Tarp Vs Tent

Description

In this video I have a look at the pros and cons of both tarpalins and tents. All of the pros and cons in this video are based on my own personal feelings on tarps and tents.

Tags: Bushcraft,survival,ray mears,bear grylls,camping,how to,Tarpaulin,Tent,Survival Skills (TV Genre)

Video Transcription

hi guys what I'm gonna be doing today in this video is answering a question I've been asked about a lot and what that is is what are the advantages of camping in a car pool and over there Vantage of camping in a tent I previously have been answering this question on an individual basis but I mean there's so many times I thought I'd do and a quick video on it and having a look at it what I'm gonna do in this video isn't necessarily going about why a tarpaulin is a better way of camping than a tent because in even though I prefer tarpaulin it isn't necessarily always the best option and what I want to do is look at the pros and cons and the advantages and disadvantages of each form of shelter so what I've got with me today is I've got a standard 3x3 top this is the DD one I've also brought a superlight type I want to talk about the light weight gear a little bit as well and I've also got a really standard camping tent which I picked up from a local supermarket for about 20 pounds so nothing too technical nothing too fancy nothing too expensive I've I've deliberately gone for very very average equipment to have a look at the real pros and cons and there's much smaller tents you can get there's much more lightweight tent tents you can get but they tend to be a lot more expensive and I've selected the 3x3 type because it is the most commonly used one and I've also brought the superlight one with me as well because it is currently my favorite tarpaulin to use and I did kind of want to discuss that stuff a little bit as well so let's have a look at them in the backdrop forms first let's look at the advantages and disadvantages of each now packed up form in terms of carrying it and store it in your pack I think the tarpaulin has a very very definite advantage so the main event it has is this is the 3x3 one which is quite large it's still much smaller than a 10 we put them side-by-side on the pad for on the top is clearly smaller it's also lighter weight this is a 720 grams tarp and this is a 1.5 kilogram 10 so both pretty light but this one does feel significantly lighter the other advantage the tarp has isn't just size and weight what packed up it's said there's no rigid parts and there's no poles so it's pretty easy to to bend this tarp you can squash it into a stuff sack you know you can use it as a kneeling pad you can use it just sit down on without worrying about breaking anything now this is because there's no rigid parts I have taken the tent pegs out of this which come supplies I very very rarely carry tent pegs with me when I'm camping in a tarpaulin I tend to crack my own when I'm out in the woods just out of a few bits of stick you don't really have that option with a tent you could craft your own tent pegs but to be honest it's already going to be rigid because it does have a pole you see a single pole tent by still can't bend it you know it's a rigid thing when it's packed up this tarp will pack down much more than is you can see I can like actually fold this pretty easily and make it much much smaller I can even wrap it with some power corn or whatever to compress that even more and then you've obviously got the super light version of this which is really really lightweight and this is 460 grams so you know there's no weight in that at all weighs less than a bag of sugar it's tiny

and will pack up a little smaller I think but to be honest it's already pretty tiny so you can shove that in a side pocket and bag if you've got large trouser pockets or going that can go on a day pack whatever the same thing goes for type you know you can show it your day pack or whatever ten is a little bit more difficult to do that because it is rigid I find you're pretty much restricted with the way that you carry this these from personal experience anyway it's either restricted to be on the other side of your pack on the bottom of it or on the top of your pack you can't bend it it's got a pole in it and that is a clear advantage over them when they're packed up and the 10 also to actually pack the tent down it has to be folded in a very very specific way to get it back into that bag and I think that a very shot general thing with most tents you know it's designed to fit specifically into this bag and it will pretty much always fill that bag it will fill the space in that bag when it's folded top all you have a little bit more leeway with it if you're good at folding your tarp or you can get these things absolutely tiny admittedly it's not something I'm very good at and but I know some people who can get their tarps even the largest 3x3 tarp the heavy weight a tarp I've seen people Pat them down to a really really tiny tiny size so that's the advantages and packed up the tarp pack top has a clear advantage over tent so what I'm going to do now is I want to put both these up and we're going to go through the advantages and disadvantages of each in its use you know actually as a shelter as a sleeping area or working earlier so I'm gonna go ahead and get these up and then I'll get back to you once that up and we'll go through some more things so I've got both of these forms a shelter set up now and even just side by side you can see that there's quite a big difference between the two so the tent here is a much more enclosed kind of shelter if you will you know it sits right down to the ground I can get this thing really really tight if I wanted to it's only up for the purpose of the video so it's a little bit it's a little bit slack and I've left it like that deliberately so I can show some extra features of it momentarily but you can see that the tent is restricted to being very very low down very down to ground and that in very bad conditions or very kind of open areas is actually quite an advantage it means it's not going to catch the wind too much it's a solid base I mean it's totally pegged out around the bottom and we can improve that in a moment as well we'll look at that in a little bit more detail so yeah it's down towards the ground it's smart and close it's obviously gonna be warmer there's not really any wind getting into this and also it's got an interior bit as well which is protection from flies and mosquitoes now it's worth knowing your map you can get tarp temps I'm not going to go too much into detail with them but our tent is effectively just the outside part of the tent with out the inner inside it personally I don't really rate tarp tents I don't see the point each driver of a tarpaulin or a tent not the in-between thing well that's just my personal opinion because one of the biggest advantage of this tent is that fully enclosed inner it's got a mosquito net on it and a fitted ground sheet which means that you're not gonna be getting wet for the bottom as long as you protect your protect it a bit of an added thing if you've got a very very small plastic tarp all you can shove that underneath the footprint of the tent as well just for a little bit of extra protection we can see the tart behind it is much much larger I've got this set up quite low just for the sake of the video but if I was to put this guideline you know maybe a foot or so higher I've actually got a huge space than in which I can work I can open the front out and I don't have to have it in this configuration there's a number of configurations I can I can do with this so that's the deal side by side the tent is a pretty much bomb-proof you know that is going to take the majority of what the British weather can throw is the tarpaulin is a little bit more open you know there's nothing in the sides here so if that wind changes directions starts coming from this direction all starts coming this way it's good as your spells straight through this tarp and work like a wind tunnel in this particular setup

whereas I don't have that issue with the tent now the tarp as I said you know there's a number of configurations I can I can use the top I can set the tackle person tent I can set it up as an enclosing a really really good weather like it is today I can have it high and open and just you know a bit of protection from from the sunlight basically it's a shaded place to work and that is the advantage of the tarp it's always gonna be much more open it doesn't have a ground sheet and it doesn't have that interior bit you have to take additional things to give you that interior protection don't have to do that with a tent it's all built in but with the tent you are restricted to it is a single shape that is it you know so you know what you're going to get with the tent you can guarantee you'll find somewhere to picture tent not necessarily same thing with the tarp unless you know your configurations let's have a little bit of a closer look at the features of each and see how they you know do for each kind of weather condition so one thing that's really clearly worth

mention about the tent is the fact that a tent has additional guidelines on kind of what I called the midriff of the tent and this is actually really really important the tarpaulin doesn't have this the size of the tarpaulin effectively slack sheets and material and which means in very very high wind it's much more difficult to get that rigid edge where as you can see clearly if I pull this skyline tight this whole side really tightens up and becomes you know basically like a drum and this is really really important if you're operating on the moors on the mountain someone really exposed where there's a lot of high winds and unpredictable weather these offer an absolutely massive advantage over tarpaulin because I can get this 10 so firmly pitch that it's going to be very very difficult with the worst weather to to move it so your guidelines are often missed feature the tents which I feel are actually very very important and really add an advantage over the top all in those exposed conditions so yeah that's that's one thing let's have a quick look at the the interior of the tent so the interior 10 it might seem like there's not very much to say about it but there are a few things which are fantastic about tents just a fold that door in partly that one this one

so yeah one of the things you can do with the tent is you can have this you know you can have the door open I can have this out as a bit of a porch which is okay for cooking in but not ideal so like I said if you're in them exposed conditions yeah you've got an absolutely bomb bomb-proof shelter when you're disadvantaged and particularly a small hiking tell like this is it's gonna be very very difficult to cook you're going to be using a camping stove or whatever when you're in that kind of stitch in that kind of situation you ought to be start a fire on the side of Mount is pretty difficult to find fuel and you do have to be very wary of you know the the gases and stuff that come off there as a cutting board is amazed Calum rocks I don't really use stoves too often but you can't realistically safely use a stove in this tent there's a whole number of safety issues with using a stove in attend you know it could fall over and set the tent on fire Archer inside the fumes are going to build up inside it so you have to do all that on the outside you know you can turn the door into a bit of a porch and get a bit of protection from the elements when you're doing that but and the tarp has an advantage over that but we'll go through that when we get over to the tarp a couple of the major things about the interior the tent obviously you've got the inner well the tents of this protection from the bugs you know you can be in a tent and not get a single ball on you all night you know especially it's got a good mosquito net like this one so that is that's a big advantage especially you know in the weather like today I'm absolutely I'm crawling with midges I could sit in that tent and get a bit of bit of reprieve from them and one thing that I really don't like about tents and particularly the modern fabric tents canvas one's not so bad but you know you got to be hiking all of them is the fact that I feel they get even in cold weather they get very very stuffy on the inside you know you're in learn you're breathing all night and it's hot and especially in warm weather when the sun's on it first thing in the morning you really know about it

gets very very stuffy in there that is one I think personally a huge disadvantage of the temp the other one as well you can probably see there isn't a lot of space in here and there's enough space for me and my gear and it's going to be snug in there but you know you're enclosed you dry you've got a solid shelter that's not going to go anywhere

I am so that's that's the interior tend to get a bit stuffy but you're protected from the elements 100% and you're also protected from bugs and things but you don't have somewhere to cook so let's have a quick look at the tarpaulin so for me in the tarp all and one of the things that really speaks out by a tarp especially this 3x3 one as you can see I'm completely inside this tarp if I raised it up a little bit I've got space to walk around inside it there's tons of room in here I can open the sides up and it gives me a huge cupboard space I can cook in here with a stove I could even get a small fire going in here if I really needed to but for that I'd probably have it much higher because remember it is plastic and plastic and fire is never a good mix with a disadvantage as you can see you know it's open at this end it's open at that end and it's open at the bottom as well so I'll sleep on the ground and have to get this right down and getting really reap egged out but there's flies and bugs coming through here so you know if I was worried about being bitten all night by mosquitoes on midges and thought I would have to put a separate mosquito net in here or just had to put up with the you know the bite the clear advantage on the interior the tarp over the tent is the sheer space you get in here I mean this is a massive spacing I've got this in a very small configuration today and you know I can just about stand up in it and if I had it a foot higher as I said I could stand up and walk around I can open the sides the space on the tarpaulin is absolutely phenomenal but there's a couple problems with using a tarpaulin in severe weather so we'll have a look at the outside of that now and sort of go over some ways that we can kind of combat these problems but why it for short in a few places of the 10 so as I said when we look at the 10 there's no place for guidelines on the sort of main fabric of of these things which means I had no way of pulling these edges taut the only way that I've got to do that are these pieces down at the bottom which do offer me some rigidity but it's much more effort to get this tent as taut as it as sari get this tarp as tall and as drum-like as the 10th part of the problem that is is generally people use paracord paracord brilliant it's lightweight it's very very flexible but it does stretch so as I pull on this that guy that guy line because it's paracord does stretch a little bit and you can just start by carrying Bank line and Bank line in even though you know it's it's okay paracord is just that little bit more versatile but you know you can get this pretty tight you know I've seen some people getting the tarps like absolutely like as rigid as anything but the effort that goes into that is so much more than the effort that goes into doing that with a 10 I mean you can get this pretty solid but you do have to be careful you have to really think about how it's angled into the wind you have to do that with the tent as well but more so with the tarpaulin because if I accidentally angle one edge of this tarp into the into the wind one of the shorter sides it's just going to act like a wind tunnel it kind of amplifies the power and if it's raining you know that that winds just going to bomb through there and it's going to come through with all that rain and all the bugs and everything that comes with it so you have to think a little bit more about how you're pitching it and again that is kind of not necessarily disadvantage but one thing to remember the tarpaulin you know it as I've said it's got lots and lots of configurations it's a very very versatile piece of equipment but you have to know how to use it you have to know how those configurations work you have to know your environment you're going into as you can see I've got the stronger team two trees which is the most common way of using a tarpaulin but if I was up say on the side of a mountain probably it's going to be the tent that winds over it's low it's close to the ground splat you know that exposed weather but also a tarp is a little bit harder to pitch when you're in an exposed condition out on the moors in the mountains now I'll put a link in the bottom you can set a tarp off as a ten but to burst if you've got to be if you know you're going to have to do that I would just take the tent in the first place anyway it's just got it's just got advantages over the tarpaulin and that kind of enclosed setup you know a tarp isn't necessarily designed to be that you know that way but yeah so that is you know a bit of a look at the two and one thing as well that I which really sells at art to me and it's not necessarily a practical thing but tents as I've said you know you fully enclosed in them and what I don't like about that is you kind of separating yourself from nature a little bit and at nighttime as well if you get a bit paranoid if you're out on your own you can't see out you can't use you're disconnected from the environment around you when you're in the tent so you know you're shutoff and you're inside you can't see out it's dark in there don't get any of that with a tarpaulin tarp all and once you're under it you know if I'm lying on the floor I can see out I can see what's going on I'll wake up with the Sun you know the lights going to come through the air is fresher in there it doesn't get stuffy you've always got a bit of a breeze running through and I just feel like it's just that bit more connected to the environment that you're in when you're in tarp oil and that is the thing that really really sells it to me that openness to your surroundings you know you've got a shelter over your head but you can see out one of my favorite things to do is sit on my top and on a really rainy day and watch the rain coming off it and I split up a weird things like book you know I really enjoy that and for me that's the biggest advantage of the tarp over the tent you can see out and you're connected to environment

so guys this has been a quick look at the advantages and disadvantages of both the tarp and the tent in comparison now I've come at this from a really really personal perspective everything that I've said here are my personal feelings on these things just because it's a question I've been asked about a lot and what I would really like to get from you guys in the comments section is I'd really like to hear your thoughts on these things the pros and cons of the tent I'm not trying to sway anyone in either direction you know different things for different people whatever makes you the most comfortable as I've said my favorite is the top and I think it's always going to be the top but occasionally I will use a tent because it is more appropriate to do so but for me it's definitely the tart the tart wins over it's a much more versatile piece of equipment you're open to your surroundings there's a number of different things you can do with it and you know its survival techniques bush car techniques you know all these things can be encompassed in the tarp tarp if you're interested in learning more stuff about that I'm not going to go on about it team watching this video but if I remember I will put links to it in the description box below I've got a few different configurations and tips and you know setup techniques for it so as always I hope you've enjoyed this I hope you've got something out of it thank you all for watching please please like share subscribe comment all that stuff and please keep watching for more videos thank you very much everyone