Dragonwing - Ground Cloth Owner's Manual

Ground Cloth Owner's Manual

Your DRAGONWING ground cloth has been designed to fit snugly within your pavilion. It's made with a heavy, skid-resistant vinyl, rugged enough to last many camping seasons, yet easy to mend if punctured. Its three-inch lip, when raised, prevents water from entering the pavilion.

Your ground-cloth comes with a series of six-inch nails attached to the perimeter of the cloth

Please take a second to observe how the ground cloth was folded when it was delivered to you. You'll notice that all the nails have been arranged so that they are together, and that they are pointed away from the ground cloth. You'll want to duplicate this pattern when you fold the ground cloth for storage.

The ground cloth has been properly laid down when the nails are on the outside of the raised lip. If they're on the inside, the ground cloth is upside down and inverted.

To use the ground cloth, simply lay it out, right side up, where you wish the tent to be pitched. Make sure that the area under the ground cloth has been cleared of sharp rocks, glass or other jagged items that might cut into the fabric. (This is as much for your comfort as for the ground cloth's protection. Who wants lumps underfoot? The longer the tourney, the more important this step is.)

Raise the lip by driving the nails into the ground. If you prefer, you can fold the lip under (you may want to do this for doorways in fair weather, where tripping on the lip is more of a problem than water getting into the tent).

Then pitch the tent using the directions in the tent's owners manual. By taking care to center the structure exactly over the ground cloth, you can use the cloth's border as a guide for staking down the base of the tent's sidewalls. If necessary, the guy ropes of the pavilion can be adjusted to better align the pavilion's structure with the ground cloth

CARE OF THE GROUND CLOTH

You should store the ground cloth as dry as possible. When we break down camp, we usually flip the ground cloth over and let the bottom dry out in the sun before folding up the cloth. Be aware that mildew can't feed on the vinyl, but it can (and will) feed on the dirt and organic material that eventually collects on the outside of the cloth. If mildew sets in, you can kill it by soaking the cloth in a mild bleach solution and then drying it in the sun.

If your ground cloth develops a hole or puncture, it can easily be mended with the sort of vinyl patch found in auto stores everywhere (and used to patch tears in auto upholstery vinyl). Make sure that the area to be patched is clean, and follow the manufacturer's directions.

When you're folding the ground cloth, be sure to keep the points of the nails away from the rest of the fabric. This is easily accomplished by folding the lip of the cloth in such a way as to point all the nails outward. Then, as you fold the cloth up, arrange the folds so as to stack all the nails on top of each other. When you're finished, you should have all the nails in one place, facing away from the cloth, as you slide the cloth into the storage bag.

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