Although folding campers, trailer tents and Camp-lets might seem similar, you put them all up in different ways. When I was looking into purchasing my first folding camper, my biggest question was how does a folding camper work?
So, how does a folding camper work? A folding camper folds or slides out from the trailer unit. No canvas is pegged directly into the ground unless you’re using the awning.
Putting up a folding camper is, in my experience, much easier than putting up a tent or a trailer tent. I’m going to explain in more detail below how a folding camper actually works and why putting up a folding camper is so easy.
How A Folding Camper Folds Out
The canvas of a folding camper and all the facilities you’ll find in your camper are stored in the trailer body. To put a folding camper up, the canvas literally folds out of the trailer. This is perhaps demonstrated by a video. The video that you can see below demonstrates how the canvas folds out of the main trailer body.
The folding camper is constructed in such a way that barely any physical effort is needed to put it up. The video above gives you a really good idea of how most folding campers work. First and foremost, you will have to unfold the canvas from the top of the unit. Next, you will lift the outer frame of the camper with one hand and begin to pull out the bed with the other. As you begin pulling out the bed, the outer frame will gradually move into position. You can stop holding the outer frame at this point and pull out the bed with both hands. Please note that this is general advice, however. While this applies to most folding campers, obviously some models function differently.
Again, this is best demonstrated with a video. This video shows a person putting up a Conway Crusader. I’ve set the video to begin at the part where the person is pulling out the bed to show you exactly what I mean:
The mechanics of a folding camper are brilliant, which is particularly shown with how easy it is to put up the outer body of the camper. Even the older models were built in a way that made it easy for anyone to put one up. You don’t need to be physically fit to put up any folding camper. Some of the newer models, from around 2012 onwards, come with gas struts fitted to the bed. This makes them even easier to put up and is a key selling point of folding campers when compared with your average tent.
So, we’ve covered the basics of how you put up the folding camper externally. Wondering how the inside works too? That’s what I’m going to explain next.
How The Inside Of A Folding Camper Works
Once you’ve pulled out the beds and put up the outer frame of the folding camper, it isn’t time for a cuppa just yet. You’ll notice that from the outside, the folding camper looks a little skew-whiff. This is because you need to tension the cabin canvas. That might sound complicated, but fortunately it isn’t as difficult as it sounds.
Inside the vast majority of folding campers, there are horizontal poles. You use these poles to tension the canvas. In most models, you simply extend them as far as you possibly can. The poles won’t extend any further than they need to, so you don’t need to worry about extending them too far.
Once you have extended the horizontal poles, you’ll need to lock the brackets into the vertical position. These brackets will look like this:
To finish off erecting the main canvas, you’ll also need to tension the bed-ends using the poles attached. These poles have button clip attachments that make it very easy to erect the canvas around the beds. Finally, attach the canvas around the outside to the underneath of the unit. Again, this is simple as you simply have to put the elastic straps around the little pieces of plastic that keep it in place.
After you erect the canvas, the inside of your folding camper will look a little something like this (maybe not as tidy!):
In most folding campers, the furniture is collapsible. If you’ve ever wondered how folding campers contain all the facilities you’ll find in a caravan while being so much smaller, this is how. When packing a folding camper, you dismantle all the furniture. Fortunately, the collapsible furniture isn’t too difficult to set up when you’re setting up the unit.
Setting Up The Collapsible Furniture
As you can see in the photograph above, very little of the furniture remains assembled in a packed away folding camper. The furniture inside a folding camper easily dissembles, which is the reason a folding camper is so small (compared with something such as a caravan) when it’s all packed away.
You might think setting up the collapsible furniture inside a folding camper is going to be time-consuming and confusing. Fortunately, the vast majority of folding campers are built with ease in mind. For example, the main wardrobe is on a sliding hinge mechanism in most Pennine models. You simply lift up the wardrobe and slide it into position. It’s as easy as that. Similarly, most furniture in the folding camper simply slides or clips into place. Once you’ve put a folding camper up once, you’ll never have to look up how a folding camper works again.
With most pieces of furniture, for example, the bathroom cubicle wall and the kitchen shelf, you position the piece of furniture and then secure it with clips. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I feel it’s important to highlight again how the way folding campers are designed makes it very easy for owners to use them. The mechanisms used in a folding camper have been refined to ensure ease of use. Everything just works. The furniture all slides into place or is secured with a few clips.
Your folding camper should come with instructions for setting up the inside. If it doesn’t there are plenty of demonstrations on YouTube. In particular, there are plenty of video tutorials created by Pennine that show you how to put up your unit quickly. Once you’ve set up the collapsible furniture, you should end up with something like this:
Are All Folding Campers Easy To Erect?
Are all folding campers as easy to erect as the Pennine Pathfinder we’ve seen above? In my experience, yes. I don’t think there’s any folding camper that takes longer than 20 minutes to erect. While I haven’t owned every single folding camper out there, I’ve never heard of a folding camper taking longer than any other. The Pathfinder is one of the larger 6 berth folding campers out there, so anything smaller might even be quicker to erect than the 15 – 20 minutes that a Pathfinder takes.
People often compare folding campers and trailer tents on how long it takes to put each type of unit up. For the most part, trailer tents are harder to erect than folding campers. Why? Because the vast majority of trailer tents need pegging into the ground, which is the bit that takes time when camping. Since the main folding camper unit doesn’t peg into the ground, putting it up is a much easier task.
It’s far too easy to make a sweeping statement like ‘all folding campers are easy to erect’. The same applies when discussing trailer tents; we can’t just say ‘all trailer tents take ages to put up’. There are differences from model to model, so it’s important to look into all the models you’re looking at specifically. For the most part, though, all folding campers can be put up easily and quickly regardless of your experience.
The difference in how long it takes to put up a unit is more pronounced with trailer tents. Putting up some models of trailer tent takes 20 minutes. Putting up other models can take 45 minutes! That’s why it’s important to pick out a select few models and look into them specifically.
