DON'T BUILD A CABIN. Do this instead.

this is what i'm talking about you don't need a cabin get yourself a wall tent light a fire enjoy life so you want to build a cabin in the wilderness you want that off-grid lifestyle but maybe you don't have the time or the money or you're just not quite ready to make that full leap yet instead of starting with a cabin start with a wall tent by first putting up a wall tent or maybe permanently putting up a wall tent you are on your way instantly to having all those things you need plus now you've got a place to live while you build your cabin in this video i want to share everything i know about wall tents over our two decades of using them living in them and enjoying them i want to help you achieve your cabin dreams in the wilderness and it might just start with a wall tent let me give you a quick tour of mine and then i'm gonna talk about all the things you should look for when you buy a wall tent this is edna she apparently thinks the fire pit is a good spot to lounge so do you like that spot girl let's go take a look at the wall tent now this tent is a 12 by 14. it's got a structure of steel tubing now this is just electrical tubing you can buy out of menards so if you buy a wall tent like this you're either going to choose whether to purchase an angle iron kit which are these pieces right here you purchase those from the wall tent supplier and then what you do is cut your own pipe to fit the angle iron i'm just going to give you a quick roundabout here this wall tent is supported by four series of pipes in the ceiling and you can kind of choose on some of the models uh how many pipes you want to support it also something very important is a stove jack we never have a wall tent without a wood stove and so most good wall tent companies are going to provide you with a stove jack now there's a flap on the other side of this that's covering it right now it's summer it's really quite warm now we don't really need the wood stove so i've got the flap covering the opening as far as amenities you choose when you get a wall tent you can choose to have windows you can choose to have screens doors wherever you want to put it it's going to cost you more money than the base price of a tent now i like to have screened windows on each side for ventilation and it also doesn't make you feel so closed in you can open it up and you can have instant access to fresh air in daylight which i really really love the other thing to point out is the color you've probably seen lots of green army tents for sale on the internet that you can get really cheap i would not recommend them they are so dark you want that natural light which the white tent allows you to have and so it's just so important to be able to just have natural light in here there's tons of headspace in here there's just so much room it really does feel like an instant cabin when you've got it up let me show you what it looks like looking the other way looking out towards the front door i've got two zips here one for the screen one for the main door and it also has clips on the outside for the canvas it's really important i feel to have a screened in front you're gonna pay extra for all these things but to keep the mosquitoes and everything down you're gonna really appreciate having that screen door now as far as the fabric weight this is a 12 ounce treated duck canvas it is fire water and mildew repellent treated it's really important to get those things to help have a very long lasting tent a lot of times you will find rendezvous tents you know reenactment type tents and they are usually made from a lighter material cotton canvas and they have not been treated at all and also those type of tents tend to not have the reinforcements that you're really going to need for long term wall tent use and it's super important because this is an investment and you want to buy the best tent you can afford because it's gonna last you longer now here are some things that you should look for in a tent when you go to purchase one you want to see good reinforcements in all of the corners this is where your tent is going to get the most uh abrasive action so you you want to see a tent that has reinforcements along the ridges and along the corners now when you purchase an angle kit a good tent company is going to provide you the exact dimensions of the tent you just purchased so you can make accurate cuts and usually i just use like a jigsaw with a metal cutting blade it's not very fun takes a long time you can do it with a hacksaw um it's gonna be pretty taxing and labor intensive but it can be done if you have a bandsaw bam you can get through the steel piping really quickly with that if you're in the wilderness and you have access to poles trees that you can limb up you want a ridge pole probably four to five inches in diameter and the other poles may be three to four inches you can totally rig up a wall tent with poles so you don't necessarily need to have a steel frame you can use poles that you get from the woods and those poles are going to go right through here the ridge pole goes through the opening in the end and out the side and then you crisscross poles on the outside to hold up the tent as far as windows go you want to make sure that the screen is is really heavy duty and secure to the fabric this one has a zip and a velcro on top it's very easy to just pull these up and close it up when you when you want it closed up we're back at the outside of the tent you can see where that ridge pole would come out if you were using a wooden pole for a ridge and then there would be another pole here and another pole here holding up the tent as far as the screen goes you just let it down and you can zip that up and as well this clips back everything zips together and then buckles the canvas as well so if it's hot or cold you can adjust what you need depending on the conditions you're going to want to see that there is lots of adequate loops for tent stakes if you're gonna have this on the ground and the other thing you want is a storm cloth you can see that this storm cloth we've got sitting outside of our platform if you had snow you could put snow on this and uh keep keep all the moisture out in the winter time otherwise you want it to drain away from the tent this tent has been reinforced on all the corners and the edging it's got heavy d-rings and this is underneath the rain fly i highly recommend investing in a rain fly for your tent it's going to help protect your tent and in the winter time it's going to help that snow slide off and stay off your canvas although cotton canvas all by itself is waterproof once it absorbs water the fibers expand and it literally becomes waterproof but there's always there can be variations in stitching and other things that could allow just simple pinpricks of water to develop and come down into your tent so adding a rain fly is going to prevent that for sure but it's also going to just help protect your your tent from uv rays it's going to give it a longer life it would be much easier to replace the the rain fly than the entire tent so you want to protect that tent also you can see it sheds water i need to tighten up these guy lines keeps the water away from your tent when it rains see what that fly looks like extends over the edge so right here in the rain fly is the opening for the stove to come through you would roll that back and roll back the opening on the tent itself and your stove pipe would stick out right there here again you can see that storm cloth and in the winter i i screw it down to the base of this platform now even though you're not building a cabin i do recommend building a platform for your tent to keep it up off the ground although we've had luck putting it right on the ground just as well so it's really up to you if you can't afford to build a platform put it right on the ground what i do is these tents come without a floor you can order a floor but i've never wanted one but when we put it right on the ground we clear the area of all sticks and roots and everything i lay down a tarp and then i buy this indoor outdoor carpet i got this at menards and i put that in there and it just kind of gives you a nice you know homey feel i use just a broom to keep it clean and at the front of the tent is just a rug that kind of collects all of the debris so we're not tracking everything in but if you do build a platform you want to build it the exact size of your tent not bigger if you want all that rain to come off your platform and not drain underneath the boards right back into your tent wait to build your platform until you know exactly what size of a tent you're going to get and be aware that some 10 companies will say it's a 12 by 14 but actually that's the cut size and when they're sewed together they end up being smaller so you really want to check into the company to see what exact size you're going to get for a finished size not a cut size let me show you some of the accessories i put in here and it's really easy to make a wall tent feel amazingly homey and cozy there's daisy like i said i use this for a catch-all and then this is just indoor outdoor carpeting and you can see this is just an untreated deck this just an old old boards we had around the homestead so they have not been treated but most of the year this wall tent sits here on this platform covering it so it's gonna last a long time if you don't use treated wood i would recommend giving this a coating of stain and helping to preserve the wood one thing to keep in mind in wall tents is you're going to have issues with rodents and mice constantly so when we're not here i keep all of our bedding and everything that can be chewed on right in here in the cedar chest which edna is not going to let me show you same for any kind of food items i keep in this closed little cabinet even at night time because at night time the mice will come out and start getting into your food and whatnot so i really like to have everything buttoned up against the rodents look at you i highly recommend some kind of a mouse trap and this is the best one i've come to find for catching multiple mice while you're away so let me show you that so this is a pretty unique mouse trap in that you can catch more than one you just turn this and it just cranks it up and each time a mouse steps in there it sets off a spring kind of boots them into the box clean it out you open it now they could stay alive in there i choose to use a bait in there that will kill them after they eat it so i just don't want a bunch of live mice in there suffering but you can let them go if you want of course i'm not gonna let them go this is an amazing uh mousetrap that it's gonna catch more than one you just leave it in the wall tent so check that out as far as the bed and the table and all this stuff got it second hand i've painted it i fixed it up a lot of this stuff comes apart and folds flat for a bed you could just build a simple 2x4 frame this one is put together with just a couple sheets of plywood and some dowels and i've got an old featherbed mattress and a couple pieces of foam but you could just as easily just use a blow up mattress or whatever i mean the beautiful thing is you can make your wall tent look any way you'd like wood stove is a necessity and i would definitely encourage you to get some kind of a spark arrestor within the pipe here or on the outside at the top of your pipe one thing you're going to want to make sure is that your stove pipe extends high enough past your tent roof so wherever the peak is you want the stovepipe to be at least as high as the peak there's absolutely no reason why you can't be just as comfortable in a wall tent as you can be in a cabin and the thing is it's just so much easier to deal with so where do you get a wall tent you can keep an eye out on facebook marketplace or craigslist or the local classifieds if they still exist where you're at i have gotten some pretty good deals that way we have had tents from alaska tent and tarp company the davis tent company and most recently waltonshop.com and that's who we're buying tents from currently we feel like they have the best price for the quality and also it's a veteran-owned company and highly personable service and we really just love the company that's walltenshop.com they're not sponsoring this video i just want to give them a shout out if you do go there and look at their tents tell them i sent you if you're curious what i have invested here in this 12x14 tent with the rainfly with the extra screens and windows with the indoor outdoor carpet and all of my accessories i probably have a little under two thousand dollars invested now i got almost everything and i got everything inside second hand so you can do what you want on the inside but as far as the total tent package uh you're looking around 16 1700 for what you see right here not including the wood stove which i also got secondhand now they do make wood stoves specific to wall tents and they're smaller they're lighter they're portable and um there's a lot of those to choose from most wall tent companies will offer their own line of stoves or recommend some stoves that you can buy from them too you would be amazed how warm these wall tents can be and you can be extremely cozy even when it's super cold out i can't recommend a wall tent enough we've spent months at a time living in wall tents from the yukon river in alaska to the upper peninsula of michigan so you may be wondering how a wall tent would stand up in the wintertime well you can use them in the winter time but big caveat you have to be present with your wall tent every day if you're in an area that gets any amount of snow and especially heavy wet snow you have to be really really careful with how you get the snow off that tent every day they will definitely collapse under a big load of snow and you've got to stay on top of taking the snow off every day there again is where a rain fly really helps you push it from the inside out and it slides right off it's wonderful when it comes to the portability of a wall tent you really can't beat it i have put up this tent by myself it takes a bit of effort but it can be done but i would highly recommend at least two people to put up a wall tent the advantage of putting up something that you can be in instantly pretty much as opposed to a cabin build which is going to take you months probably to pull off you know it's a great trade-off if you're worried about the investment you shouldn't be wall tents have a great resale value especially around hunting season a lot of hunting outfitters and hunters like to use wall tents so the investment up front is totally worth it it really beats putting months of of your time and your energy into a cabin build when you could start enjoying your piece of land your off-grid lifestyle right now makes it a lot easier to start your off-grid homestead having a place to lay your head and be comfortable and stand up and get out of the rain and the weather i mean it's just wonderful right it's wonderful for portability for do-ability and for the sense that you can get what you want almost instantly and be completely comfortable and set up in a wall tent well you just can't beat them not only is a wall tent just downright cozy i mean it they're magical you put some candles in this thing light it up and it's just like you're your own airbnb it's so cool and there's just this visually appealing romantic thing for me personally about a wall tent they're just they're dreamy they're dreamy well guys hope you like this video if you liked it i've got another one for you to watch right here click that video day in a life at an off grid wall tent thanks for joining me i'll see you in the next one this girl in the woods she gone oh don't forget to get outside and get happy it's gonna be good you

Channel: Girl in the Woods

Views: 428,655

Keywords: wall tent, how to buy a wall tent, what to look for when buying wall tents, best wall tent, canvas tents, canvas cabin tent, canvas tent with stove, canvas tent with wood stove, how to set up a wall tent, how to buy a canvas tent, off grid, off grid cabin tent, off grid wall tent

Id: wwDzF-LbSio

Length: 17min 37sec (1057 seconds)

Published: Wed May 26 2021