Awning maintenance: how to make your awning last for years
Your awning or canopy provides extra living space, shelter from wind and rain, or cooling shade on warm days. But unfortunately, it doesn't last forever. With these maintenance tips, you can extend the lifespan of your tent, awning, or canopy.
A tent, canopy, or awning doesn't require a lot of maintenance. The most important tip you can probably figure out yourself: make sure you store them dry. Even with the slightest doubt, hang them out for a few days. It's quite a job for a large awning, but fortunately, you can zip out the side walls and front – that helps. Also, make sure you store the tent poles dry, preferably in a separate place, so they don't stain the tent fabric.
Carpet beater
Over time, a tent, awning, or canopy can start to leak, and intensive use can also cause a stain here and there. Loose seams are also a point of attention, as are zippers that are about to give up. At the end of your holiday, it's smart to make a list of such things so you can have a professional look at them. But there are also things you can do yourself. Beating it out, for example. For this, you set up the tent on a rain-free day and beat the dust off from the inside with a carpet beater. Be careful with the windows, as they can't handle that. Afterwards, thoroughly clean the outside of the tent with a brush.
Windows and flaps
Clean windows and the plastic flaps at the bottom – mud flaps – with lukewarm soapy water and a damp cloth. You can also use that soapy water later to clean the tent poles and pegs. Steel tent poles can become a bit rusty where they slide into each other. You remove that rust with waterproof sandpaper and then spray some clear varnish over it. Make sure everything is bone dry again when you store it.
Stains and tears
Over the years, stains can appear on the tent fabric. From bird droppings, for example, or resin if you've camped under conifers. You can remove dried bird droppings with a brush. Resin is a different story: if you tackle it with a knife, you'll damage the tent fabric. Over time, it will dry out further and then crumble. You can't really remove it. In any case, never use soap – that affects the waterproofing of the fabric.
During your inspection round, you may have come across small tears in the tent fabric – there are special repair kits for this in the camping shop, with adhesive strips. Larger tears should be repaired by a professional – a good tent is worth that investment. For the groundsheet, there are self-adhesive repair kits available in the camping shop – immediately take a spare kit for your next holiday.
Mold and leaking seams
A major annoyance is mold in the tent fabric. We then say that 'the weather' is in the tent. This occurs if the tent is still damp when you stored it. Mold in a cotton tent is hardly removable; in a synthetic tent, you can try it with a small splash of bleach in a full bucket of lukewarm water, carefully brush and then rinse well with clean water.
Leaks can occur due to age, but also due to bubble-blowing children at the campsite: soap affects the waterproof coating. Special products are available in the camping shop to re-impregnate your tent, but you must first know what type of fabric your tent is made of – you need a different product for cotton tents than for synthetic tent fabric.
Waterproofing
Incidentally, even new tents can leak, but that is almost always at the seams. These are stitched with 'swelling thread' that first needs to expand to fill the stitch holes – which is why a new tent first needs a rain shower before it is waterproof at the seams. Seams of synthetic tents are taped to prevent leakage. Over the years, this tape can age. There are products in tubes to make them waterproof again. You apply it (neatly) and then such a tent can last for years again.
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