Overlaping tarps??

**miisterwright** · 08-13-2008, 11:15

Originally Posted by jaiden

I grew up in NC and have been through a bunch of hurricanes and the night of which I speak is the most rain I've ever seen. The water rolled off just fine when it was a "normal" rain, but once the 3 fire hoses of rain turned on it became a mad scramble to figure out a better pitch. At first I stood under it, holding up the part that was collecting rain. It collected at least 5 gallons in just a few seconds! I checked the weather radar on my cellphone and there was a small but extremely powerful storm cell stuck against the side of the mountain where I was hanging.

...and this is all with the stock HH tarp that barely covers anything??? Did everything get soaked or what?

**jaiden** · 08-13-2008, 19:18

yep, stock tarp. The hammock and pad stayed dry. An UQ might have gotten wet.

I got soaked despite my poncho, since the instant I raised my arms it was like each one turned into a downspout. Fortunately I was in my synthetic skivvies underneath so I was able to wipe off the worst of it and also fortunately it wasn't too cold at that point so I didn't mind it so much.

It was quite an adventure. I have newfound respect for the HH stock tarp, but I did wish I had brought my JRB 10x11 instead

**miisterwright** · 08-13-2008, 22:42

seriously... but even when I was wanting to get a Hennessy, I didn't think I'd be able to trust that little tarp for anything more than clear skys. I think my 13x10 claytor is small.

**jaiden** · 08-14-2008, 06:15

you'd be surprised, it actually worked quite well. Certainly no room for error though!

**miisterwright** · 08-19-2008, 22:55

So my wife's hammock arrived and we used it on our trip this past weekend. We got quite bit of rain. Probably about 3/4-1" in the evening and night. We hung our hammocks side-by-side from 3 trees and pitched the tarps just like you normally would over each hammock, but overlapped. Here are a few photos I don't know how good you can see things.

We stayed dry and the four of us waited out the storms under these two tarps sitting in our two hammocks.

**Youngblood** · 08-20-2008, 06:22

Originally Posted by mbwtt

So my wife's hammock arrived and we used it on our trip this past weekend. We got quite bit of rain. Probably about 3/4-1" in the evening and night. We hung our hammocks side-by-side from 3 trees and pitched the tarps just like you normally would over each hammock, but overlapped. Here are a few photos I don't know how good you can see things.

We stayed dry and the four of us waited out the storms under these two tarps sitting in our two hammocks.

Congratulations!

Those are some big tarps. From the photos, it looks like you where close to having a problem near the ends where the lower tarp could drip water onto the hammock the higher tarp was covering. How close was that?

For those that don't have experience with this, the overlap technique requires a higher level of precision in hanging everything. When I saw the photos they reminded me of one campout where someone very experienced using two rectangular tarps and three trees to hang two hammocks side by side didn't hang things precisely enough and the end of one hammock took water. They had tried to cover it with a umbrella but with some of the other things going on that day, that solution failed. With overlap you can have 'over head' coverage but take water from water dripping off the edge of the second tarp if its drainage area invades your 'over head' coverage from below. It can get a little complicated to explain but when you see it, it is obvious. Water can be very sneaky... and you can quote me on that.

**miisterwright** · 08-20-2008, 11:13

It was definitely not an ideal setup. We were not expecting the rain. It was over 100 F when we set out. The hammocks were well covered, but the packs I had hanging under the tarp were to close to being exposed than I can be comfortable with. They were under my diamond shaped Claytor. There is not much width to the ends of that tarp. I think they would have not faired so well if the tree I was hanging from hadn't been blocking for me.

I hung my claytor with a little more sag than I normally would ( just a few inches, not a big deal) just to make sure I was well under the tarps. I also pitched my wife's Funky Forest tarp ( the lower, blue tarp) a little lower on the foot than the head so the water would run down the edge of the tarp rather than off if it. Had I not done this, it probably would have soaked my hammock.

We will be getting a bigger tarp, but I think this will do until then.

**Just Jeff** · 08-20-2008, 21:56

I had two hammocks under a MacCat Standard and a JRB 8x8 this past week - it rained very hard one night but all I had to deal with was water splashing up from the ground onto the underquilt. I re-hung the hammocks and tarps the next night and it worked perfectly for the size of tarps I had...still a heavy rain but quite a bit lighter than the first night. I'll try to get the pics out this weekend...they're still on the camera.

I ended up overlapping them more end-to-end than width-wise, actually. My son was in the Hennessy with the MacCat pitched in line with it, nice and wide. I was in the Warbonnet with the JRB pitched inline with it. We were hanging from the same ~6" diameter tree on the foot end, and from different sides of a large tree on the head end...we probably had 2' of separation at the head ends of the hammocks, but my hammock was sticking pretty far out from under the MacCat so I could get enough side coverage with both hammocks under there. To compensate for that, I hung the JRB from about the tree to waist-area, giving me plenty of space at the head end. Worked great...probably hard to understand from the writing, though.

But one of my next purchases will be a tarp big enough to cover us both easily. Something like 10'x12' with a moderate cat cut should do it w/o limiting site selection too much.

**slowhike** · 08-20-2008, 22:04

When I've done the double tarps w/ two or three hammocks underneath, I've been fortunate so far that I've had little rain & very little wind.
Had there been much wind blown rain, we would have had to re-think our set up.
A small sheet of plastic or silnylon for each end would go a long ways in adding the extra coverage needed on the ends should the need arise.