How to get your camping gear dry

I’ve tested a number of cotton tents and have been left wondering how the heck do you dry a tent and camping gear prior to storage when the weather is against you? There must be something better than having it strung around the house for days, getting in the way and smelling musty. Of course, pack it damp and you get mildew. It is a problem that severely curtails ideas for late or early season camping.

Kit will eventually dry in a warm house. But it is not just heat that is required to quickly and fully dry fabric – you also need airflow to help remove those ‘sticky’ water molecules from the fibres. And you will still get all that water vapour hanging around the house, wasting power as you try to heat a damp atmosphere. Condensation and mould often result.

If, like mine, your house is cold then you have little chance of drying gear.

Enter hours of research and the dehumidifier solution. The thought process was that if I can reduce the humidity in a room then the dry atmosphere will suck the water from an item. Water removal is also helped if you can pass the dry air that leaves the dehumidifier over the tent.

There are two common types of dehumidifier: the refrigerant type draws air over cooled plates upon which water condenses and is collected. The desiccant type uses a chemical held on a rotating disc that passes through drawn in air to absorb water. It then passes a heater that dries the desiccant – the water drips into a collecting tank. The warm dry air is blown back into the room, supplying a heating element to the drying process.

I approached air quality specialist Meaco’s Chris Michael for advice. He says: “Refrigerant dehumidifiers have a drop off in performance the lower the temperature gets and the cross over between refrigerant and desiccant machines is around 20 degC (i.e. a 20-litre refrigerant machine only takes out about 8 litres at 20 degC). The performance of a desiccant machine is the same at 1degC as it is at 30 degC.”

Refrigerant dehumidifiers are cheaper but the compressor makes them heavier and noisier than desiccant types. And, as Chris pointed out, they are most effective in a hot, moist atmosphere.

However, the desiccant will remove water efficiently from freezing – ideal if you have a trailer tent or folding camper to dry out in the garage.

Given we keep our house around 18 degC I went for the £199 Meaco X-Dry desiccant dehumidifier. My initial thoughts were to have a smaller unit placed with the wet gear in a closed room. But although a fast-drying solution it would not prove as cost-efficient as purchasing a larger unit and drying the whole of the house.

• Performance is maintained even when the temperature falls.
• Electronic humidistat reduces energy costs.
• Auto-restart ensures that it restarts after a power cut – important you leave your unit on in the garage while you dry your tent.
• Continuous drainage or into an internal tank with an overflow prevention switch.
• Compared to refrigerant, desiccant is more environmentally friendly.
• The exiting air is about 10 degC warmer than ambient.
• Weighing in at 8kg it is half the weight of most other dehumidifiers.

I now leave wet gear draped over an airer on the landing overnight with the X-Dry operating in Turbo – highest of the five settings. I can dry a cotton family tent in eight to ten hours. No condensation, no mould and a house that feels 2 degC warmer than it actually is.

There is a cost – around 20p a day. This varies dependent upon how hard the X-Dry has to work but power draw is between 440-740W. However, the savings in heating fuel and the outstanding levels of comfort that the X-Dry provides easily outweighs the running costs – and remember, this was tested over winter so summer use should prove more economical.

I can now quickly clear the house of camping gear and pack my tent and sleeping bag away nice and dry without the worry of mildew. The X-Dry really is proving to be a camping essential.

CONTACT
Meaco (UK) Limited
Freecall 0500 418458
Web meaco.com