Things nobody thinks about at first

So saga of my Tent rental business continues.

Some of the tents that I’ve purchased for rentals are called ‘pole tents’. These tents have a canopy section (the part that’s shields the folks from rain/sun) and, (wait for it…) poles.

These poles live at the 4 corners (and the 4 sides) of the tent (if your tent is square. You’ll need more of them if it’s rectangular, or some other polygon).

One end of each of these poles attaches to the canopy, and the other end rests on the earth. This however is not enough to keep the tent in place. Obviously if you don’t anchor the poles in their upright position, they’ll fall over (gravity and all).

That means you’ll need to drive stakes into the earth around the tent, and then affix some sort of rope or strap from the pole/canopy, down to the stakes.

Now this opens 2 more cans of worms. What stakes to use and what straps/ropes to use.

Upon some research, I’ve decided to purchase 40″ steel, double headed stakes. They look like this:

These stakes are heavy, and long. In order to drive these stakes, you could use a sledgehammer. This would certainly kill me after only a couple of stakes. So, I did more research and found that there exists a range of gas/electric powered ‘stake drivers’ on the market. Apparently, enough folks drive stakes on the daily that it makes sense for some companies to come along and create devices that make working with them easier.

So I ordered one of these too. It’ll be here this week, and I’ll review it once it comes in and I’ve ran it for a while.

Next of course, you’ll need to remove these stakes. I dunno if you’ve ever tried to pull a tent stake up before, but it can be difficult. These stakes are driven almost 4 FEET into the earth. Needless to say, these are going to be tough to pull up. So, I purchased a levered stake puller too.

Now for rope/straps.

Stakes alone won’t do anything. You need to tie the tent canopy/poles to the stakes. I could use traditional ropes and knots (which I’m learning to tie). This of course is not optimal. That said I ordered about 20 ratcheting tie-straps to do this job. That way, I can drive some stakes all around the tent, pull up one corner of the tent and strap it to the stakes on that corner. Repeat for all corners, and this job is done.

I’m really excited about setting my tents up and testing them out for the first time. The devices should all arrive this week.