How to Fix a Broken Tent Zipper. First I Tried a Sarong.
The first hint was the three inches of open zipper behind the slider. I backed up, pulled the slider past the spot where the zippers split, and tried again. It didn’t get any better. Was I nervous? Not really, more … sad. Hindsight said this should not have happened.
When the zipper broke, I was inside the tent, shutting the door for the night. I kept calm, tried again, and then told my wife what was going on. She took over, repeated my experiment at least twice, and sensibly declared defeat, to the drone of mosquitoes as they zoomed in and out of the tent — mostly in.
The obvious solution was to replace the tent. We had gone on several camping trips since we discovered that only one of the sliders could close the center part of the door zipper properly.
Yes, that’s where hindsight helps — we should have replaced the tent before this trip.
Yes, that’s where hindsight helps — we should have replaced the tent before this trip. For instance, last fall we could have checked the stores that might have had leftover tents for sale cheap.
But right now the bank account is really happy that I transferred some money from the line of credit at the other bank, just to pay for this trip. There is enough there to cover a new tent, but putting it off until late August would mean the possibility of a sale price.
It was time for a creative solution! I meant, try some things and see if one of them worked. We had black duct tape and green masking tape. I needed something else, but what?
“Honey, do we have any safety pins?” I asked, just in case.
“I didn’t pack any,” my wife replied, “So if you didn’t pack any, we don’t have any.” That was pretty much a flat denial, with the added bonus that I could take responsibility for that failure, if I thought anyone had made a mistake.
“I thought it was worth checking.” I replied. See? It wasn’t anybody’s fault.
Hmm. We only needed to deal with the middle part of the fly, from near the top down to about 1 and a half feet above the ground (0.5m). How long was a sarong? I had seen one in the tent.
I turned on a flashlight and looked around in the tent. There it was, half hidden under a bag of dirty clothes. I picked up the sarong, and stepped outside into the thickening swarm of mosquitoes.
I reached down every minute or two to sweep them off of each leg, hoping to get rid of some of them.
I held up the sarong against the door as the drone of the mosquito swarm decreased slightly. Sure enough, a bunch of them had landed on me. For some reason they were almost all on my legs, near the ankles.
The sarong hung down over most of the door. There were about 6 inches at each side of the open bits of door zipper and over a foot at the bottom of the open zipper.
I took the sarong back into the tent and grabbed the roll of masking tape. I wanted a short term solution that could easily be taken off the tent, not a long term solution that might leave glue on the tent, so I left the duct tape behind.
I was pretty confident that this solution would work and would help, maybe help a lot.
I was pretty confident that this solution would work and would help, maybe help a lot. I was feeling a bit of anxiety, though. Two ankles covered with crawling biting insects will do that. Well, not just the ankles: half way up my calf I could feel some moving on each leg. I reached down every minute or two to sweep them off of each leg, hoping to get rid of some of them. No such luck, as far as I could tell.
My wife was trying to play her computer strategy game, between slaps at the mosquitoes. It seems that a few of them were dumb enough to pass between her and the bright screen. Easy targets! Slap! Slap!
After a couple of minutes she had killed several mosquitoes, and one of them even left blood on the screen. This didn’t help much against the hordes of blood-thirsty invaders storming past me at the door. She covered up her legs and torso to reduce the area of skin that the mosquitoes could get at.
Meanwhile, I ripped off a long chunk of tape and attached one half to the sarong and the rest to the tent. Then I ripped off another chunk of tape, but the sarong fell to the ground, with the tape still attached to the sarong, but not the tent. This was a bit concerning, but I wasn’t defeated yet. I tried holding the sarong up with my left hand, with the roll of tape in that same hand. Then I ripped off the tape with the other hand to add to the long chunks holding up the other part of the sarong.
The sarong stayed up while I was doing this, covering the hole in the door zipper. However, the ends of some of the strips of tape were loose. Still holding one corner of the sarong with my left hand, I tried to flatten the pieces of tape with my right hand, so the adhesive would be pushed against the tent. The tape came loose, the sarong fell down to dangle from my left hand where I was holding it up against the tent. The sarong still had several bits of green masking tape across the top.
I stepped into the tent, holding the sarong, and grabbed the black duct tape.
Hmm. Frustrating. I stepped into the tent, holding the sarong, and grabbed the black duct tape. I stepped out of the door and started to pull off strips of duct tape. I stuck three of them to my left hand, which was still carrying the sarong and holding the roll of duct tape so my right hand could rip off strips of it.
I used the duct tape to attach the sarong to the tent, attaching all three of the strips of tape to it while holding it up with my left hand, like I did with the masking tape. The sarong was perfectly placed to block the mosquitoes. No more of them were entering the tent.
The sarong was perfectly placed to block the mosquitoes.
“That should do it,” I said. I let go of the sarong and stepped back. The sarong immediately fell to the ground, allowing the mosquitoes to freely flow in and out of the tent.
I was feeling a bit desperate, and willing to try anything that might work. I knew that there was a horizontal bar holding up the tent, just above the doorway. I thought maybe attaching the sarong to that would make it easier for the duct tape to hold on to the slippery tent fabric. Sort of a gravity effect.
I was surprised when this worked! I don’t know if the tent fabric around the rod is less slippery? It’s a different color than the other fabric. In any case the duct tape stuck, and supported the sarong. Mosquitoes in the tent mostly died of slapping over the next couple hours, but we got some sleep.
The next day, I looked for a more permanent solution, either a new tent or some way to keep the mosquitoes out of our existing tent. My teen daughter decided to join me on the trip, because driving with Dad can turn into an adventure, and she is young enough to enjoy that. She also likes to tease Dad at any opportunity. And I like to tease her back, a bit. It’s a match made for driving!
Our first stop was at a dollar store in Eganville, where we found safety pins, hand sewing needles, and thread, but nothing made of mosquito netting.
On our way to Pembroke, we hit a construction detour. Turn left, go 1.5 miles (2km). Turn right on a road that should parallel the one we were just on. I figured this road would take us into the middle of Pembroke, near a large Dollarama. Instead of turning right on the detour back to our original road, I kept going straight ahead. I finally reached the main road through Pembroke. It looked a bit different than I expected, but I turned left anyway. As soon as I completed the turn, we saw a huge sign right ahead of us: “Welcome to Petawawa”.
We had come out farther left than I expected, not just 1 or two miles, but all the way to the other end of Pembroke! We turned around in a church yard and headed back toward Pembroke.
We were looking for either Canadian Tire, which is a hardware/car parts/sports/outdoor retailer, or Walmart. Both were at the far end of Pembroke. Also, I thought we might find mosquito netting doors at a dollar store downtown.
I wasn’t looking forward to driving around in Pembroke and going back home on the road with the 1.5 mile detour. Then I saw a large Home Hardware store, half as big as the Canadian Tire at the other end of town, and with no space wasted on sports gear or food. I pulled into their parking lot.
My teen daughter criticized my parking. I should have parked closer to the entrance of the store!
My teen daughter criticized my parking. I should have parked closer to the entrance of the store! I told her I wasn’t worried about it. I hadn’t made my 10,000 steps yet that day. Some 14 year olds do raspberries for the slightest reason. Mine didn’t do that, she booped my nose.
When we got inside, we wandered around and didn’t see anything like mosquito netting. I flagged down a store clerk who pointed me to the “seasonal” section at the front of the store, and apologized that she was getting something for another customer.
The first thing we found in seasonal was a mosquito netting outfit for my daughter. In reply to her obvious question: “Will you pay for it?”, I graciously pointed out that she had her own money, and she had been saving for fun things to buy on this camping trip. No, I wasn’t paying for it. She graciously accepted my argument, and didn’t buy it.
“Honey, I got a mosquito netting product!”
Then we flagged down the same clerk again, who found us, not a mosquito door, but a mosquito net that was designed to drape over a round umbrella stand on a patio table. It was $45, which was more expensive than I expected. On the other hand, our outdoor patio set had an umbrella. It should work OK, even though our umbrella is rectangular and not round. So that meant it would be used more than just on one camping trip, so the extra expense was justified — sorta.
And I wouldn’t have to drive through Pembroke. So we bought the mosquito net and headed home to the campground. My daughter and I recognized the turn for the road we arrived on, just in time to turn around in the same church yard. My daughter noticed the turn for the detour we had taken before, and I only had to back up 50 feet to the corner — once traffic had cleared while we waited on the shoulder of the road.
“Honey, I got a mosquito netting product!” She recognized right away that it wasn’t a door, but agreed that it was worth a try. I talked about piling most of it on top of the tent, above the door, but my wife suggested hanging it over the tent as if it was the umbrella the manufacturer had expected. I thought that was a great idea, and suggested taking off the tent fly and putting the netting on, then putting the tent fly back on, so the tent fly would hold it down in usually the same position.
So while my daughter enthusiastically described for Mom all the turnarounds and bad parking, that’s what I did: tent fly off, netting on, tent fly on. The netting reaches the ground on the door side of the tent. The sarong is still hanging there to provide some privacy and backup mosquito protection, and to slow air movement when it’s cold at night.
After all those failed fixes, an hour’s drive with my teenage daughter, and spending around $60, our tent is free of mosquitoes, most of the time. But we don’t use the zipper on the netting, we just lift the netting and go under it. We don’t trust zippers, obviously.
