Vaude Power Lizard SUL tent

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foxyrider
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Vaude Power Lizard SUL tent

Post by foxyrider »

I've just taken delivery of one of these after a lot of research and deliberation, in preparation for my Swiss tour in the summer, my previous mobile home being a Vaude Taurus UL thats done great service over a 10+ year life.

All i can say is WOW! They claim a tent weight of 1050 grams (thats the canvas, 8 pegs and poles without the bags) and mine weighs in at 1051 grams - light by anyones standards but there again with a price from Vaude of £380 (i got a flash sale price of £199 on Amazon) you'd hope it would be something like they claim. The aluminium poles are short enough when folded down to easily fit in a pannier making it an ideal tent for touring.

I'll put up a report of what its like in action when i've used it but a trial attempt suggests a quick erection of under five minutes and about two to get it packed away. There's reasonable headroom and plenty of length, its supposedly a two man and i reckon that could be doable without being too cosy. I got the 2 man version as i like a bit of space when i'm away but there is a one man and even a three man version available using the same basic design.

IMG142s.jpg


I'll keep you informed on its performance.
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andymiller
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Re: Vaude Power Lizard SUL tent

Post by andymiller »

I spent all of last summer (5 months in total - probably 150 nights camping) touring with a Vaude PL. It's a vey good tent, and at the price you paid it's a steal. I would definitely advise getting one of their tent repair sleeves. Also I think it's worth reinforcing the doobries that attach to the central pole with some cloth tape - I found that they started to delaminate.

You're going to hate me, but for the benefit of anyone else looking at this type of tent at this sort of price point ... The PL has now been retired after too much time in the Italian sun. I've replaced it with a Nordisk Telemark from backpackinglight.co.uk. I prefer the Nordisk as I think the design is better and gives more usable room. As for longevity well here's hoping, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
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PrinterJohn
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Re: Vaude Power Lizard SUL tent

Post by PrinterJohn »

Has anyone experience with the Power Lizard SUL 2-3P, looks ideal for a couple, but can't find any reviews yet.
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Re: Vaude Power Lizard SUL tent

Post by simonineaston »

What is it with these 'SUL' tents? These 3 letters pop up quite a lot in tent names from European makers - wonder what it means - anyone know?
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BeeKeeper
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Re: Vaude Power Lizard SUL tent

Post by BeeKeeper »

simonineaston wrote:What is it with these 'SUL' tents? These 3 letters pop up quite a lot in tent names from European makers - wonder what it means - anyone know?

There are also UL and XUL so I guess UL stands for ultra light and the S and X prefixes for Super and eXtra respectively.
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Re: Vaude Power Lizard SUL tent

Post by simonineaston »

Doh!
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Re: Vaude Power Lizard SUL tent

Post by bretonbikes »

andymiller wrote:I spent all of last summer (5 months in total - probably 150 nights camping) touring with a Vaude PL. It's a vey good tent, and at the price you paid it's a steal. I would definitely advise getting one of their tent repair sleeves. Also I think it's worth reinforcing the doobries that attach to the central pole with some cloth tape - I found that they started to delaminate.

You're going to hate me, but for the benefit of anyone else looking at this type of tent at this sort of price point ... The PL has now been retired after too much time in the Italian sun. I've replaced it with a Nordisk Telemark from backpackinglight.co.uk. I prefer the Nordisk as I think the design is better and gives more usable room. As for longevity well here's hoping, but I'm not going to hold my breath.


Looking at the design, unless those poles are pre bent I'd expect pole breakages by week 10 especially if put up and down every night. This is a very similar design, but has a 'gothic arch' piece so the poles aren't under such tension - we've had no breakages with them. http://www.robens.de/en/Products/Tents/ ... ight2.aspx

Their more expensive tent http://www.robens.de/en/Products/Tents/ ... yphon.aspx is more like the SUL, but the main pole is bent through a larger radius so should last better, but I'm still unhappy about it - I'd still expect poles to break circa 10 weeks in with daily pitching.

This on the other hand does a sililar job but with a much greater pole radius - http://www.robens.de/en/Products/Tents/ ... osDuo.aspx and would be my choice for that reason.
Last edited by bretonbikes on 15 May 2013, 11:41am, edited 1 time in total.
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pjclinch
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Re: Vaude Power Lizard SUL tent

Post by pjclinch »

Poles get pre-bent by bending them. One way to do that is by pitching the tent...

No shortage of single hoop and tunnel tents without pre-bent poles that don't have breakage issues, so I suspect that's rather alarmist. In practice, by week 10 rather than having a broken pole you'll have a bent one caused by pitching the tent.

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Re: Vaude Power Lizard SUL tent

Post by bretonbikes »

pjclinch wrote:Poles get pre-bent by bending them. One way to do that is by pitching the tent...

No shortage of single hoop and tunnel tents without pre-bent poles that don't have breakage issues, so I suspect that's rather alarmist. In practice, by week 10 rather than having a broken pole you'll have a bent one caused by pitching the tent.

Pete.

Not alarmist - just the experience of pitching around 5-10 tents every day for 4 months of the year for the last 25 years (about 20,000 pitches) - Very few tent poles now take a 'set' especially heat-treated high-quality poles - most stay pretty straight, though if the bend is very extreme they will go way beyond their Yield Strenth on day one and so bend permenently (no bad thing) - of course YMMV
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Re: Vaude Power Lizard SUL tent

Post by PrinterJohn »

Apart from the possible pole issues, the UV problem I'm not worried about as we never get further than northern France, has anyone any experience of this model?
andymiller
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Re: Vaude Power Lizard SUL tent

Post by andymiller »

bretonbikes wrote:
Looking at the design, unless those poles are pre bent I'd expect pole breakages by week 10 especially if put up and down every night.


My experience (with Laser and Vaude) is about 4 months. But when it comes to testing tents to destruction I'm happy to defer to your much longer track record! The Robens design looks interesting (although at 2.4kgs it seems a bit heavy)

The Vaude pole repair sleeve does the job pretty well and weighs next to nothing. In future I may well take a spare pole section and do the repair myself en route. In comparison with zips and UV damage, broken poles seem like a fairly manageable problem.

What I had in mind when I talked about the design was the fact that instead of having a short pole at either end the Telemark has four even shorter poles at the corners. This improves the amount of usable space and makes it easier to maintain separation between the outer and inner tents - something that always seemed to elude me with the PL (I notice the Robens does something similar).

simonineaston wrote:What is it with these 'SUL' tents? These 3 letters pop up quite a lot in tent names from European makers - wonder what it means - anyone know?


Sports Utility Lounging?
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Re: Vaude Power Lizard SUL tent

Post by bretonbikes »

andymiller wrote:
bretonbikes wrote:
Looking at the design, unless those poles are pre bent I'd expect pole breakages by week 10 especially if put up and down every night.


My experience (with Laser and Vaude) is about 4 months. But when it comes to testing tents to destruction I'm happy to defer to your much longer track record! The Robens design looks interesting (although at 2.4kgs it seems a bit heavy)

The Vaude pole repair sleeve does the job pretty well and weighs next to nothing. In future I may well take a spare pole section and do the repair myself en route. In comparison with zips and UV damage, broken poles seem like a fairly manageable problem.

What I had in mind when I talked about the design was the fact that instead of having a short pole at either end the Telemark has four even shorter poles at the corners. This improves the amount of usable space and makes it easier to maintain separation between the outer and inner tents - something that always seemed to elude me with the PL (I notice the Robens does something similar).

simonineaston wrote:What is it with these 'SUL' tents? These 3 letters pop up quite a lot in tent names from European makers - wonder what it means - anyone know?


Sports Utility Lounging?


When I lead our led trip (14 people) in September I always take at least one repair section per tent. What tends to happen is that once a pole has started to fatigue and breaks, it is just the harbinger of a whole series of breaks. In general, with a batch of say ten tents one will start to go, then another and another in fairly quick succession, but often a couple of the tents will be fine well beyond the other - sometimes there's no rhyme or reason. Some tents though have been so bad as to be unuseable within 3 weeks - the original Vaude Taurus and the Jack Wolfskin 'Pocket Hotel' both being hopeless and in both cases suffered from very tight radius pole arches. But as for repair sections, inn extremis any suitable tube will do though. As in the past I've used tents with larger section poles I just cut sections of them up and they work a treat, but just a bit of copper pipe from a dump will do the job if you borrow a hacksaw.

There's a bit of an opinionated rant about it all here - http://www.bretonbikes.com/generalartic ... uying.html
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foxyrider
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Re: Vaude Power Lizard SUL tent

Post by foxyrider »

pjclinch wrote:Poles get pre-bent by bending them. One way to do that is by pitching the tent...

In practice, by week 10 rather than having a broken pole you'll have a bent one caused by pitching the tent.

Pete.


This is indeed what Vaude themselves say.

As for Bretons comments re the Taurus - mines over ten years old with @ 160 nights use (daily up/down). It did get new poles after eight years due to fatigue fractures but neither broken bit was under strain so i can hardly blame that, rather the damage was caused by several 'flat' tent incidents up on the Baltic! Just for the record, i'm only 'retiring' it as the PL is half the weight and i'm dragging stuff through the Alps this summer - its still ok, no significant UV damage, the zips all still work and it hasn't lost any waterproofness that i can tell.
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Re: Vaude Power Lizard SUL tent

Post by bretonbikes »

foxyrider wrote:
pjclinch wrote:Poles get pre-bent by bending them. One way to do that is by pitching the tent...

In practice, by week 10 rather than having a broken pole you'll have a bent one caused by pitching the tent.

Pete.


This is indeed what Vaude themselves say.

As for Bretons comments re the Taurus - mines over ten years old with @ 160 nights use (daily up/down). It did get new poles after eight years due to fatigue fractures but neither broken bit was under strain so i can hardly blame that, rather the damage was caused by several 'flat' tent incidents up on the Baltic! Just for the record, i'm only 'retiring' it as the PL is half the weight and i'm dragging stuff through the Alps this summer - its still ok, no significant UV damage, the zips all still work and it hasn't lost any waterproofness that i can tell.


To be fair the Taurus (Taurus 2's I think) we had were the first model probably 12-13 years ago and I suspect there was a little tweaking to the design afterward - ours used large diameter 'grey' poles (11-12mm?)- trust me we had five and none lasted more than 4 weeks;-) Actually I may still have the fly/inners for some, but they get used as tarps usually - if your poles are Ok I could dig them out as the 'canvas' bits were fine and I hate chucking perfectly good tents away because of poles.
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Re: Vaude Power Lizard SUL tent

Post by pjclinch »

PrinterJohn wrote:Apart from the possible pole issues, the UV problem I'm not worried about as we never get further than northern France, has anyone any experience of this model?


UV... for prolonged exposure polyester is much more stable under UV than nylon, so base camp tents are often made with polyseter flys. On the other hand, before UV degradation, all else being equal, nylon ought to be stronger and/or lighter.

If you do go with nylon then silicone elastomer coatings filter off the worse of the UV a lot more effectively than PU coatings, and they also heat-age the fabric less so you get something stronger and potentially longer lasting. The flipside is they cost more. Until recently silicone flys couldn't be seam taped but some (IIRC Vau De were the first) folk have now come up with a way of doing it. However, seam taping adds to the cost and weight, and also heat ages the fabric it's applied to. A properly made seam needn't leak, as Hilleberg have been demonstrating for decades.

(The Power Lizard SUL has a silicone elastomer coated fly IIRC).

Pete.
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