Date:         Tue, 15 Jun 1999 11:29:27 -0700
Reply-To:     Alistair Bell <albell@UVIC.CA>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Alistair Bell <albell@UVIC.CA>
Subject:      poor man's awning - another solution
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I posted this last year:

I am a tarp fan, and I like lots of headroom so i decided against affixing
the tarp to the raingutter, (that way also does not provide enough slope to
deal with  the rain that you encounter on Vancouver Island), so i decided
to try and attach the tarp to the pop top.


Warning! lengthy and verbose description up ahead!


My solution is a green, coated, ripstop nylon tarp bought from Mountain
Equipment Coop. It comes with its own stuff bag and packs very small. It is
rectangular, 2.9m X 3.9m. It has reinforced grommet holes along the edges
and webbing loops at the corner.


I attach one corner of the tarp to the roof hinge mechanism (pop top up),
via a hefty o-ring and little metal "s" hook. The long side of the tarp is
alongside the van. I attach the tarp to the front of the pop top (I screwed
on a little nylon hook to the fibreglass "beam" that runs across the front
of the top, right close to the side of the top. I got this hook at Peetz
Tent and Awning in Victoria, a great source of material and hardware) again
using a beefy o-ring this time the o-ring was fed through one of the
grommets on the tarp. This left about 1m of tarp dangling down onto the
luggage box. I attach a bungee cord to the corner of that dangling bit and
pull it across to a tie-down point on the other side of the luggage box.
Now the inboard edge of the tarp is seen to be tucked under the edge of the
pop top, protecting that side and giving a good peak for rain to flow off.
The flap on the front also protects, to some degree, the front window of
the canvas.


To support the outboard edge of the tarp I made a series of collapsible
aluminium poles. I didn't have any tent poles to spare, so i made them up
myself from some 6061 (i think) series aluminium tube (bought at the Metals
SuperMarket, expensive but great for small purchases and browsing for
ideas). I bought two diameters of tubing, one diameter to the pole itself ,
and a smaller diameter that slid perfectly inside the pole to act as a
connector. I epoxied the connector part inside the poles to form a male
connector. The smart thing that I did (patting myself on the back)., was to
make the pole sections in 2 different sizes: 4 "long" sections of about 1m,
and 4 sections of 0.5m. This allows me to vary the height of the outboard
edge of the tarp to suit the conditions. In balmy sunny weather, where the
tarp is used for shade, I use the long sections plus the short sections
giving me a 2.5m height at the edge. If the weather turns bad, I can adjust
the height right down to (never have gone this low!) 0.5m. I also can have
one end of the tarp higher that the other, mimicking the angle of the pop
top. This works very well, esp. when during wind driven drizzle, and gives a
great slope for the rain to drain (in fact you can collect the rain in a
bucket off that low corner).


Oh I forgot to mention, I guy the poles with some utility nylon cord and
tent pegs. I found some great military surplus pegs a few years ago in a
store in Williams Lake. They are shaped like a cross between a snow picket
and deadman. Very easy to drive onto the ground and hold very well.


The tarp is much easier to set up than to describe, and has the advantage
of being portable so that you can have it strung away from the van if
needed.


The ripstop material is quiet in the wind.


Another (dubious) advantage of the tarp is its almost unlimited diddle
potential. You can spend many a happy hour adjusting the guy lines and the
pole heights to come up with new and better configurations :)


This tarp has been field-proven over the last two years, from windy(very)
and wet Nitinat Lake area on Vancouver Island, to the "blistering heat" of
the Cariboo-Chilcotin on the mainland.




Alistair