Pyramid Canopy Shelter using our PSTL Tarp

Description

This type of tarp set up fills two purposes, it sheds the rain, and it holds heat in overhead adding comfort by radiating heat from the hot air down. A simple set up suitable for several people. This video part of our 50 ways to set up our PSTL tarp series.

LInk PSTL tarp http://wildernessinnovation.com/?p=796

Tags: tarp,shelter,survival gear,pyramid canopy,camping,outdoors,PSTL,Tarpaulin,Weekend

Video Transcription

a very peacock here with wilderness innovation and I'm up here doing old camping I'm going to do some fun cook i'm gonna make a louisiana style crab boil here over the fire in my zebra pot and i had it's been rainy temporarily it stopped here it's been raining for several days up here but rained all night and everything got my fire going I put my PST our large tarp over top of the fire I actually did it the hard way because I did it after the fire was going and i've only got me so I had I had to kind of do some things I could put it up without burning the tarpaulins putting up if you put it up beforehand it's easy because you not to worry about the flames winning it but anyway so I got this thing set up it's a cool nother set up it's kind of like you probably you may have seen some shelters where where they use a parachute and so you got a big parachute and they hoist it up in the air above above a nice big fire and you know you can put 15-20 people under there and it's very nice one of the concepts is it keeps moisture from coming down on you the inside of there fills up with with hot air from the fire so what you have in effect is hot hot air radiating down on to you so it kind of creates a kind of creates a comfortable situation so I just goofing around I thought well it's going to rain anyway so I wanted to be able to work around the fire even if it's raining so I decided to put this up I thought well let me try it out see what it looks so it's like not doing a parachute but just our PST L this 10 by 10 let me show you how I set this baby up so if you look back on here every place I've got it tight out here on a corner you see I've got I got four corners tied down just like normal but what I did was before I tied the corners down as i hoisted i hoisted this up from the center tab and i used a good i used one of the pulley style not so i could really tension the cord good

what I did as I came in here and here's actually the middle here's the middle tab on the tarps on each of the four corners I basically came to the next set of tabs out from that and tied those two together and I just used I just used some of these easy clips and so what that does is that shortens I'm trying to make kind of a pyramid shape out of out of a ray out of a square so by doing that then that that kind of brings it in and gives me that kind of pyramid type shape I can't really do a shape like they do with a with a parachute with with this kind of tart but this kind of gives me a little something similar so what I saw I tied that tie that out I used the easy clips i mean you could you could just tie a tie the cord you there if you want it to because it won't come out you just slide one tab over top of the other ones so the other and sticks out you just tie a rope on there but originally I didn't tie accord to this but I found once I got it going that actually is a lot nicer to tie it out as well so so that's why i did there so let's go around to this other side now one side here I decided to step back here this one side here I decided to kind of open it up just a little bit more so that I could have an entry exit point everything there and so so I so instead of leaving it tied down I actually put easy clip up here near the butt easyclip up here more near the corner of this center tab instead of letting it fold over like normal I just put the clip there so what happens is basically whatever your whatever your highest level is that that air can escape from there that will be the level of the smoke inside so if I add up to experiment with how high I could this thing I want to be low enough to kind of work with me but the high enough so I kind of sigh set it up so basically if I'm sitting seated in my chair the smoke level is higher than I am so this everything above that fills with smoke and hot air and then that kind of radiates down on you then when it's raining too I've got my chair kind of slid out of there right now but but anyway so so that's how I've got that set up I've got got just a small fire in here right now just a cooking fire and I'm getting ready to do this crab boil I'm going to cut everything up here and that's going to be actually another video but but anyway so up inside of there that's what she's like so you know you can you can set this up any way you want to but it's actually the temperature out here is actually only about 40 degrees and so its forecast to rain some more so basically doing this when I'm underneath there it is nice and warm you just feel that warm heat kind of radiating down from the top on you and and then when it rains and everything I'm out of the rain but I'm still close to my fire so here's another just a quick little video showing you another little setup you can do with your P stl it wouldn't be practical do it the regular size but P stl the large ten by ten this works really nicely now right here so this tab right here one thing you want to do is either I just put some easy clips or whatever you do want to do something as if the wind blows and everything that kind of this wants to kind of hang to the inside again so this is that Center center tab that I've it's just I just leave it laying there like that I put an easy clip right here that makes it so it can't fall back to the inside I've I've had a blast using this shelter today I'm messing around a little bit with how I'm running the fire

but but I have had it it's a it's about 42 degrees outside right now it has been drizzling a little bit stopped for a moment but inside at the height of my head it's been pretty consistently at 70 to 80 degrees and just a hair above my the height of my head with that probe up there has been 116 to 120 so the top the whole top part of that is is pretty nice and toasty and and so anyway without the big you know I just built this over a camp site fire pit if I just had a regular fire on the ground like it like we would normally have you know you'd have room in there for probably three people could probably get in there without much problem at all so that fire pits about five feet diameter so it takes up a lot of room but anyway it's a it's it's absolutely doable it's so cozy and comfortable in there it's it's it's unbelievable how well that works so anyway this is perry peacock here with Willard's innovation showing you what would you call this pyramid set up over the fire and so it gives you kind of a pyramid canopy and this is we have different styles we're going to do some video we've started doing some videos on the 50-plus ways you can set this type up but a canopy set up is one where none of the edges or corners are directly staked to the ground so this is the canopy it's a pyramid style canopy set up and what I'm trying to do is two things I'm I'm trying to I'm shedding rain when it rains which it's it keeps it keeps doing this on enough but and also i'm capturing heat inside of there keeps a warm place for me and it sheds the rain for me so it gives me a little shelter and I'm cozy right around the fire so this works very very nicely nice little setup a nurse there's a whole bunch of different ways you could actually set this up I've actually toyed with a few of them out of probably a mess out of a couple others for it's all over anyway perry peacock wilderness in the nation have a great day I got to get back here to cook in my lunch Louisiana crab boil so here we go