in the porch area, the breeze will consistently provide cooler air, reducing the need for a fan.
Most weather apps indicate the direction of the wind, which is a quick way to know the direction your tent should be facing. Alternatively, you could take the traditional route and hold up a finger in the wind to figure this out!
8. Use Battery Powered Fans
One final option will be to use a battery powered fan to cool down the interior of your tent. At the very least, you can keep it running for a limited amount of time (say, thirty minutes to an hour) to create air flow inside the tent to keep the heat more bearable. Be sure to invest in extra batteries as well!
