It’s my first time posting so be kind! We are family campers who generally go for a few long weekends every year. We bought the airgo solus horizon 6 around 6 years ago and it has been great up to last weekend. Over the weekend 2 of our air beams exploded in quick succession. This has caused significant damage to to exterior and interior of the tent and we will probably need to get a new tent. I am wanting to know if other people have had this problem with air beam tents after a similar time period? We had not had any of the beams replaced (nor had we been advised to after a certain time period) and they were inflated to the correct pressure (although no pressure released for the moderately hot day as this was not something we had done previously and to be honest the warmer weather was a surprise and we were not present when it happened!) I appreciate that the beams puncture but did not expect this to cause so much damage to the fabric. It was a moderately hot day but have camped in much hotter conditions and had no issues. I have friends who have air beam tents and had beams puncturing or ballooning but this doesn’t cause the damage that has happened to ours. One of our friends even had a beam pop this weekend but not with the same damage to tent.
So my main questions are:
1. have people had this problems after a number of years use? (with folding / packing etc I expect the beams will deteriorate) Any suggestions to prevent it?
2. Does anyone routinely replace air beams after a number of years?
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I think there are a lot of variables and it would be incorrect to make some kind of sweeping statement about airbeams, although if you go on social media youll always find someone with something sweeping to say.
As you say, there are a number of variables such as how the tent is stored, whether you simply got one of the more "Marginal" ones off of the production line, whether it was an expensive tent to start with, it's also quite possible that the fabric ripped more than it would have done if the tent was new as the fabric is perished, or if the tent has been reproofed.
Could even be that the fabric itself started to fail before the beam meaning there wasnt enough pressure to hold the beam so the beam burst (stitching rarely fails but the fabric bursts off the stitches at the seams).
There have been significant improvements in both tent fabrics and the quality of beams themselves in recent years.
Personally I'd advise against new beams - even if you can find them - your tent is 6 years old, your new beams will last, say, 6 years. I doubt the fabric on your airgo will remain particularly viable for another 6 years so it wont be worth the considerable expense.
We suffered from bulging tubes after nearly 100 nights in our 2014 Outwell Concorde, but managed to catch it before any more damage was done, by wrapping the grey sleeve with gaffer tape across the tears. Checking and re-working the repairs as necessary once a season got us another 100+ nights out of it before upgrading.
As the tent got older, the woven PE tube sleeves deplasticised and became increasingly brittle, so we'd reduce the pressure if hot weather was forecast. It would probably be sensible to have somebody inside during initial pitching to help the tent up.
My understanding is that the majority of these problems were sorted from 2016 onwards. That said, Outwell stopped offering their "SmartAir" (single-point inflation) setup in heavier polycotton tents, suggesting it was never fully fixed. There are also stories of isolated manufacturing defects causing problems, so it'd be worth doing a thorough test pitch before your first trip.
Many Vango owners invest in one or two spare beams, but I've not heard of anyone proactively replacing beams every x years.
Where the beams have actually exploded and torn through the canopy, there's not a lot you can do, and I don't think it would be worth repairing. You'll be able to find similar sorry tales in the review section on here. I did a post about our experience here, but the photos have been deleted .
I will make a sweeping statement...I rarely hear of any damage problems with poled tents either fibreglass or steel... a breakage due to a serious storm on extremely rare occasions perhaps. However, I don't think I have heard anything but problems and burst tubes on air tents and personally wouldn't touch one with a barge pole...who wants a tent that is likely to burst it's poles at any minute and collapse?
I think the biggest issue was that most of the mainstream manufacturers up to 2016 couldn’t admit that there were serious design flaws, else they’d have had to recall and refund the entire product class.
These days the problems are generally just isolated manufacturing defects, and your tent will be fixed or replaced under warranty - rather than the flat out denials / accusations of user error of yore. Hence the advice to test pitch thoroughly, (well) before the first trip.
The whole sorry business has turned a lot of early adopters against a technology which has a lot going for it - say I, from the comfort of a Karsten.
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We had a beam go in our first airbeam tent back in 2016 - faulty cable tie enable the beam to bulge and then burst, this was fixed under warranty, and because it was a vango with internal beams, our bodging using cling film and gaffer tape worked a treat!
Fast forward a year to early 2017 and we decided to buy a second (smaller) airbeam, another vango - this time a polycotton. This tent served us very well, never any beam issues whatsoever and we put it through it's paces both in the UK and France.
We have now bought a new tent with steel poles, but that wasn't because we had an issue with airbeams, merely that the layout of this particular tent best suited our needs
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Topic: Airgo solus horizon 6 beams exploded
via mobile 31/8/2021 at 11:47am
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