Wind moving the van is worth solving separately because it never stops bothering people. Park nose into the wind where you can, and if your van has a pop top or a high roof, avoid exposed ridges and car park corners where it funnels. I'll drive an extra fifteen minutes to sleep in the lee of a hedge.
Found a weeping elbow behind a panel this way after two weeks of assuming my pump was faulty.
Also check the pressure switch adjustment. Some pumps have a small screw that sets the cut-in pressure, and if it's set too close to the cut-out pressure the pump hunts constantly even with no leak at all. Quarter turn at a time and test between each.
Your pad is the problem, not the quilt. R2 foam is a summer pad. The insulation under you is compressed flat by your body weight so it does almost nothing, which is why the pad's R value does the actual work below about 45F.
For 30-40F nights you want R4 minimum, R5 if you sleep cold. An inflatable in the R4.5 range weighs about the same as the foam you're carrying. Cheapest interim fix is to put the foam pad on top of a cheap closed cell one and stack them — R values add.
Temperature ratings on quilts are also survival-ish numbers in some cases, not "sleep comfortably in a t-shirt" numbers. Read the fine print for whether it's a comfort or limit rating.
A litre a night sounds made up until you leave a dehumidifier running and see the tank fill.
Not ruined, almost certainly the silty lake. Fine sediment packs into the hollow fibres and evening backflushing with a syringe barely touches it once it's set.
What actually restores flow at home:
- backflush with warm (not hot, never boiling — heat destroys the fibres) water at pressure, from a tap adapter if you have one, for a good two minutes
- soak an hour in a weak white vinegar solution if your water is hard, then backflush again
- if it's still slow, that's the fibres, and no amount of flushing fixes it
Field prevention is the bigger lesson: for anything silty, let it settle in a dirty bag for twenty minutes and pour off the top, or prefilter through a bandana. Two minutes of patience saves the filter.
It's in a cabinet with one small gap at the bottom. Adding an upper vent this weekend, thanks.
Inverter standby, 1.4A. It's been on since I built the thing because I never thought of it as a load. That's 20Ah a night doing absolutely nothing.
Two of them, in different places. They have a five to seven year lifespan and then they're decorations, so write the replacement date on the case in marker.
I did five seasons under a tarp and went back to a tent, specifically for that region. The tarp itself is fine in rain — pitched low it's drier than people expect. The problem is everything around it: no bug protection in early season, condensation inside the bivy soaking your quilt's footbox, and the fact that on the third wet day you want somewhere to sit up and eat rather than lying on your side in a nylon coffin.
If your goal is the kilo, look at a single wall trekking pole tent instead. Around 600-700g, real doors, real bug mesh, and you're not carrying separate poles. That's where I'd spend the money.
Plan for it rather than fight it. I assume night one is a write-off, keep day two moderate, and I'm fine by day three. Twelve years of this and it still happens on maybe a third of trips.