I just bought a Coleman Mackenzie Cabin 6L in the end of season sale to replace my ancient Vango Colorado. Was delighted with how quick and easy it was to pitch, but following a whole morning of persistent drizzle, I found water on the inside.
2 drip points from top of roof(not seams), drips beneath the opening window, and small puddles on the floor of the 2 left hand side corners near the bedroom anchoring points.
The Vango was hellish for condensation when camping in the UK, but the Coleman has much better built in ventilation and was pitched unoccupied in my back garden for best part of a week, so no humans adding moisture to the air during the night.
I assumed water inside was caused by ingress, but on re-testing (with an hour's worth of 'artificial' rain, as I couldn't get the real thing!), it seemed watertight. I would like to retest with several hours worth of rain, but weather not obliging...
Can anyone with a Mackenzie or other cabin shape advise if condensation tends to fall from top of roof? I never had a cabin tent before, but in the dome it always ran down the walls to the floor. Drips beneath the window certainly could be condensation, as there was misting on the plastic window, but more worrying are the actual pools of water in the 2 corners. However, the tent was up for a week unoccupied before it rained and the weather was pretty warm during the day, much cooler at night. I didn't open it up at all (it has permanent mesh vents) on the 4 days before while I waited for the rain, so can't say categorically that the water was not there before it rained, and with hindsight, I should have opened up to air and checked it daily.
I bought my Coleman Da Gama 6 off ebay at the end of last year. It was an ex display model and had been erected in a field for months so I wasn't expecting much. I erected it as soon as it arrived and within an hour it started to rain and rained for 3 days.
It was clear that the rain was not beading on the outside as the material looked like a wet rag so I feared the worst. However, when I went inside, apart from a couple of obvious leaks from seams which caused a small pool of water in a couple of corners, it was bone dry.
As soon as it stopped raining and dried out I resprayed it with Fabsil. I didn't do anything about the seams as I didn't have any seam sealer at the time. Within a few hours of spraying it, it started to rain again and rained for another couple of days. It looked good and the rain was now beading on the outside but when I went inside there were drips all over the place, from the centre of the roof. The seams had stopped leaking.
Nobody had been in the tent but the weather had been hot and sunny one minute then cold and raining the next...ideal conditions for condensation although I have never seen that amount of condensation in a tent before.
It was suggested on these boards that if the Fabsil was not dry when it rained it might have acted like a wicking agent allowing water through, and that might be the case.
I have used the tent 3 or 4 times since then but it hasn't actually been rained on, however, there has been a couple of nights of very heavy dew (and may have rained on one night as the tent was quite wet in the morning) and no water has come inside at all. The inside of the material does feel damp if you touch it though which I think is normal in many polyester tents (although my Outwell was always bone dry).
I can only suggest that your problem probably was condensation as the material itself doesn't normally leak as it is waterproofed during manufacture. There has been lots of similar threads this year about rain or condensation dripping off the roofs of tents and I think we have had some ideal condensation forming weather conditions this year which has caused it.
If it isn't leaking when a hose is played on it then I would suggest the tent is fine. I am on a water meter so I am certainly not going to play a hose on mine and will wait to see if there are any further problems when it eventually gets rained on when camping.
I had a Mackenzie Cabin 4 and it seemed to have a lot more condensation than my new Sunncamp one. In fact it had so much that we sent it back and the second one did exactly the same.
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Topic: condensation or leaks?
