I have had my tent, an REI Quarter Dome Plus, for about seven years and it has been used on many tours during that time. This summer when I was camping in Rome, NY, I experience a heavy rain and some water leaking through in some places on the floor of my tent. It was pitched properly and it was on a hillside. The problem was that the water proofing in the tent floor and ground cloth were showing their age.

At first I thought about buying another tent. A tent of similar quality was going to be expensive. After some research I decided to treat my tent using some cleaning and water proofing products from NIKWAX.

I used NIKWAX Tech Wash for cleaning and Tent & Gear Solarwash for waterproofing. To clean the rainfly I threw it into our front loading clothes washer with about 3.5 ounces of Tech Wash. I used cold water and slow spin. I used about 1.5 ounces in a bucket of water in the sink to wash and rinse the ground cloth. I also mixed about 1.5 ounces in a bucket to do the tent floor. Placing the tent with the bottom up on our patio, I used a sponge to wipe the bottom with the Tech Wash solution. You want to wipe, not scrub, to avoid damaging the material. I used a garden hose to rinse.

The tent floor is about 8′ x 4.5′. That is important because the size determines how much Tent & Gear Solarwash is needed. I used almost all of two 17 ounce bottles. Instead of using the squeeze spray that came with the bottles, I used an airless sprayer to coat the outside surfaces of the tent bottom, ground cloth, and rainfly. While not necessary, the airless sprayer made application much easier and provided an even coat.

The Solarwash is applied while the materials are wet from washing and rinsing. Beads of Solarwash form as the materials are drying. The directions recommend wiping up those beads as they are drying. That is a good idea since the beads would take quite some time to dry and since wiping with a sponge also acts to spread the Solarwash coating.

The process did not create much of a mess and everything dried quickly in the sun on a 75 degree day. Of course, I still need to do a quality check by actually using the tent on a tour. I’m confident because NIKWAX has a good reputation.