Living in a Wall Tent , Off Grid Homesteading in 2020

[Music] how's it going everybody my name is Dave Whipple and you're watching Busch radical welcome back to my series about off-grid homesteading in 2020 today we're going to be talking about its temporary living arrangements you've got a piece property he's gonna put a cabin on it you want to put a small log house build a homestead up from the ground up you wanna do it out of pocket you wanna do it on the cheap my advice is you definitely want to live on the property that you're gonna be homesteading while you built gives you a million opportunities to get other things done clearing up all the area burning up would get in the place dialed in and when it comes to a temporary living arrangement I don't think you can do better than a wall time during the building projects of the last 20 years my wife and I have lived in a dome tent while we built the cabin we lived in a cabin where we built house we've lived in a camper where we built the garage we lived in a garage where we built the house and on our last homestead project we lived in a wall tent well we built our cabin I have to say of all the ways you can be set up with a temporary living arrangement well you build the wall 10 is my favorite in this video I'm going to show you guys what to look for in a wall tent what to avoid in a wall tent I'm also gonna really dive into what the benefits of a wall 10 are as opposed to let's say a camper as opposed to let's say a regular tent now when it comes to things to look for and things to avoid in regards to wall tents the first thing is color you want a white wall tent with good bright white canvas the reason being is there's going to be so much natural light that gets through the canvas and through the rainfly that you're actually going to feel like you're not hemmed in in a cave the old green army tents and some of the canvas camping wall tents from the 70s our dark brown or olive drab and it's like a cave inside you don't want that one of the things that makes or breaks a tent in my opinion is a good heavy zipper there's so many tents out there that they basically have like a shoestring tie about every foot and you tie the door closed now that might look interesting if you want a classic looking tent but there's really no practical reason for it you don't seal the door off well and you're constantly untying it and tying it back up you want a good heavy zipper here's another thing you want to look for you want to look for corners that are already reinforced now from the inside of this take look at that corner down on the other end you can see that that corner is also reinforced the ridge in the top of this wall tent is also the reinforced I've owned lots of wall tents over the years and without that extra reinforcement in the corners if you leave them up for a building season or a couple building seasons which I have just the wind and the mud natural movement of the tent itself it tends to wear on the corners and you'll get thin spots in the canvas by a tent that already has the coroners reinforced another thing to keep in mind is windows now this tent has a window in every single wall and that's very important because if your tent doesn't have windows it's gonna be the shortest amount of time before you wish it had so buy a tent rate from the get-go that has windows now another thing that's a must-have item in a wall tent is a bug screen basically on this tent the whole end of the tent has a bug screen on the inside so you could fold back both sides of the canvas door and you could basically sit there and have a complete view but still have that bug screen protection this is another one of those areas where I don't know why there are tents out there that don't have bug screens because I've never lived somewhere where I didn't want a bug screen at one point or another now it might be fine in the fall not to have one but if you're building during the summer time and you're building there in the spring that bug screen is gonna be worth its weight in gold so I wouldn't look at a tent that didn't have one this is what I would consider pretty much a typical setup for the inside of a wall tent this particular model is a twelve by fourteen you got a two person bed you got yourself a back window you got yourself a table down here you have the wood stove if you're not going to be using a tent like this daily a nice chest to keep your bedding and stuff in just in case you have mice in the area this is one of the other great things about living on wall time you can have a regular-sized bed not a camper sized bed not just the bed that's based on a cushion that would be a bench and then it folds down into a table this is an actual bed so you can be hanging out in an actual bed somebody else can be at the table somebody else can be at a chair by the stove and pretty much everywhere that you walk in a wall tent like this you've got all the room you need to stand up and that's a big deal no it's not like this gives you plenty of room for storage gives you lots of living in space and one of the real benefits of having a wall tap other than the fact that it's very much like living in a cabin is the fact that it's heated space and you can heat your wall tent with a wood stove what you want to look for whenever you're buying a wall tent is that it already has a pre-installed stove jack now if you buy a tent and it does not have a place for a wood stove pipe to pass through it you can install what's called a stove jack some of the old tents they have a two part stove Jack where you cut a hole out of the canvas and you sandwich this metal flange in it's got kind of little metal tabs that lock it together so it's an inside and an outside piece of metal that the stovepipe passes through on this tent it's a fireproof material that's very much like like a welding blanket here you can see the wood stove that we have in this wall tent and if you go up you can see the stove jack where that stove pipe passes through the roof of the tent one of the things I like the most about a wood stove and a wall tent setup is that when you're on a piece property and you're building a cabin and you're cutting brush and you're cutting dead trees having a wood stove in a wall tent gives you a place to put all that stuff it's a very good relationship but if you had a camper you're gonna be dealing with a propane furnace and a camper you don't have anywhere to burn wood in the camper and a wall tent you're not going to be buying propane you're gonna be using wood that you're cutting anyway to heat your living space now there's four setup options with a tent like this you can use an internal frame like this one has and it sits on the exact footprint of the tent you can also set your tent up like a lot of spike hunters do with a pealed pole frame like you see here on this log raft now the other two variables that come into play with the wall tent do you want to put it on the ground or do you want to put it on a platform for homesteading purposes I would say absolutely build a platform and put your wall tack on a platform you're gonna be spending a month two months three months four months in that tent on the ground is fine if you have a very flat very smooth area but a platform is a much better setup if you're going to be in it a long time and maybe your ground is a little bit unlevel or it's got some Hills to it now this tent that Brooke and I currently own is set up on a platform the platform is made out of old barn beams and rough sawn lumber and if you look down here at the flooring you can see we have this all seasoned patio carpet right over top of the rough boards you can build your platform out of anything you want but one thing I would say is make sure you screw all the parts together don't nail them because when you're done you're probably going to want to use that platform for some other project a deck a porch maybe you want to use that lumber to build the floor for a small toolshed whatever it is make sure you can take it apart and repurpose it if you're not going to leave the tent set up once your building projects done now let's imagine that you're going to set this tent up on the ground itself you'd set the tent up just like you normally would but you want some kind of a foreign keep the damp down you want to keep the bugs out of it you want to make sure that whatever kind of a floor and you put in if it's like a like a patio carpet it's not wicking moisture up from the soil so when you put your tent down put down the tarp that's the same size footprint as your tent on the inside then you can roll your patio carpet out on it and you're pretty much good to go my wife Brooke had this tent up in the Upper Peninsula Michigan last year for a couple months and she had it set up that way right on the ground with a tarp underneath and then the patio carpet over top of it was fantastic but we had a good flat piece of sandy ground if you're on a little bit of an angle or if you're gonna be there for a long time and you don't have great ground put it on a platform when you buy a wall tent one of the options is generally a tarp type rain fly cover this is an absolute must-have especially if you're going to be leaving your tent up for months and months you're gonna see a lot of weather buying a tarp style fitted rain fly like this it's probably the single best thing you can do to protect your investment in your wall time this is another thing I like this particular tent has these sewn in D bracket attachments not only for the rain fly but for the stake loops on the bottom of the tent another thing I like about that is when you put in a sauna and D bracket like that you've got fabric that is whole and you're sewing it in you're sewing in your attachment to that whole fabric when you put in a grommet you're cutting a hole out of the fabrics so you've just breached all the integrity of the fabric and then you press the grommet in I like this design better I would look for sewn in tie points over grommets my personal opinion I spent two months in a all tent on the Yukon River in 2014 spent five months living in a wall tent in 2015 another five months in 2016 and another five months in 2017 if you add that up with the time spent fishing out at our fish camp at Minto where we had a Walton I've spent over a year and a half of my life living in wall tents this wall tent was made by a company called Walton shop calm now the reason this is the tent we currently have are all the things I've already covered in this video it's also an American company owned by veterans and you can call and talk to the people who own the place if you're looking for a wall tent I would definitely suggest these guys not only that but they have the lowest prices on wall tents on the Internet they're doing everything that's important in a wall type right up front they're doing the extra corner reinforcement they're doing the ridgepole reinforcement they've got the sewn in tie points a good heavy-duty zipper a storm flap so you're not buying all this stuff as upgrades check them out it's a Walton shop calm I'm gonna put the link down below in the description tell them I sent you now that I've told you everything I love about a wall tent what to look for and what to avoid when you're buying a wall tent the wall tent company that I recommend let me talk about why you should want a wall tent versus a camper a camper is the first thing that comes to a lot of people's minds when they think about getting a temporary living arrangement set up while they build something else here's why I don't like campers well for starters living in a camper feels like your existing in a hallway everything in most campers is built on this hallway mentality here's where you walk and here's the stuff off to the side also a lot of campers have built-in closets they have built-in storage so you're stuck with whatever is already there they also almost always come with a bathroom that's got a shower and a toilet the shower is generally right over top of the toilet most people I know never use the shower in their camper a lot of them don't use the toilet in their camper because but they're at a campground where they've got outhouses when you are on your own property in your building one of the first things you're gonna want to do is you're gonna want to build an outhouse anyway the idea of having a camper and having that limited space that's dictated by the camper manufacturer I've done it I got through it I didn't enjoy it I didn't feel like I was living very comfortably I couldn't wait to get out of the camper having this table that you wedge into on the end that every day you're folding it down for another bed every time you pass somebody in the hallway you're literally just squeaking past them in this hallway area what about a dome tent well yeah if you're if you're super poor and you have a super high tolerance for its suffering and misery $100 and it's gonna keep the rain off you you're gonna be able to put your junk in it you know that when it comes to living on your property where you build there's pretty much endless possibilities you could get a shelter logic style shelter you could get a dome tent you could get a pup tent you could get a camper you could buy one of those portable storage buildings all of those are options the reason I made this video is because having done most of those things in the past I think the wall tent is the best option when everything is considered you've got a lot of space it's nice and bright it's heated with wood they have really good resale value it's just a cheerful way to live and you definitely want to live on your property you don't want to rent and commute back and forth because you'll never get your project done and you'll never get to move on to that new homestead so thank you guys so much for tuning in in the next installment of off-grid homesteading in 2020 I'm gonna go over the tools that you need to get not only your building project done but also to set up your property don't forget to hit sub and like and hit the little bell to get updates when I post videos thank you guys so much for watching Busch radical my name is Dave Whipple it'd be radical a we'll see you soon [Music]

Channel: Bushradical

Views: 335,126

Keywords: Wall Tent, off grid, off grid living, wall tent living, canvas wall tent, Dave Whipple, Canvas wall tent living, Hunting tent, Spike camp tent, Guiding tent

Id: pculP9_8Zlc

Length: 12min 53sec (773 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 08 2020