UKH

Was in Orco Valley and got ransacked by a fox in the night and it tore a fair sized hole (about the size of a football) in my tent. It ran off with my water bottle.

Does anyone have any experience of doing their own patch repairs with adhesive of this size. If so what materials do you use? And is it worth the bother of doing myself?

...or best to send it to a company that will fix it for approx £40? 

Tent is only worth about £300

Thanks

James

With a hole.that size I would definitely be sending it off to be fixed by a professional 

In a break with UKC tradition, I'll answer the question you asked first: no, never tried it.

The longer answer as to what to do depends on you, your finances and the exact spot in the tent which has the hole.  If it's an area that is an obvious high stress point, close to the pole sleeves, a guy rope attachment or a peg loop, then I suspect that no matter how professionally the repair is done, it'll pull loose sooner rather than later; I'd have second thoughts about using the tent in anything but gentle weather conditions.  If the area is away from an obvious high stress point, in the middle of a panel of fabric say, then you might fare better, although it has to be recognised that a correctly-pitched tent requires all the fabric on the flysheet to be under a degree of tension in order to be taut.  It's your call as to how much you'd trust its longevity.

Were it me, if finances dictated that I had to get it repaired then I'd pay the £40 to get it done by someone else; but I'd have a look at the cost of new, similar or better tents too and decide whether I wanted to put that £40 to a new tent, whether I needed that new tent between now and the new year and if I could wait that long, see what was in the new year sales.  Or try eBay, you might strike lucky now that most people have stopped thinking about pitching a tent until the spring.

I can share your pain, having had to repair a tent with duck tape in the past whilst many miles from home.  It worked, but I really don't recommend it unless there's no other choice.

T.   

Spinnaker repair tape is the stuff to use on flysheets assuming you can get it to stick. Much lighter than duck tape and doesn't 'creep' like duck tape will under tension in the sun.

Have tried betrafol tape? 

Have you tried betrafol tape ?

My mum used to make and repair tents after all sorts of damage, usually caused by us kids being careless and I've modified and repaired a few tents. The ease of repairing a tent depends on how posh a tent it is, the thinner the material the harder it is to work with IMO, and siliconised materials are a real slippery pain which you'll struggle to stick together with the usual adhesives like storm seal/seam grip.

If it's just a PU coated nylon then you can buy material from profabrics/point north for very little and with a very simple bit of machine gluing and sewing you can easily make a very functional repair. The trick is to get the fabric of the tent you are repairing  and the patch fabric as flat as possible to each other without stretches and wrinkles so that the forces are distributed evenly.

One other thing to consider if you don't want to DIY, don't discount speaking to a general seamstress. So long as you explain very carefully what you want done (because they are unlikely to have the background knowledge) they can probably sort it for less than the cost of a specialist outfit like LSR.

Another vote for spinnaker tape, or betrofol.

Thanks guys. I'll probably send it off to get repaired. It's not at a high stress point - On a door panel on one of the vestibules. I'm generally not aiming to do it in extreme conditions, so should hold up after a repair (famous last words).

Fox, you say?  There are many beasts of the forest that can lay waste to a tent.  I lost a tent to a porcupine.  You wouldn't believe the number of holes a porcupine can punch in a tent when manoeuvring around inside, deciding what is edible and what is not.