REVIEW: Karcher WV1 window vac

By Iain Duff

It’s a fact of camping life that no matter how good your ventilation is, it’s impossible to completely prevent condensation in your tent.

So how do you deal with it? Well, you could just wipe it up with a towel every morning, but that’s messy and means you have to find a way of drying the cloth before the next morning. It’s also a bit old school. Alternatively you could invest £40 in a Karcher Window Vac. It clears condensation inside the tent in seconds, and you can even use it to dry the outside of the flysheet.

The new handheld WV1 is designed to clean windows and surfaces at home, sucking up moisture and leaving the surface clean and dry. But it turns out it works just as well on tents, not for cleaning but for drying. The battery powered device is rechargeable, so if you have electric hook-up you can charge it up in your tent – but Karcher reckon it can clean up to 45 windows on just a single 90-minute charge so it should last a full week of use in the tent.   

How does it work? Well, it’s dead easy. To get rid of the moisture, simply drag the 250mm cleaning head along the tent wall (for best results, make sure the fabric is taut) and watch as the murky water gathers in the clear tank. Once it’s full, pour the liquid away and continue until the tent is dry. It really is that simple. We also used it to get rid of excess water from the outside of the tent before packing up, making folding it up much easier and eliminating the need to dry it out for hours when we got home. It’s actual genius!

For more information go to the Karcher website