This is our personal experience in deciding what kind of hot tent to buy. What is hot tent camping? Hot tent camping is to use a wood burning stove to heat the tent. It is like a portable cabin with a mini stove and chimney, which can be packed and carried with you. The thermal tent can be made of canvas or fire-resistant nylon or polyester.
I first looked for a cheap way to go camping in a hot tent. I checked with some Chinese dealers, and most of their cheap hot tents are made of nylon or polyester. I studied the safety of nylon around sparks. Although ordinary nylon tents are easy to burn, this special nylon is obviously treated with flame retardant materials. One way to avoid any burn holes caused by sparks is to use a spark arrester and place the furnace exhaust high enough above the tent or on the side of the tent, depending on its setting.
Canvas tents may be heavier than nylon, but natural fibers allow air to pass through them, reducing condensation problems. Since we will use our tent in winter and not only for sleeping, it is my top priority to use breathable fabrics in the tent.
I started using canvas tents as an option. Except for a few kinds of canvas such as esker tent, most canvas choices in Canada are very large and heavy. Exploration, field work, or other semi-permanent operations seem to have done a lot of work. These large steel frame tents are very suitable for this kind of application, but according to my needs, they will be too large and bulky.
They are also familiar with the construction of these tents and have done a lot of tent camping. They use an A-frame configuration with guide ropes on both sides. The setting using clips and tensioners looks practical and fairly fast, rather than having to tie everything completely by hand, which becomes more difficult in cold weather.
When backpacking or carrying many times, we certainly use lightweight nylon tents. We want a hot tent for car camping, winter hiking with sleds, or cold camping and fishing in the shoulder season, with a minimum of carrying. Our idea is to use the tent less as a sleeping area and more as a sleeping and living/cooking space. Therefore, 10 × 10 seems to be a practical compromise between size and mobility.
We want a space where we can put a crib in an area of the tent, and then we can store some items under the crib. We also consider using the space around the fire as our living and cooking space. We need some space to store the wood for easy access. Of course, we will keep some items outside the tent, such as food, but we can also choose to bring these items into the tent for cooking.
