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  1. #31
    Senior Member Rolloff's Avatar
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    My AHE Toxaway is a great tarp but it stretches and retains water. Then again it when it retains water it stretches the most. With DCF I don't have to reset the lower end of my porch mode in most showers. Water continues to run off where I directed it and doesn't pool as much where it doesn't stretch.

    Did I mention lighter? It's the lightest tarp I've carried.
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  2. #32
    Crawldaddy's Avatar
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    Had a 12' one. Useless in horizontal rain storms. Not wide enough. Couldnt lower it enough. Sold it

  3. #33
    Senior Member Rolloff's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Crawldaddy View Post
    Had a 12' one. Useless in horizontal rain storms. Not wide enough. Couldnt lower it enough. Sold it
    My Toxaway has a 12' RL and is much wider than the 11' HG Hex. Bonefire gear suspension straps allow for a nice low hang seeing that the hammock is set static at around 4" under the tarp. When raising or lowering, the entire kit moves as one. The 12' RL made it much harder to bring the tarp down closer to my 11 and 10.5' hammocks due to the hammock suspension needing to run outside of the ends of the tarp thus the Toxaway needed to be wider. When the tarp was pitched to ground the hammock would often be close to grounding out when loaded.

    For best coverage with the lighter UL tarps I think you need to have your kit 'tuned' with that intent in mind. Even at that as Crawldaddy pointed out above. Severe and horizontal rain will still force me to pull out the UQP. I won't have the coverage to keep it completely dry below me, but I've managed to keep my gear high and dry.

    Learn to work with what you have at your disposal and HYOH
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  4. #34
    Senior Member cmoulder's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Of Wolf and Man View Post
    Been using a dyneema ZPacks tarp as a ground shelter for years and I’ll never go back. Not only because of the weight, but because my old silpoly tarps would absorb so much water weight after a rain. A quick shake and a few wipes with a quick dry towel or microfiber rag and it’s back to it’s pretty much dry and without the extra water weight.
    Some observations HERE and HERE and HERE on DCF tarp weight when wet.

    TL-DR... wet or dry, DCF is always lighter than other options but even when wiped down very well will still retain about 40% water weight, and if it can't be wiped down — say it's raining when you pack up — the weight gain can be 100% (double).

    I sill loves me some DCF, but being an incorrigible gram weenie with a good scale I had to go and find out for myself.
    Five Basic Principles of Going Lighter (not me... the great Cam Honan of OZ)
    “If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.” ~ Gen. George S Patton

  5. #35
    Member Of Wolf and Man's Avatar
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    Aug 2022
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    DCF tarp regrets?

    Quote Originally Posted by cmoulder View Post
    Some observations HERE and HERE and HERE on DCF tarp weight when wet.

    TL-DR... wet or dry, DCF is always lighter than other options but even when wiped down very well will still retain about 40% water weight, and if it can't be wiped down — say it's raining when you pack up — the weight gain can be 100% (double).

    I sill loves me some DCF, but being an incorrigible gram weenie with a good scale I had to go and find out for myself.
    Interesting thanks. I never made a science experiment out of it, but I never noticed any extra retained weight whereas with my silpoly tarps feel like a brick when packing it up after a night of rain. Just sharing my own personal experience. If it’s all surface water then I guess it’s largely a factor of how well you wipe it down. I carry one of those super absorbent sea to summit towels specifically for drying equipment, so I’m guessing that helps. Bottom line dcf is still lighter, and if it does retain some surface water - which I don’t doubt your sources - i’m sure it still retains much less than sil tarps.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  6. #36

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    Hmm...every few years I re-consider DCF, and bulk was always my main sticking point. If I'm on a pleasure trip it's usually bikepacking, and bulk is a big consideration there. But now seeing cmoulder's folding method, maybe it's less than I thought. Also the water weight gain of even a shaken and wiped silpoly tarp is something (not sure how exactly it compares to DCF, but the silnylon comparison from WhiteBlaze posted above makes me think it's probably more).

    Some of my hammock time is for car-based work trips where bulk is not a concern, but for those times, blocking out unwanted night light from parking lots/RV-centric campsites/etc. is definitely a concern, and my dark grey silpoly is good at that.

  7. #37
    Senior Member Rolloff's Avatar
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    I always hated even thinking about folding a tarp to get it back in the "provided" stuff sack. Since I went from a 12' Silnylon tarp in skins to the 11'HG DCF Hex folded the cmoulder way I've easily lowered both weight and volume penalties. Adding back the UQP verses the weight and price points for the same tarp with doors, is a push.

    When I'm working out of a 14L pack. Volume is the real devil in the details.
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  8. #38
    Senior Member cmoulder's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Of Wolf and Man View Post
    Interesting thanks. I never made a science experiment out of it, but I never noticed any extra retained weight whereas with my silpoly tarps feel like a brick when packing it up after a night of rain. Just sharing my own personal experience. If it’s all surface water then I guess it’s largely a factor of how well you wipe it down. I carry one of those super absorbent sea to summit towels specifically for drying equipment, so I’m guessing that helps. Bottom line dcf is still lighter, and if it does retain some surface water - which I don’t doubt your sources - i’m sure it still retains much less than sil tarps.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
    Indeed, starting with a much lighter weight for the tarp itself is a big bonus. And after carrying and packing a wet 20D or 30D silpoly, and especially silnyon, it still feels featherweight by comparison. Either way, we still have to pack it and carry it.

    In one of the threads linked above, I detailed how I wiped the tarp down rather thoroughly with a ShamWow (I carried a cut-down piece to test) and let it air for an additional 1/2 hour or so, and yet it still retained 52% water weight.

    This is, of course, very subjective; obviously the relative humidity must have been quite high in that instance, and at other times and places with more favorable conditions it might well have been completely dry... for example, in direct sunlight with 30% relative humidity.

    There's the well-worn cliche "It is what it is," to which I would add the corollary "It ain't what it ain't..."

    Five Basic Principles of Going Lighter (not me... the great Cam Honan of OZ)
    “If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.” ~ Gen. George S Patton

  9. #39

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    My last bikepacking trip was four fairly rainy days, with not enough dry time to really let the tarp air out. The seat bag it was packed in (along with my hammock, stakes, pad, and rain jacket) started to look (and feel) like a droopy sack of potatoes by the end.
    P1010101.jpg

  10. #40
    Senior Member cmoulder's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by KBr00ks View Post
    My last bikepacking trip was four fairly rainy days, with not enough dry time to really let the tarp air out. The seat bag it was packed in (along with my hammock, stakes, pad, and rain jacket) started to look (and feel) like a droopy sack of potatoes by the end.
    P1010101.jpg
    Very much my experience with backpacking as well.

    There are certain horses that I have beaten damm near to death, but the claim by some people that they can keep everything relatively dry through multiple days of rain and/or high humidity is not one that is borne out by experience. At least I have never, ever seen it.

    On the bright side, when those dry, clear weather fronts blow through and you have a 'drying party' on the sunny rocks, well it's just absolutely glorious!
    Five Basic Principles of Going Lighter (not me... the great Cam Honan of OZ)
    “If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.” ~ Gen. George S Patton

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