CAN ANYTHING BEAT THIS?! BUSH COMPANY ALPHA ROOF TOP TENT WALKAROUND & REVIEW - EXPLORE TIPS

[Music] all right we're back another episode of explore tips tricks and review our last ep we were talking all things awning and i ran you through the bush company 270 degree xt awning now this week we're going to get stuck into rooftop tents by far my favorite way to tour it is my favorite camping setup it completely changed the way uh that i camped i obviously used to run swags all the time swags on stretchers swags on the ground your typical canvas fold out uh rooftop tents now i had a few different brands of them and look to be honest they were okay but for me i would rather just use a swag they weren't quite as fast and efficient enough for the way i like to camp and how fast i'm moving the other thing i found is when you went to set them up the zips tend to always get quite full of dust and then the the bag itself is always extremely dirty so by the time you go to set up you end up putting dust all over yourself you've broken a sweat running around the truck that's just a just a little bit of background of where i've come from uh with my camping i then stepped up into my first hard shell rooftop tent which was an algae cab once again our cab that was an epic product and i basically just about wore it out and i was going to do a massive eight-week trip touring through australia i needed a new setup and that's when i got in contact with dean from the bush company so full disclosure i am sponsored by the bush company but i have used a variety of different tents um which is why i ended up teaming up with the bush company i didn't do it for the for the fun of it i did it because i thought it was the best product on the market at the time so when i first teamed up with the bush company i was in their black series tent basically i lived out of that thing for a solid eight weeks and then all the other trips we did as well so i probably ran that tent for a good year maybe a little bit longer all in the back of my head i knew this thing was coming and uh credit to dean i gave him a few small little bits of feedback from using the black series that he uh was able to implement into this alpha series tent it's all the little one percenters of this tent that i think sort of puts it at the top of its game within the clamshell hard rooftop tent so we'll get stuck in what we might do initially is we'll just do a walk around the outside and i can show off some of the features then uh we'll open it up and i'll show you through the inside but it is a aluminium constructed clamshell tent this is probably one of the things that sets it apart from any of the other tents on the market is it's a mounting system so it's got a full extrusion rail running the whole way around the tent now that comes in handy for just about everything so on the front here all of his own hinges that then can be moved depending on what accessories you want to fit onto the front so these are a bush company uh bracket to mount your light bars because the intensities are two separate lights obviously four four mounting brackets and i just had to slowly slide some of the actual hinges of the tent around so the versatility of what you can put on here all sort of comes down to this uh unique mounting system now on the side obviously i've got the xt awning which uses those uh mounting brackets as well as we come around the back one thing you'll notice is some bloody heavy duty latches so it's it's none of your chinese bloody cheap latches it's a fully custom designed latch to suit the bush company nice and easy and then of course lockable as well if you want to lock your rooftop tent i never have but anyway the other good thing about these is once again they are movable handle same thing all in this extrusion rail so easy to change slide around if you need to and this bracket here is basically your mounting bracket for the ladder which i will show you on the other side so each tent comes with two brackets one for the back of the tent and one for the side of the tent now the reason they do that is because if you've got your 270 degree awning out you're not going to be entering uh from the rear of the tent so we'll keep wandering as we come around the side here's where you'll see my other mounting bracket now this is the bracket that i use probably 90 percent of the time i'll tell you what while we're here i'll pull the ladder out that is actually where i keep my ladder when i'm touring i normally have a fridge in there and my ladder just sits there it just gives me easy access to grabbing it you can have it inside the rooftop tent but i find that this bag always tends to just end up dirty or wet so i don't like to put it in with my bedding anyway that normally comes out i fold that up i normally sit that on the wheel arch even after a few cold ones you can basically come up sits on you can find it no matter where you are easily locks on slide and lock down and that's basically as simple as that and that's your ladder bracket nice and sturdy a few of the other ones are a pin system or got a clamp that's the best bracket i've seen so far just keeps it nice and easy while i'm up here i've got my shovel holder on the top so another cool feature along with the exclusion rails all the way around you do have two full length rails on the roof here what that means is you can run another set of load bars if you'd like which is extremely handy because obviously this does take up the whole of your roof so this now becomes your roof rack whether you want load bars or whether you just want to use the aluminium top the tent will still open up the way that they valve these gas struts with uh 50 kilos of gear on it so if you want to strap your surfboards down a little bit of extra gear you still can open and close the tent without any dramas so all i do is just your m8 nuts i've got four stainless steel eye bolts up there and that way anything i chuck up there i can just strap down a few other products to mention that do go straight into these rails and he has brackets for is like your max tracks holders your high lift jack holders obviously your shovel holder me personally the tent and awning is already quite heavy so i like to keep my max tracks and my high lift jack everything down just that little bit lower one other thing i can see while we're cruising around here is the gas struts the gas struts are actually mounted on the outside of the tent now one of my previous tents they were mounted internally now i thought oh that's a far better idea having them internal they won't get broken off you won't you won't smash them on the side of trees etc now both the black series and the alpha have the struts on the outside and i've been through some pretty hairy country obviously the strut on the left-hand side of the car is protected by your awning anyway and you can see the amount of scratches down here i've never ever had a drama with breaking that off what i did have a drama with was when you put the struts inside the tent just naturally inside the tent it's always going to hold that little bit of moisture and what ended up happening was the strut itself actually rusted because i'm up the beach quite a bit one day i went to open it bang the gas the gas strut ball essentially snapped because it had rusted through and my tent wouldn't stay up so visually it's good to have these on the outside to see if there is any rust forming and if you wanted to change them over so i just thought i'd mention that um that's something that i get asked quite often never had a drama with them well let's open it up and have a look so this is how i do mine obviously i jump up on the back of the truck sometimes uh if it's a really quick overnight stop i don't even have the awning out and i will literally just climb into the tent via the back without a ladder i do have a nice little step here being my drawers so that makes it simple for me it's going to be different for every setup couple of quick statistics i guess it's 88 kilos so it is quite a heavy tent but you'll see why as we go through it it is 2.25 meters long and 1.4 wide so absolutely massive now it opens up 1.8 which is i'm going to say one of the highest opening on the market i don't know if it is the highest opening it is slightly higher than the alu cab and it is higher than the black series the predecessor so you got this nice bungee here which basically keeps everything pulled in nice and tight and uh what you'll see now is one of my favorite parts reach inside you've got your uh steel spring poles i think they are so nice and easy that slides into little space there grab the other one out and this one goes up on top slides in there have a go at the size of the rain fly and this is one of my favorite features a couple of reasons one if it's pouring rain i'm stood here i'm obviously staying dry while i'm getting in and out of the tent same goes for if i've got the awning open and i'm coming up on that other side you do have a nice little bit of our rain coverage when you're trying to get in and out of your bed canvas wise it's a 300 gram poly cotton rip stock canvas now one thing that i believe is unique to the bush company i haven't seen it in any other rooftop tents is it's actually double layered so what that what that means is you've got your external layer and then there's a full another internal layer so you essentially have two tents on top of each other what this does is it increases the thermal property so when the sun hits the outside of this tent the back of it is actually uh fully uv treated just like the top of the awning if you've seen the previous video so all the heat hits this external layer rather than hitting that one layer of canvas that most other rooftop tents do so you can black out if you've got the doors shut which obviously you lose your airflow but by having that extra thermal property it does stay a lot cooler which means you're not getting woken up sweating your ass off now the other benefit is if you're in freezing cold climates you're gonna run through the snow in the victorian high country those sorts of things by having the two layers same same principle you've got twice the canvas to keep the heat inside that rooftop tent on those freezing cold nights is you do have another vent pocket at the top here so that still lets a little bit of air flow in which will limit the condensation that you get inside the tent the other cool thing about having the dual layer while we're talking about condensation is that your condensation will tend to form in between the two layers and there's little drain holes where the condensation and water can actually seep out rather than having that internal layer absolutely ringing wet which when you fold up in turn wets your uh wet your bedding so look definitely good for extremely hot and extremely cold climates bit of both i don't think anyone else is doing that now miji mesh which is important and an absolutely massive opening on all three windows to give you that airflow i don't think there's really anything else i can show you from here let's jump inside and check it out we'll use the ladder right so when entering from this side when i said there's dual layers i don't always keep both down so you've got your internal uh canvas wall which you want so you've got your mesh which gives you airflow if it starts pouring rain you can simply zip up the internal canvas door to stop any of that rain coming in now if it's extremely hot or extremely cold and you want to keep the weather out or it looks like it's going to be a big rain event you've essentially got your extra layer of canvas there now just for ease of use i don't always have these down i tend to just leave them permanently rolled up because predominantly the type of camping i'm doing it's nice and hot and i like to have the windows down right so they just roll up out of the way i simply open up our mesh and we'll home sweet home welcome to my humble abode basically this is what i normally do come up and i normally chuck my thongs in the side pocket if i've got boots there's two pockets on the side here you can never have enough pockets so we'll run through them real quick you've got your side pockets what i kind of like to call his and hers pockets then up top take my hat off so you can see so you got six on the roof now uh these you might store random bits and pieces that you want kept up in your bed your books uh whatever you whatever you want to take to bed uh go nuts one thing that i do use this middle pocket for is i unzip it down and i sit it like that and my ipad is actually the perfect length so my ipad sits in there we put our heads up this way and uh we watch our we watch our netflix in bed now two other really important pockets to point out is on the front entry here if you live out of a rooftop tent like i do you always seem to have water bottles rolling around the tent i always chuck my water bottle in there at night time once again his and hers is one on each side i just pulled out the storm straps for the awning which i'll show you in a minute we'll do that after i show you the rest of the inside but that's where i keep my storm straps so other than pockets the next thing that is really important to mention in here is the 12 volt outlet now to be honest it's it's massive overkill but handy to have so on each side so you've got his and her power outlets you have a cigarette lighter you have a double usb and an anderson plug on both sides so basically that means you come up at night she has her phone charger you have your phone charger phone goes down there and it's plugged in and then if you've got your cigarette lighter to run anything else perhaps an external fan if it's extremely hot you could uh hang a fan and charge it off there and i'm not really sure what the anderson plugs are for just to be completely honest with you but i think in south africa you can probably plug one of your one of your spotting lights and look outside the rooftop tents something i may have not mentioned at the start of this video is that these are made over in south africa so like we spoke about outside i've got my storm flaps completely rolled up nice big mesh to get that airflow something that is uh important to mention i think is that if it is raining i can pretty much have this fly permanently there and unless it is properly coming in sideways the massive rain awning will cover it so if it's a hot night and it's raining you still have all that airflow at the moment i've just rolled it up out of the way everything clips to the side or up so that the cameraman has better access let's say it's pouring rain and it's a nice hot night what i typically do is i'll zip these sides probably to about there and that's it so you can see rainfly there you still get that airflow without fully enclosing yourself in the rooftop tent mattress 75 mil high density foam mattress and then there is actually a nice uh layer of carpet underneath that as well and there is a light up top that has uh three different settings depending on the brightness you're after so because this does have internal power there's an anderson plug just on the front of the tent and i have mine permanently hard wired so i always have power i showed you that you can zip up inside all the way or halfway to keep that airflow going one of the next questions i always get asked is how does this big fly go when the wind picks up now obviously without any wind it's absolutely perfect that's where these storm straps come into so i don't know if these are set up to length but all you do you can reach from inside your bed so you don't have to get out of the bed you clip that on you pull that down and that's one side got the other one here these are fully adjustable too depending on how tight you want it you can do that from inside your bed while it's raining without getting wet and all that does is tension up that canvas i've got them wound up super tight that you can just sort of adjust them depending on how much tension you want on them if it's like chaotic wind and i have been in a couple of scenarios where the wind has been absolutely out of control and you just can't stop the flapping not in this tent because i haven't been in crazy wind in this tent just yet this is a really cool feature you can basically you get rid of your storm straps you simply undo a buckle on each side and you can slide this whole entire rain fly completely off so a couple of benefits there one if you know it's going to be an absolutely hectic night and you've got 30 40k winds coming take it off um and you know you're not going to have to worry about it the second option is if you're going to pack the the 10 away it's been pouring rain all night you know you might not be able to open the tent up for a while um you can simply slide this off and and honestly 90 of the rest of this canvas is going to be dry because of the coverage that you get from this massive rain fly well i'll tell you what i've been dribbling about this thing for a while i am pretty passionate about this tent i absolutely love it it is my home away from home if you're in the market for a rooftop tent the bush company has the two models this is the alpha which is basically the the high-end product and then he has the black series which i'll do a separate video on which is also another amazing tent that i lived out of there is a few different rooftop tents coming onto the market now dean has been making these for about the last 10 years different types of rooftop tents and awning over in south africa so put the bush company to the test if you're having a look at anything i definitely uh will throw my name to it i absolutely love it hopefully this covert ends very shortly so i can get back out on the tracks and enjoy it anyway guys if you've got any more questions because i probably missed something chuck them in the comments below i'll do my best to answer all of them for you until next time get out and enjoy the [Music] explore [Music] you

Channel: The Explore Life

Views: 150,477

Keywords: camping, rooftop tent, rooftop camper, The bush company, the explore life, overlanding, 4wdtouring, alpha rooftop

Id: iN5DIEkbpGQ

Length: 18min 19sec (1099 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 23 2020