How to Successfully Pitch a Bell Tent on a Deck

To pitch a bell tent on a deck seemed like an enormous undertaking when we first started out. Customers would ask us for advice on the matter, but in fact, it was us who learned from them.

After all, we had designed the bell tents to be pitched on grass, so what did we know about pitching on wooden decks?!

From our customer’s experiences we soon learned how to pitch a bell tent on a deck with success, and their shared experiences would eventually help us to do the same when we set up our indoor showroom in 2011. The showroom required three decks for a 3m, 4m and 5m bell tent.

Before You Pitch a Bell Tent on a Deck…

Before building a deck for a bell tent, we absolutely recommend you have a go at pitching a bell tent onto grass first, following the manufacturer’s instructions. By pitching it as it is intended, this will help you to understand the tent better, and the importance of each step.

There are approximately one million videos on-line to help you with pitching a bell tent.

By pitching as normal first, you’ll also gain a better understanding of the overall footprint (including guy lines), and so how to mimic the perfect, ideal pitch but on a deck instead of the grass. With each step of pitching on to a deck, you are trying to mimic that perfect pitch on to grass.

Bell tents are designed to be pitched directly on to the ground, on to grass. They can easily be adapted to pitch onto decks though at very little extra cost. Some simple steps to follow: –

Throw Away The Pin Pegs!

These pegs are intended to be used around the circumference of the groundsheet. They pass through eyelets on tabs and are pushed directly into the ground at intervals. These will need to be replaced with screws and washers when you pitch a bell tent on a deck. We found these screw and washer intended for fixing corrugated sheet to timber were ideal. Be sure to purchase the correct size as the washer will need to cover the original eyelet entirely, whilst the screw will need to pass through the eyelet hole. Your tent manufacturer will be able to tell you the diameter of their pin pegs, and the diameter of the eyelet.

Replace The Wall Pin Pegs With Screw Hooks

The wall pin pegs serve to keep the storm flap in place over the groundsheet-to-canvas zip, they also help with the overall stability of the tent. So it’s important to replace them with screw hooks to maintain this function. By using a hook, you will still be able to unhook the walls and roll up the walls of the tent if desired – this can be very useful when cleaning the interior of the tent as you can sweep any debris clear of the tent with the walls rolled up.

Fixing-In The Guy Ropes

Ordinarily, when pitching on grass, the line of the guy rope would follow the line of the canvas seam and then be secured into the ground once the right angle on the ‘eaves’ has been achieved (the eaves serve to protect the windows and walls from water run-off from the tent roof). 

If your deck is flush to the ground, you can still do this, however most decks are raised and so this is no longer an option as it would interfere with the angle on the ‘eaves’, and so affect the way the water runs off the roof.

If the angle on the eaves is too acute, water will be conducted into the tent. If the angle is too obtuse, water will pool in the canvas where the eaves meet the roof and will eventually find a way in. The ideal angle on the eaves should allow the water from the roof to run off quickly, and clear of the tent.

To achieve the correct angle when you pitch a bell tent on a deck (especially a raised deck), most will use posts attached to the deck itself. For our showroom we had our local blacksmith make us some clamps for this purpose.

But we’ve seen effective posts made more affordably from wood too.

Tip: Don’t tie-off the guy ropes on to the posts and so lose the function of the slide (guy rope tensioner). If you do this, you lose all ability to adjust the tension on the guy ropes. The guy rope tension needs to be adjusted frequently if it’s been windy for example. If you remove the need for the slide, you simply introduce other problems. 

A slide is meant to slide! Without it, during windy conditions, the power of the wind is transferred to the canvas itself which can tear – the slide prevents this. During windy conditions, the slide moves a little whilst remaining in position enough to keep the tent erect.