How often do you clean your tent?
As a seasoned cycle tourer, you just can't stop yourself checking out other people's camping equipment when touring. It's like an addictive drug. You're overwhelmed with a compulsion to rifle through their panniers, crawl through their tent and rummage through their pots and pans. We love talking to fellow cycle tourers about how their kit works for them or why they picked a particular item. It's fascinating, seriously. (It can't just be us?!)
Recently we've become a bit obsessed with tents. We've had a few problems with our own Hilleberg Kaitum 3GT, and with its zips in particular, so we've been asking cycle tourers about their choice of tent, and why they chose a particular make and model. We've learned about a massive variety of different cycle shelters, from Northface, MSR, Terra Nove, Vango, Blacks and REI, to name but a few.
We recently had our wrists metaphorically slapped by Hilleberg for not cleaning our tent and its zips thoroughly enough, so we've been asking others how often they actually clean their tent when on the road.
Q: Do you clean the zips on your tent and if so, how often do you do it?
A: Erm, cleaning the zips? (Confused look. Scratches head.) Erm, no, I can't say I've ever done that.
(Hilleberg told us, in a rather strict tone, that we should clean our zips with a toothbrush EVERY DAY and regularly use a bathtub to clean the entire tent. (Insert the quote here from letter)
This is in stark contrast to what they state on their website, in their brochures and and on the posters at the Hilleberg office in Redmond, Washington, that the Hilleberg was build for extreme outdoor activities and perfect for cycle touring, we picked the Hilleberg.
I had a a look around online and no other tent manufactures have anything about cleaning the zips. The most cleaning everyone have done to their tent is to wipe bird poo off or the after math of a pitching in a muddy field.
No one have ever had problems with their zips or had their tent damaged because of a bit of dirt. Not one of all the people we have talked to have said anything about broken zips, unless they owned a Hilleberg themselves. Else they, even us, reports about other tents lasting forever with little to no cleaning, they all agree that to pretty much only doing the golden rule dry it out before packing it up for storage.
So how often and how do you clean your tent?