I'm a new member, although I have used the site for a while now. The reason I have now become a member is because I wanted to leave a review of the tent I have just had to return for the second time.
I now need a new tent and we are looking at the Vango Nile 800. Does anyone out there have one that has been thoroughly tested in our glorious English weather?!
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We used our Nile 800 in Cornwall for the first two weeks of the school holidays. Now, the first week was reasonable weather just windy and so we didn't see any problems with the tent - lovely size, reasonably easy to put up (but heavy) and stable. It does take up a lot of room in the three packs it comes in.
Then the rain came. The tent started leaking through the horizontal sections of the zips on the side pods and was especially bad where strain was being put on the bedroom side. There were also several leaks through seams and toggles which I would have fixed with sealant if the major leak through the zip wasn't present. We returned the tent when we got home and got a different tent as a replacement (Hartford XXL).
Maybe we were unlucky as Vango are supposed to be a good make.
I'm beginning to feel a slight sense of panic and desperation. We don't really want to fork out thousands for a TT, but we can't seem to find a decent size tent that doesn't either leak (VAngo Nile 800, Royal Bordeaux 6 XL and most Outwells by all accounts) or shred (Sprayway Valley 8).
Apparently Quechua don't just test the waterproofness of the material used to make their tents, they test the whole tent in a special rain room. That way they can see if the seams and zips leak. If only they made a tent with 3 bedrooms (have to separate the devil children) and an annexe (essential for the loo).
We too have a nile 800, and have had a few problems with it leaking through the pod zip sections (pods were unattached). Also, since the front door opening is so big ie across the width of the tent, this is a weak point and all of our pegging points have come away from the tent with relatively little wind. Other minor leaks were also noted.
I am in the process of trying to return the tent to Vango for inspection, bought the tent from Outdoorgear4u.
I will arrange to get the tent picked up this week hopefully.
------------- Linda
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Topic: Vango Nile 800
