After almost five years with a Eurohike 2-man special, I have taken the plunge and upgrade my tent for a Terra Nova Quasar.
This tent is legendary for its robust build quality and ability to handle any weather, and without properly putting it through its paces yet, the materials seem to be very high quality.
However, I wanted a footprint to go with the tent to protect my investment as much as possible. The main advantages of a footprint seems to be:
- Extra protection for the ground sheet on rough and rocky ground
- Covered floor in porch areas
- Keeps the tent clean for when its packed away
An added bonus is that (in principle) a footprint gives you a dry area to get yourself together on in the morning after camp and roll the tent back up in without it getting covered in mud and dew.
Unfortunately, the official Terra Nova footprint sells for anything between £60-80 — if you can get your hands on it. When looking for one, all outlets seemed to be out of stock.
This price tag seemed to me quite high for something, ultimately, designed to be sacrificial.
A bit of research online revealed a wealth of people with similar feelings and saving money by making their own tent footprints. In some cases, these were even lighter and more compact than their branded counterparts.
Here, I’ll go through how I made my footprint for the Quasar specifically, including purchasing materials and total cost (it was a lot less than the official one)!
Material choice: Tyvek
It didn’t take much reading to see that the general consensus amongst tent-footprint-DIYers was to use Tyvek for construction.
This is a lightweight material with paper-like consistency used to waterproof under-construction buildings. It is supposedly incredibly tear resistant and waterproof, making it ideal for a footprint.
Buying Tyvek isn’t as straightforward as I thought, however. Builders merchants will sell it, but only in industrial-sized rolls and costing you over £100.
I used this diagram of the dimensions of the Quasar from the Joe Brown’s website to see how much Tyvek I’d need. Something like 1.4 x 4 m seemed to be ideal.
In the UK, I found roofingsuperstore.co.uk, which sell Tyvek by the metre and send it to your door. However, they only sell it with 1 m width, but this could be of use if you are making a footprint for a smaller tent.
I ended up buying from an eBay seller, Joe’s Supplies by the Metre, who sold the exact dimensions I was looking for, 1.4 x 4 m. This cost £13.77 with free delivery and came to my mainland UK address within a couple of days.
Making The Footprint
I was expecting the 1.4 m width to extend a little bit further out from the side of the tent, but it turned out to be absolutely perfect without cutting.
The Tyvek completely covers the inner groundsheet but does not extend beyond the flysheet. If any part of the footprint is exposed to rain, water will then pool between the footprint and the tent groundsheet, defeating the purpose of it all.
Now for cutting the length. After doing some measuring, I ended up cutting just based on the dimensions provided in the diagram. This gave me a basic footprint shape.
I then re-erected the tent up on the grass so I could pin the porch out properly. The porch section appeared a little too large.
I cut in on each vertex of the porch area about 2.5 cm and then folded in the three flaps. I then duct tape “lined” this edging.
This provided a bit of re-enforcement in these edge pieces and a nice reflective lining which will hopefully make it easier to know where is dry and where is wet when fumbling to tidy kit in the dark!
I had some duct tape already in the house, but I ended up finishing a roll so had to buy a new one. If you factor this cost in, the total outlay for the footprint was £18.27.
The re-enforcement was also good as I then used a single hole punch in the far corner of each section. The duct tape and layering prevents the hole becoming too much of a weak point.
I then put a daisy chain of three cable zip ties through each hole. These allow me to secure the footprint to the pegs pinning out the porch, and with three zip ties there is some adjustability at each.
It also means I can peg out the footprint initially and then have a clean surface to put the tent up on.
I thought the plastic zip ties would be a little more hard wearing than string.
Overall this took me about three hours to make and I’m pretty pleased with the end result. The Tyvek seems robust and is suitably lightweight and packable.
My duct tape lining has potentially added extra bulk to the footprint when rolled up, but this was optional. If it turns out to be a major issue, I’ll pull the tape off.
I haven’t had a chance to test the footprint yet, but I’m looking forward to putting it through its paces over the next few months effectively living in the Quasar.
More here soon!