stevage

That's amazing - and good info. The tent I'm talking about protecting (Mont Moondance 2) has a very similar floor to the tarptents.

The other tent I referred to (with worn out floor) was a cheap McKinley Compact something - you can buy them for around $100 these days. Amazingly, none of the zips or anything ever wore out, despite some very rough treatment. I probably got around 100 nights out of it. (I bought it as a cost saving measure when backpacking in Europe once - figured if I got 5 nights out of it, I was ahead.)

stevage

I've camped a few times on gravel roads. Once it was the only remaining spot at a very busy campsite. Once I was too exhausted to look for anywhere better - it was there, it was flat, and there wasn't going to be any traffic. And once was actually on a rail trail, under a bridge - better than camping on wet grass.

Individual holes in floors might be easily fixed, but abrasions seem to eventually wear the whole floor out uniformly. Well, at least with conventional nylon floors - silnylon might behave differently.

fuzz2050

I have my parents old backpacking tent, an amazing little thing from Black Ice. It's more than thirty years old right now, and it's been used hard throughout it's life. The waterproofing has failed and has been reapplied several times, rips and tears have been sewn up, but the floor looks just the same as it ever did.

staehpj1 

I think that one factor is exactly how the tent is used. I have camped on all kinds of surfaces and not found my tent floor to be damaged much if at all. I suspect one reason for this is that when I get into the tent I almost always to crawl right on to the sleeping pad. I never have shoes on in the tent and the tent floor seldom sees me putting weight directly on it. In the rare cases where I actually put weight directly on the floor it is my hands and knees.

I am not especially careful, but I use a one man tent that the sleeping pad pretty much covers the floor of. Also time in the tent is almost entirely laying on the sleeping pad. Even when three of us used a 4 man tent the tent floor saw very little traffic other than folks crawling directly on to or off of their sleeping pads.

shelbyfv

I use the dedicated footprints for both a small Kelty and a larger Marmot. I much prefer them to the plastic I used on previous tents. They fold up smaller and attach to the tent so you can move the whole thing around to find that "just right" spot. They keep the bottom of the tent clean and provide a clean surface for repacking the tent. I can't think of a good reason to not use one if it is available for your tent.

bktourer1

I took a 55 gal. garbage bag, sliced it open and put tent on top and trimmed to fit.
Last day camping went into recycle bin

stevage

Thanks for the replies everyone. Looks like there are people selling Tyvek sheets on eBay for just this purpose: https://www.ebay.com.au/sch/Camping-H...R40&_nkw=tyvek

Maybe if I plan carefully it can be used as either an ultralight tarp, or a floor protector - which I'll use on occasion.

Stay tuned for a thread about constructing ultralight tarps out of tyvek

djb

absolutely Staehp. I agree.
In my case, my tents get used by family members who for the most part, are hacks. Kids never think of that stuff you've mentioned, and my wife doesnt either, so give me a "bed mattress bag" thickness groundsheet Ive cut out to tent shapes any day of the week, as I am not the only one using the tents, and the mats do not cover the entire tent floors (we have a few tents in the family)

but I see what you mean, this goes for taking care of stuff in general, any outdoor thing will last longer with regular use if common sense is used for not abusing it unnecessarily.