Carpets
Flooring is not boring.
I recently found a nice thick felt carpet in a charity warehouse. ‘That will go great in the bell tent’ I thought, luxurious to step out of bed onto. Big mistake. The day I put it in was the first day my new canvas tent up in the garden had experienced downpour that went on all night.
As to be expected there were small pools of water around the edge, also touching the edge was the felt carpet which acted like a sponge. It was so heavy I could hardly drag it from the tent. Now it’s sits rolled up outside waiting do a trip to the dump. It’ll never dry.
Lesson learned, always go with designed for purpose. I now have a plastic woven under carpet, two half-moons. This works well for insulation and makes a good protection layer for the tent floor.
On top of this I have a thin organic patterned woven tent carpet. It looks really nice and feels nice under foot and should the worst happen, and water get in I can simply hang out in the sun for a bit and it’s dry in no time.
I might add that my tent has now self-sealed and water rarely gets in.
Glawning, the makers of my bell tent, have a nice selection of floor coverings. They do recycled polypropylene half moon matting in a variety of colours.
The benefit over natural fibre is that it doesn’t get wet, or if it does it drys quickly, and of course it’s smaller and lighter and so easier to travel with.
I have both natural and nylon depending on the location or occasion.
