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Posted 20 hours ago

Vango Casa Lux 7 Person Family Tent (green)

£15.295£30.59Clearance
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We found that getting it pitched perfect was a bit of a challenge – the enclosed part of the porch always seems to pull the pole down a bit and cause a slight lop-sidedness to the tent. To be fair this may have been caused by somewhat uneven ground. In practice it did not cause any problems. Despite the omission of the flyscreen we still found it a useful addition as it provides a nice covered space for cooking which is better than in a conventional open porch as you are completely out of the elements. Due care please people for gas/electrical safety in this kind of environment.

Many serious camping families have a few different tent options, depending on the type of holiday they are planning. What to look for when choosing a family tent Inside the lounge there are two groups of “TBS II” Tension band system straps. These run across the tent from side to side one set adjavent to the sleeping inner and one at the midpoint of the lounge and anchor at the ceiling midpoint and are intended to help stabilise the tent in high winds. They also come in handy to hang lightweight items off to dry but with them up they are a definite hazard. We lost count of the amount of times one of us walked into them. Still better than having a tent collapse .However, if you’re planning on a week's holiday or longer, you may want to go even larger. Or perhaps you’re planning on a family hiking holiday and want to carry your tent everywhere, in which case a lighter, smaller tent, purely for sleeping may be the right choice. The tent comprises 5 fibreglass ‘Powerflex ‘poles, flysheet with sewn in groundsheet and a separate groundsheet for the covered element of the porch which is attached using toggles. Pitching was fairly straightforward and took two of us around 60 minutes to set up on both attempts to date. The first was something of a learning experience with a tent of this size and the second attempt we were working with a gusty wind which made pitching a bit awkward. After first pitch we left the bedroom inner installed so we can pitch it in one go.

It follows a fairly straightforward, peg, pole and clip system to put it up, but details such as reinforced peg points and lightweight alloy poles should mean it will last through many years of summer camping weekends.When choosing a family tent, there are a few different things to consider. Firstly, how much space you’ll need so that all your clan can all be comfortable. If you have younger children, you may be bringing a travel cot and prefer to share a sleeping space so you can keep an eye on them, whereas older kids may want their own bedroom. There are 6 vents either side of the tent just above ground level for airflow plus three zippered openings for power distribution. One at the rear left hand side adjacent to the bedroom inner at ground level for power access plus another ground level zippered power access into the open area of the porch plus a ceiling level zippered access into the enclosed part of the porch (these latter two are not mentioned on the tent specs) these could be used for running a mains powered lamp into the enclosed part of the porch and for running mains into or out of the tent on the open part of the porch. This will be useful for us when working with astronomy equipment as it will allow us to feed out our 12v cables from the mains supply in the tent. The could be used for other purposes of course. The lounge area has two positions for hanging lights/lanterns with a ring being centred on the poles immediately adjacent to the bedrooms and another ring centrally located to the lounge. This is good news as I often find tents have the lantern hanging point next to a tent wall which restricts the power of the bulb and also forces the use of low power bulbs so you don’t fry any fabric. This is less of a problem now that cold LEDs are so readily available but its still welcome for a central light position to get even spread of illumination in the tent.

There are lots of tent configurations, available so look at what might work best for you and how it’ll grow with your family too. No substantial problems were found in pitching although its worth noting its quite a heavy amount of fabric due to its size and most definitely a 2 person pitch which is pretty normal for a tent of this size. The main lounge/living area of the tent is a very generously sized and we found it great to have so much space. Although we used it little on the only long trip to date (the weather was a scorching 30’) it will be much appreciated when it rains forcing us indoors. The bedrooms were great even allowing for them not being as dark as I had hoped – we had the rooms split 70/30 which gave us plenty of bedroom space for camp beds and getting dressed without a squeeze plus a junk/storage room for our hiking gear and storage of equipment boxes and with the addition of the useful front room as a galley it left the lounge area free for lounging, dining, laying out maps etc. Like a decent sleeping bag, the right tent is imperative to your camping comfort and can absolutely make or break your family holiday. There’s nothing worse than trying to put up a tent in bone-drenching conditions while your kids sit grumpily in the car (been there!) or waking up with several small elbows, feet and a collapsed canopy in your face (been there, too).

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You also need to think about weather conditions, if you’re camping in the summer look for tents with good ventilation and mesh panels to keep out bugs. Early spring and autumn campers will need to prioritise waterproofing and warmth; accessories such as tent carpets can keep things toasty. If your family is larger, or you’re planning a longer trip and would like some more space, take a look at the Adhara 700 Nightfall Tent too, which has many of the same great features, plus an extra 2-man sleeping pod and extended living area. We bought the Vango Casa footprint for the tent. It’s a weird thing with one large decent quality footprint for the main tent plus a strange lower quality thing for the front porch areas which seemed extremely badly thought out. It runs the full width of the tent which would create a footprint into the open part of the porch – perfect for funnelling water into the non-sewn in groundsheet area of the front room/enclosed area. Further if this were rolled out to the full width the of then it would provide no openings for some of the tent pegs in the porch area. We just folded it in half and put it under the enclosed part of the porch groundsheet but it seemed a bit of a botch. Its not the end of the world by any means but just very strangely/badly thought out.

Tents are categorised by how many people they sleep. However, a family of four shouldn’t necessarily opt for a tent that sleeps four, as you’ll need to consider room for storage and living space too. A good rule of thumb is to choose a tent with one extra sleeping berth, so you always have a bit of wiggle room.The living space is tall enough to stand in and it also features three (yep, three!) doors – two side doors and a huge front door which can be fully opened – so there are plenty of configuration options available and it also feels very spacious and airy. Even after first pitch the tent was pretty much ok – all the doors opened without problems and there was nothing much wrong that a little bit of adjusting later on wouldn’t sort out. The tent has a front door with separate flyscreen and a side door with no flyscreen plus a zippered door into the front part of the enclosed porch. The front door zips around on two sides only and the foot of the door is not zipped – this area is covered by the separate flyscreen door. I would have thought it would have made more sense for the flyscreen to be part of the main door which would give one zip to open rather than two to get in and out of the tent. verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{

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