Why use a floorless tent?

A floorless tent is a term for a tarp with a bug netting sewn into the perimeter of the tarp’s bottom. The tent not having an attached floor has a ton of advantages, some being: weight savings, tent space, versatility to your system, and added lifetime to your tent. Using a separate groundsheet is pretty common, save your tent’s floor and have a floor for cowboy camping. If you don’t have a sewn in floor to your tent you can just use your groundsheet as your dedicated waterproof floor. Then you can replace it when it wears down, pack it separately from your tarp, or use it for cowboy or shelter camping.

How does a floorless tent work?

There’s been tons of floorless tent designs through the years, and they’re all a little different. Sometimes these tents are fully enclosed and use a zipper. Sometimes they’re shaped to open with the tarp and close underneath the floor. Like on the Gonzo Shard, the perimeter of the tarp has about 2 feet of bug netting sewn into it draping down. The back corners are sewn at an angle making the netting shape under a groundsheet and the rest of the netting would be tucked underneath the groundsheet. So the tent would open and close with an velcro opening in the bug netting leading to a zipper in the tarp. An example of the fully enclosed floorless tent is the old school zpacks hexamid tarp. It had a zipper and a fully enclosed bug mesh with no dedicated floor. You had the option to put the groundsheet inside the netting, with the netting directly on the ground, or with the groundsheet directly on the ground. I chose to use the groundsheet on the inside of the tarp with the netting directly on the ground. It might not sound smart putting the netting directly against the ground, but in practice the durability stands up to thousands of miles without anything more than some quarter sized holes.