How to Store Your Tent to Maximize its Lifespan

What's the best way to store your tent?

You might be surprised to learn that the reason many tents need to be retired is not how hard they’re used in the field, it’s what happens to them when they’re NOT in use. Storing your tent improperly can knock years off its life. A quality tent is a significant investment. Don’t let it fall victim to an easily preventable early death because it was stored improperly. So, how should you store your tent when you’re not using it? Fortunately, there are some easy steps you can take when storing your tent to maximize its service life.

There are three major tenets of tent storage. From most important to less important (but still pretty important), they are: DRY, DARK, and COOL. These three variables are the main factors that impact the lifespan of your tent in storage.

Places that are comfortable for you to sleep are usually good places for your tent to sleep as well.

1. DRY

Moisture is the enemy of fabric for two main reasons. First, moisture leads to hydrolysis of PU fabric coatings in your tent. If you’ve ever had a tent fly get sticky, smelly, flaky, and lose its waterproofness after a few years, you’ve seen the effects of hydrolysis. SlingFin doesn't use any PU coatings in our tents for this reason. As the prefix “hydro” implies, hydrolysis is the reaction that occurs between water and PU fabric coatings. Hydrolysis cannot occur without water, so minimizing your tent’s exposure to moisture is critical to minimizing the effects of hydrolysis. While storing your tent in 0% humidity may not be possible, the drier the air, the slower hydrolysis will occur. You can’t stop hydrolysis completely; if you have a PU-coated tent it’s been dying since the day it was born. However, minimizing moisture exposure in storage will slow its inexorable march towards the great beyond.

The second reason to store your tent in a dry place is that moisture encourages the growth of mold and mildew, both of which weaken fabric, compromise waterproofness, and make your tent look and smell gross. PU coatings exacerbate this issue, as they absorb water, creating a moisture-rich environment that’s a perfect breeding ground for nastiness.

Pro tip: You know those little silica packets that get shipped with all sorts of stuff that say "do not eat" on them? Instead of throwing them away or eating them, just chuck ‘em in with your gear! They’ll help absorb some of the ambient moisture and it’s a good way to reuse something that would otherwise end up in the trash.

Besides storing your tent in a dry place, you can mitigate the adverse effects of moisture by getting a tent with silicone and/or PE-coated fabrics. Avoid PU at all costs. Silicone and PE coatings are both hydrophobic, meaning they do not absorb water, virtually eliminating mold and mildew growth. They are also much less prone to hydrolysis than PU. PE hydrolyzes at a much slower rate than PU and silicone does not hydrolyze at all. This is another reason we do not use any PU coatings in our tents. If you want to learn more about the fabric coatings we use in our tents, check out this handy article. However, even tents with no PU coatings still use uncoated fabrics in the tent body (mesh, ripstop, etc.) that can absorb water. While hydrolysis isn’t an issue with those fabrics because they aren’t PU coated, they can still grow mold and mildew, so avoiding moisture exposure is still important even with silicone- and PE-coated tents!

An extreme example of a hydrolyzed fabric coating. Note the peeling/flaking coating and the failing seam tape. Too bad I can't take a photo of how bad it smells.

2. DARK

UV exposure is a silent killer of fabrics. We have a great article about the effects of UV on tent fabric on our blog so we won’t get into the nitty gritty here, but it’s enough to know that UV exposure is bad news for your tent. While windows do filter out some UV, there’s still plenty of UV that gets through to reach tent-killing levels over the course of long-term storage. I learned this the hard way as a kid; my family stored our gear in a loft in the garage underneath a skylight. I was shocked when I pulled a lightly-used tent down and ripped the stuff sack in half when I yanked on the drawstring. The exposure to UV through the window over a couple seasons of storage had rendered the fabric useless. Silicone-coated fabrics are less susceptible to degradation from UV than PU coated fabrics, but no fabric is immune from UV. Preventing UV damage in storage is easy- keep your gear in a dark closet or bin and it’ll be fine.

Here's a video showing what UV can do to your tent fabric if it's left out:

3. COOL

Finally, keep your tent somewhere cool. Heat speeds up hydrolysis. An example: our fabric supplier tests coating stability with the “Jungle Test”, in which they put fabric samples in a 160˚F (~70˚C) oven at 95% humidity. One week in these conditions is roughly equivalent to an entire year of normal use! PU-coated fabrics generally only handle one week in the jungle test before they start to lose their waterproofness and degrade into a sticky mess. PE coatings generally last about three times as long as PU. Silicone-coated fabrics can handle the Jungle Test indefinitely.

In addition to speeding hydrolysis, heat promotes mold and mildew growth. Living things like warm conditions- there’s a reason our body temperature is 98˚F. The combination of high humidity and warm temperatures creates a veritable Petri dish in your gear closet.

You don’t have to refrigerate your tent or anything, but if you have a choice between a sweltering outdoor shed and an indoor closet, go with the cooler of the two. Now, you might be tempted to store your tent in your basement because it’s cooler. Don’t do it! Unless you live somewhere with consistently low humidity, basements are often too humid for tent storage. The high humidity found in basements far outweighs the benefits from the cooler temperatures. Prioritize DRY and DARK before optimizing for temperature.

The windowless room where we store our inventory is always freezing regardless of the outside temperature.

Should I Stuff or Roll My Tent?

Ah, yes, the age-old question: should I stuff or roll my tent? Here’s the dirty little secret: how you pack your tent into its bag is small potatoes compared to the issues I mentioned above. Laminates like DCF and Ultra TNT can delaminate or develop pinholes if they’re creased or compressed excessively, so it’s recommended to gently roll those or stuff them into an oversized stuff sack, but standard woven tent fabrics are not as sensitive so you can stuff or roll as your heart desires. Or, if you want to store your tent uncompressed (which certainly won't hurt anything) you can put it in a pillowcase. The breathable cotton will allow any residual moisture in the tent to evaporate in storage.

Personally, I stuff my tent when I’m in the field because I want to break camp quickly and I roll it neatly for long term storage. Just be gentle if you choose to stuff. If you stuff, put your tent poles in the stuff sack FIRST, and then stuff your tent around them. Jamming your poles in after your tent can tear the tent or stuff sack. As long as you thoroughly dry your tent before you put it away, it doesn’t really matter how you pack it.

 

How should I store my tent poles?

To avoid wearing out the shock cord in your tent poles, fold them from the middle first and work your way out instead of starting at one end. This ensures even tension on the cord as you fold the poles. If you have room, you can store your poles assembled, but BE WARNED: if there is ANY moisture on your poles when they get put away (even high humidity) then storing your poles assembled can cause the aluminum inserts to corrode and fuse together. Only store your poles assembled if you are absolutely sure they're dry and you live in an arid place. Worn-out shock cord can be replaced easily (natural rubber degrades over time anyway, it's normal to need to replace shock cord eventually). However, once poles corrode together the affected pole sections need to be scrapped, so err on the side of storing your poles folded. 

Here's a demo of proper pole-folding technique:

So, where should I store my tent?

In a perfect world, everyone would have an air-conditioned, dark closet with a dehumidifier to store their gear. Honestly, depending on how serious your gear obsession is, building a climate-controlled gear vault might actually be cost-effective when you amortize the cost of your gear across its lifespan. Unfortunately, that’s not an option for most of us. Your best option will probably look like a windowless closet in the living area of your home (i.e., not an attic, garage, or basement), away from humid areas like bathrooms and protected from extreme temperature swings. A little care when putting your tent away will pay dividends down the road in your gear’s lifespan.