Cyufjy

Our tent was featured as ants free thanks to protective grids.

However ants just ate holes in the wall material. Some research shows this is not unusual.

Which tent wall material do I need to prevent ants from eating it?

This happened near Gorge du Verdon in South France.

I have never had this problem. I never even worried about this problem -- and I worry about everything.

If you google What kind of ants eat through tents, you will find that other people have had your problem, for example in Texas and Africa. There are also many hits about ants who just saunter in, rather than chewing their way in, and tips to get rid of them.

The response that sounds most practical is from Michelle Calderon, posting on the website of World Race; she used duct tape to deal with ants in Africa -- Zambia, I think. (As someone once said, if you can't solve your problem with duct tape, you aren't using enough duct tape.)

Briefly, she and her friends used duct tape to remove the ants from their tent and their ant infested belongings, and then they duct-taped the inside and the outside of the holes.

So the way the ants get in is they chew holes through your tent. I had
eight new holes in my tent courtesy of the ants. I duct taped both the
inside and outside of the tent to repair the holes.

She describes her technique in detail, with pictures.

This suggests that getting a tent made of double sided duct tape may work, but, mon dieu!

Woah! That sucks. I've never even given that a thought before; those are some nasty ants you have there.

I cannot guarantee success, but here are a bunch of ideas, some more likely or more reasonable than others. I think #6 might be the best bet, as it involves the ants dying before they can get to you.

1. You could custom make a tent out of a more durable material. Not ideal, I know, but your situation sounds extreme. I would try using the material from heavy duty tarps and see if that stops them.




2. I have seen people use bug netting with tents before, but I assume the normal bug nets won't keep your ants away. Maybe make your own bug netting to put over your tent made out of a metal mesh screen, the kind you often put over windows or doors - you can buy rolls of that stuff.




3. Possibly even more extreme, you could make a trough completely encircling your tent and fill it with something that will (hopefully) stop the bugs. Filling it with just water might be a deterrent, but it's possible they might just swim through it. Water mixed with something bad for the bugs might work, but then you need to be careful because you probably do not want to be dumping toxic water out, and that might even be illegal. Maybe mixed with a potent natural deterrent, like something very spicy like cyan pepper, or something even hotter than that. The trough could be made by laying out a tarp, putting the tent in the middle of the tarp, and putting sticks or anything under the tarp at the edges to make it form how you want. This actually sounds kind of neat, like you're adding a moat to protect your castle from the insect invaders. Probably not so much fun in practice though. ;)




4. All of the above at the same time. It might look ridiculous, but I would rather look ridiculous than have a swarm of ants taking my food and biting me.




5. Figure out what is attracting the ants in the first place. If they sense food that you have, maybe you can block the scent better and/or mask it. Maybe the material in the tent itself smells appealing to them? Some people like the smell of certain plastics or other materials.




6. Have you considered hammock camping? I have not done it, but some people never want to go back to tent camping after they have tried it. I wonder if maybe a hammock might be easier to protect than a tent, as you could potentially have just 2 small spots to protect against, where the supporting ropes go out. Perhaps you could use a small amount of a drastic repellent on those two small spots. If the ropes were long enough to keep it away from me, I might even apply an ant killing foam around the rope to stop them dead on approach.

If you do not do the above things, or in case they fail, here are some ideas to address various problems caused by the ants. Ants eating through your tent causes several different problems:

1. The obvious one: There are ants in the tent! And possibly other critters now too.


2. Your tent might leak now, so you're exposed to the rain.


3. Your tent might let more wind through.


4. Being partially damaged, the tent is susceptible to further damage, such as high wind tearing further at the holes the ants started.

Those are all the problems I can think of. I will address them separately.

My general suggestion to use tarps relies on the assumption that these ants cannot (or at least will not) eat through the tarp. If that assumption is wrong, then my answer becomes invalid, or at least less valid since the tarp might at least work better than the tent material. I googled "can ants eat through tarp" and found nothing suggesting that they can.

There are ants in the tent! And possibly other critters now too.

Depending on what kind of ant it is, they might not cause problems for you other than merely being present. But some kinds might do actual harm, beyond what was done to the tent.

If you expect the ants are just doing their normal random search for resources and won't be able to actually hurt anything and won't bother you by crawling all over you, you could do tarp-camping instead of tent-camping. Possibly a heavy-duty tarp to make sure they have a harder time damaging it. This way, some bugs might come in, but they don't have to ruin your equipment to do so.

If the bugs are truly a major nuisance though, such that coexisting with them is not an option, perhaps some kind of bug repellent could help. Something applied to the tent, or a spray or candle or other thing. These strategies have varying usefulness, so you would have to just try it to see how it works.

What I've said in this section can also apply to the other sections, but I wanted to address the specific issues you could encounter and the things you can do when you run into them...

Your tent might leak now, so you're exposed to the rain.

Put up a separate rain cover. I would use a tarp.

This is something that many people do anyway when camping, so you can either use your ingenuity or use one of many online tutorials on the subject if necessary.

This should keep you dry.

Your tent might let more wind through.

If you can deal with the wind, great. If not, there are multiple ways to deal with this. You could use more tarps, especially if your tent is not too big. You could use a bivy bag inside your tent. You could camp near natural wind breakers such as rocks or trees.

Being partially damaged, the tent is susceptible to further damage, such as high wind tearing further at the holes the ants started.

I'm not sure of a good way to deal with this. Duct tape? More tarps (tarps are like duct tape - they solve lots of problems ;))? If you are expecting this problem, perhaps bring a proper patching kit.

I don't think there is one tent material that will prevent ants from cutting through, unless you want a ridiculously heavy kevlar tent.

All classic materials are definitely not sturdy enough.

I know of one solution that can solve the problem: coat the tent with permethrin. Not exactly nature-friendly (toxic to many wildlife species, especially beneficial insects like bees) and I don't know what effect it might have on waterproofing coatings like urethane and silicon.