Safe camping with your Springbar tent

Camping with a Springbar tent is normally a safe and rewarding way to spend your leisure time. Just as with your personal home, though, there are precautions that must be taken to keep safe in the outdoors.

Fire Safety

The 100% cotton canvas material used in Springbar tents is not particularly flammable, but it will burn if held in extended contact with an open flame. If ignited, our cotton fabric tends to burn very slowly and does not burst into flame.

Currently, there are 7 states (California, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey and New York) that have restrictions on sales of tents without a fire retardant treatment. Mostly, these restrictions involve sales to groups and usage in commercial applications. If you live in one of these states, we encourage you to call or email customer service prior to ordering a tent so that we can help you to determine whether any legal restrictions apply in your particular situation.

Be aware that even materials treated with flame retardants can become less effective after prolonged use or weather exposure — the fire retardant is typically the first thing to degenerate on any treated fabric. The best measure of safety is to never expose any tent fabric to an open flame or heat source. Keep fuel-based appliances like stoves, heaters and lanterns well away from tent walls. Don't smoke or use candles inside your tent. Battery lanterns are far safer than gas or propane lanterns for lighting your tent. Pitch your tent a safe distance from your campfire. If all this seems like common sense, it is. In over a half-century of manufacturing, selling and using tents made of our special cotton material we've concluded that our fabrics do not pose any significant safety threat when used in conjunction with common sense .

The nylon oxford cloth that we use on Springbar screenhouses and in the door panels of the Springbar expandable tents has a fire retardant applied to it that meets the requirements of all 50 states. However, the same precautions of keeping flame sources at a safe distance apply to this material as well. Any tent fabric will burn if held in contact with a flame long enough.

Cold weather and tent heaters

We do not recommend the use of heaters inside a tent to keep warm in cold weather. In addition to possibly providing an ignition source, many heaters may cause other risks in a confined space such as a tent with closed doors and windows. Any appliance that burns fuel also uses available oxygen and exhausts carbon monoxide, which can build up to hazardous levels.

There are tent heaters available from Zodi that are designed to combust their fuel outside of the tent and, if used properly, will not pose carbon monoxide issues.

The best insurance against the cold is a warm sleeping bag placed on top of an insulating pad. If you lying directly on the tent floor, you will lose heat by conduction to the cold ground. If you are using a cot, you will lose heat to the cold air beneath the cot by convection. Either way, an insulating pad will help a great deal in keeping you warm.

When chosing a mattress, consider the R-value, which is measure of its insulating ability. The thicker self-inflating pads such as those made by Therm-a-rest® are the best in this respect. See the selection of insulating pads we offer at our online store. Next best are open-cell foam pads. Air mattresses, commonly used by summertime campers, provide almost no insulation in cold weather, since air can freely circulate within the mattress and allow heat loss by convection to occur.