Assembling the Tent Rain Fly: Free Online Camping Guide

Video Transcript

" Welcome back! This is Brian on behalf of expertvillage.com. The next step in putting up a tent is to install the rain fly on top. If you take a quick look at the sky and there are just some clouds in the background. That should definitely be something that you consider doing if there is a possibility of rain at all, but also just for sake of insulation and helping to keep warm at night. If you notice, on this particular tent and on many dome tents like this, the side is a mesh to allow you to see out and allow air to move through. But during the night that could also allow the heat from your body to escape and make it much colder inside the tent. The real reason why we have a tent is to help keep warm to create an area of warmer air around us as we sleep. It’s very important to install the rain fly. To do that you want to locate the front. Most of them will a logo such as this that goes on the front. That’s a very good thing to get into the habit of doing, because quite often the rain fly will have a different shape, and we’ll only have one proper orientation with which it fits the tent. The next step is to attach it down securely and to give it its overall shape. Again, it varies with different tent manufacturers but on this particular design, there are hooks at the end of elastic bands that fasten either to the stake or to the loop. It’s located on the foot of the tent. There will be one located at all four corners. As with the main body of the tent, the rain fly itself will quite often have support poles such as these, to give it its overall shape and to hold it in place properly against the tent. Depending on the design of your particular dome style tent, it will be on either front and back, or side-to-side that you would mount these. On this particular design, it’s front and back, so let’s begin. In the rain fly, there is another channel, such as that, that you had to pass the large poles through for the main body of the tent. Just go and slide it through. On this particular one, you have got an eyelet on either side. Once you settle the front of your rain fly in a proper position, use the remaining stake and repeat on the backside."