*Insulating a Tent or Camper*
For the last 25 years Ive done a fair bit of camping. When I first got married all I had were tents to camp in and sometimes that was hot and sweaty so I came up with something that helped keep the sun from turning a tent into an oven when theres little or no shade. I also now use these "blankets" on our popup camper and it makes a world of difference.
Go to your local "home improvement" store and ask for Astro Foil, that is a brand name for bubble wrap that is sandwiched between two layers of foil. You will be able to buy different lengths and widths to suit your needs. This is the same stuff that so many auto "window shades" are made of. Having a good sized popup camper to "outfit" I needed a lot more than what our local store had, so I did a search on the internet for "foil insulation" and found a company that sold me about 3 times as much for only twice the price of what I saw at the store.
The plan is to cut "blankets" of insulation that will fit inside the netting of your tent or camper windows on whichever side is faceing the sun. This will keep the sun from turning your camp home into a pseudo-solar cooker. If you only insulate the "sun facing" side that leaves the other sides to be opened for a breeze to help cool you off.
This is a pic of one of our blankets. I decided that for storage reasons I would use 2 or 3 pieces to cover a window rather than one long piece.
I also went around the edges of each piece with 200 mph tape to prevent tears from starting there.
Next was to cover the tent roofs. I cut two pieces for each roof of our camper. To get them to overlap and "tie" them together, I put several pairs of grommet holles down one edge of each piece so that when the "blankets" overlapped I could use a cabletie to hold them together.
At first I tried to hold these blankets on the roof with bungee cords, but that didnt work at all. So I went to Wal-Mart and bought a bag of 16 spring clamps for less than $5 and now just clamp the blankets to the roof. Here are pics of the clamps and the clamps holding a "blanket" in place over the tenting.
I store these blankets by folding them 3-4 times each and placing them under the mattresses in our camper.
These blankets are on my camper but the idea works just as well with a tent.
Winchester
All materials at this site not otherwise credited are Copyright © 1996 - 2002 Trip Williams. All rights reserved. May be reproduced for personal use only. Use of any material contained herein is subject to stated terms or written permission.