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OK - so I slept in our people carrier on Saturday. (Merida, not kicked out of house)
Had a duvet and stuff, but woke up totally freezing (there was a frost on the ground)
Spoke to some people later, and a couple said "Oh, you'd have been warmer in a tent"
Firstly, is this actually true, and if so - why!?
Better insulated.
Depends. If you were in the same sleeping bag on the same sleeping mat, then there would have been no real difference
Have two windows slightly open- gets rid of the condensation
I would have thought the car was better insulated. However, a tent is more breathable. It could be you were a bit damp from condensation (from breathing) so felt colder.
Frozen in your own morning breath - eeuw!
do not ever sleep in a ford transit.
ever!!!!.
[i]Have two windows slightly open[/i] Aye that'll make things warmer 🙄
Done quite a bit of camping and never been freezing cold and our sleeping bags aren't particularly fancy. Never slept in a car but I would imagine it would get cold, all that metal and all.
Proper campers have insulation in the body panles, but even those with a high percentage of glass coverage will get cold. A proper double skinned tent is far far far better insulated to the ambient temperature than something made out of glass and metal.
If the vehicle is carpetted and you have a sleeping mat, put a sheet up inside, to make a little tent in the car. Toasty.
Slept in both cars and tents, sometimes in the same weekend. I'd say the car was warmer but more uncomfy - there's simply a lot more insulation in a car despite the metal and glass outer skin - I still suggest this is better than a fabric skin as this never "holds" the air. If you sleep on the floor of a van you're likely to be colder as the metal conducts heat away more rapidly, but with a like-for-like carry-mat or seat as a base to lie on, the method of heat transport away is through you heating the air (convection). In a car the convection is free convection to a pseudo-sealed volume of air. In the tent your air is a free-flowing fluid passing through the tent, extracting the heat faster (forced convection is better at heat removal) and its not a closed system meaning the air effectively never gets warmer unless its a very still night and your tent has few vents.
A tent in thick snow is lovely, all vents get covered, the snow piles up a lovely insulating layer and its pretty damn warm on the inside!
Cars are bigger than tents so it takes more of your body heat to warm them up?
Cars don't have any heating insulation at all, they're designed to get the heat from the engine to warm the car. Insulation would just be unecessary weight. I guess the sound insualtion might trap some heat though?
I think the main problem is that the metal outer of a car is a very good conductor of heat. I/e. it conducts the heat out of the car.
A double skin tent will be warmer. Your body will heat up the inner tent (smaller is better) and the layer of air betwixt inner and outer acts as an insulator.
A decent quality mountain tent will always be warmer - you get a nice 2-4 inch layer of air between the inner and outer to act as insulation. I have slept in my tent when it was well below freezing outside and it was many degrees warmer inside. A single candle burning in the tent adds appreciable warmth. The vents are adjustable so you can keep the airflow to a minimum - the outer has no gaps to let air out other than between the outer and the ground and even those are very small and lower than the mudwalling on the groundsheet. With hot air rising you gt a bubble of warm air in the tent
Less volume of air and more insulation = warmer. I suspect those who find cars warmer have not been using decent quality tents
Tent ^ for the reasons TJ says.
surely with any wind, the air between the two tent layers is continually changing?
Good quality tents here thanks, two of (Vango and Khyam), and relatively expensive sleeping bags and thermarests. My larger tent is actually the better at keeping warmer as it has less mesh material on the inner so lets the air pass through less well. I just find wind whips away any insulating layer of air almost instantly. You're fine if your inner is fairly tight-knit as this maintains a bubble of warm air inside the inner, but the gap between inner and outer is pointless for anything other than avoiding condensation. Tent fabric has virtuatlly no thermal resistance (much like glass) so the heat is not held in by the gap between skins, it just passes through the fabrics to ambient.
Having spent the last 3 nights in just such a situation on the west coast I can conclusively say I'd rather have been in my car. I've never had my car interior reach -ves despite me leaving it out in -10 winters (always leave a small bottle of water in boot), whereas a similar volume of water in a bottle inside my tent has frozen in the past in as little as -2 with 2 people in it (the tent not the water).
I've never had my car interior reach -ves despite me leaving it out in -10 winters
It must depend on the car to some degree, I had a bottle of water freeze inside my car this winter whilst it was parked on my driveway, in Nottingham - not anywhere particularly cold, think they said it had been -8 that night.
True, much as it probably depends on your tent type too. Though "My car" would be select any a tin-box pug 1990 205 to a slightly warmer and comfier toyota from the same era, or my 2001 pug 306 estate!
I've never had my car interior reach -ves despite me leaving it out in -10 winters
Same as ebygomm - I had frozen water in my car on a couple of occasions over the winter
Right.
Someone put up a tent in their garden tonight and leave thermometers in the tent and their car.
Thread closed.
*re-opens thread*
You forgot about a heat source. D'oh!
Tent is warmer everytime, I've slept in cars even in summer and still been cold.
I'm genuinely willing to do this if I can find a heat source that wont burn down my tent and will last all night and be close to the output of a human asleep. Any suggestions?
I'm still swearign it is down to air movement immediately around the heat source - this is vastly higher in a tent.
I'd rather be in a tent any time - I've spent many nights in a Transit & it's even cold in the summer
OK so I need 100w of heat output, spread over an area and not exceeding the surface temp of a human - anyone donate lots of reptile heater pads?
100W??? I think you use a bit less when asleep...
There is no air movement in my tent when its all buttoned down - it gets really stuffy
I've never had my car interior reach -ves despite me leaving it out in -10 winters (always leave a small bottle of water in boot)
Would you sleep in the boot?
On several occasions I've woken to frozen condensation on the inside of the windscreen. A decent tent and thermarest is definitely warmer.
I've slept in quite a few vans and never been cold, admittedly in summer and using a 4 season sleeping bag and thermarest. Main advantage is not having to fight with zips when you wake up in the middle of the night still drunk and bursting for a pee.
Am I the only one on here with any brains? Leave the engine running .....
🙂
you can have a fire in a car though without worrying about it, like you would in a tent.
In my experience tents really don't burn as well as some would like you to believe!
SST - MemberAm I the only one on here with any brains? Leave the engine running .....
And run a hose from the exhaust to the interior for additional heat *
[*] *awaits a rollicking from some demented forumite because their father/wife/dog committed suicide by this means.....[/*]
its warmer in a bivvy bag than the car FFS ....only time the car wins is when the midges are about but i use my -20 bag in my bivvy bag in the car even in summer ....out doors in the same weather ill use a +5 bag .....after waking up freezing in the car once at a dh race
AndyP - Memberyou can have a fire in a car though without worrying about it, like you would in a tent.
😀 Go on - find that thread Andy....
?
Another good thing about sleeping in cars is that when you wake up hungover you can just press the electric windows button, hark out of the window, then shut it again. No need to even move your head in the slightest. No faffing with zips and the like.
Reading festival 1992 Sunday night slept in mates metro, second coldest nights 'sleep' ever. Coldest was stone bench in Weston super mud on bonfire night (beach race weekend) in the late 80s.
The only time Ive tried to sleep in my car is after a night out partying, with just my sweat covered clothes for insulation, so not really fair, but Ive been freezing every time!
AndyP - apologies. I thought you were making a humorous reference to [url= http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/backpacking-tents ]this thread[/url]
hmmm....thanks for the multitude of replies. I'm liking the tent 'logic' in most cases actually. I was really surprised how cold it was, given that I had two thermarest type things, a duvet, and the dog sleeping bag / blanket in the end!
Tent in the back of an estate car
Mini inside a big tent
i slept in the back of a van in Afan on sat night found it was a bit cold ... woke up and some guys in a tent next to us were in the car with the heaters on ....
We sleep in our Van all the time and it definitely seems warmer than sleeping in a tent. One heck of a lot less hassle too!!
Our van is fully carpeted etc tho, which might make a difference?? We also sleep on a platform which is well off the ground and has great insulation under our bodies.
metal car will radiate heat to space much more readily than a fabric tent which'll convect heat away.
Temp differential car-space is loads more than tent-ambient air so more energy lost and therefore colder in car. End of miserable thermodynamics refresher.
If you wanna stay in a warm vehicle, buy an Espace: they're plastic.
OK so I need 100w of heat output, spread over an area and not exceeding the surface temp of a human - anyone donate lots of reptile heater pads?
What's wrong with a 100w/60w light bulb? I think a 60watt light blulb will be enough.
Slightly OT - I don't know if its an urban myth or not but I was told there was a case where a bunch of lads decided to sleep in a van overnight. They went to the pub, got bladdered, came back and crashed in the bag of van and shut the doors, with it having a bulkhead they all ended up asphysixiated.(???)
hot_fiat - radiative losses will be negligible in comparison with the size of convective loses due to air moving through the tent. For radiation from the car to be more than the tent you'd need a) a larger surface area and b) for the car to be at a temp higher than the tent - I dont think its sensible to assume you'd raise the temperature of the skin of the car by more than a fracton of a degree by placing a human inside it.
milkie - 100w from a lightbulb = one very hot spot with high convective loss at that point, different to 100w (the supposed value of heat from humans) over a larger surface area due to lower surface temp.
scotabroad - suppose it's perfectly possible if the bulkhead is sealed properly and the door seals work, and there are no vents in the rear. I dont know how accurate any of those assumptions are though.
I have a cheap and nasty tent and it is without doubt warmer than the car in similar conditions.
In fact, and here is a scientific test for you... I once slept in the car to allow a mate to have his way with a lady in our tent. He messed it up, she left and he slept alone in the tent.
We had the same sleeping bags, it was identical conditions and I woke up freezing and he was toasty warm.
Not really a scientific test - I'm often toasty when my missus is freezing in the same tent with the same bag and roll mat.
In true mythbusters form I'm going to do this with a 100w bulb I think. Problem is going to be getting the power to the car as it has to be parked on the road. I can only really do this over two nights though so I'll have to pick two nights with similar ambients and wind. Give me time!
I know it is not a scientifc test... did you not pick up on the sarcasm!?
Still, in my experience tent = warmer given the same or similar conditions.
large areas of single pane glass should give you a clue as to why cars get pretty dang cold.
No, I didnt 🙂
And large areas of single pane glass are a damn sight better than large areas of air-porous fabric. If I asked you to replace your single-glazed house windows with a thin layer of mulsin would you think it woudl be warmer?!
OK, I'm not a scientist or anything but I am a Military arctic survival instructor and one of our golden rules is never to sleep in a vehicle if there is a tent available, possibly for some of the reasons hot fiat says.
I am talking about severely cold conditions here (-15 and below), my personal experience (several trips to Norway) would tell me to go for the tent every time. as an example, I once broke down in a BV oversnow vehicle and had to wait a day for recovery, it was ****in orrible! as for a bottle of water never freezing in a vehicle, seen it several times.
A lot will also depend on what you are sleeping, i.e. how well insulated you are fom the ground otherwise your body will always try to heat up it's suroundings or anything it is in contact with. This could include a car interior which is designed to be heated, not to insulate.
This probably hasn't helped at all but I feel better now.
Correct me if I am wrong but I don't believe that any successful attempts on Everest or either of the Poles have involved the use of a car for overnight shelter. Given that you don't have to put up with trying to erect a car in the teeth of a howling gale there must be some very good reason why these people use tents instead of cars. The only logical conclusion that I can come to is that tents are warmer than cars.
However I once spent a weekend on Dartmoor in early February with snow on the ground spending one night in the tent and one in the car. There were four of us with a Mini Metro and a two man tent so we rotated the sleeping. The car was warmer. So I learnt from that experience that one should always check that the doors zips of your tent actually work before heading for anywhere remotely cold.
When I used to go out on the lash to various places in my yoof I always used to pack a sleeping bag just in case.
Spent many a warm and cosy night sleeping in my Honda CRX, saying that the leather seats made it really comfortable. Always cracked a window a little though.
Saying that I have also often cooked my ass off in a small 2 man tent on more than a few occasions
I reckon the vehicle is colder, especially if it's a van with a metal floor. The air circulation underneath is wot cools it down so much. Surface to volume ratios and all that. I've been far colder in a car thatn in a tent, in similar conditions.
Another vote for tent being warmer. Can't be bothered to do any science - sorry, there's already enough contradictory stuff in this thread that I'd just be adding to the noise. Have however done both numerous times and speaking from experience. Mind you, I'm guessing some of you are sleeping in the seats in a car, whilst I'm using the 1.8m of flat floor I get in the back of mine with seats folded, along with a thermarest. Have done the car thing more than a tent recently, as it's just so convenient, and I have winter weight sleeping bags.