Hi, now that the weather is getting worse I thought I'd better share this experience and perhaps save someone else from making a costly mistake. I have nearly killed my X1/9...
I live in a conservation area, in a fairly wild part of West Yorkshire, so once your garage is full the only options are build another one to satisfy the local planning department (i e build a small brick house for c. £20K), car covers (never found one that worked) or various "temporary" shelters that fall outside of the planning laws.
I've used Dancover and Protech portable shelters for nearly 5 years. They are brilliant, shrugging off wind, snow and driving rain with aplomb. The airspace is well ventilated so dampness doesn't accumulate and after years of storage the cars remain bone dry. The point here is that some temporary garages can work extremely well for prolonged periods in adverse weather conditions.
Recently, I needed more storage, haven fallen into the trap of acquiring a couple too many "unmissable" parts and projects. Feeling reasonably confident with the whole concept of PVC and tarpaulin garages, and, after a chat with the local planning officer, I decided to move a little up market and try some thing a bit bigger.
Inexplicably, rather than go back to a company that I trusted and had faith in, I bought a storage tent form a company that advertises on ebay from outside of the UK. To be clear, this was advertised as a heavy duty tent that was suitable for year round use, and it was the company's intent to provide 24/7 Germanic build quality.
Please, don't do the same thing! After a few weeks eight of the tube joiners in the tent frame had failed (the welds hadn't penetrated into the base material to any real extent) and the tent almost collapsed. The company concerned eventually replaced the failed connectors, and I wasted my time rebuilding the tent, because a month later in the recent snow it collapsed completely. Sadly a rather nice Fiat X1/9 and an even nicer Alfa GTV were underneath it. Both have been extensively damaged.
According to the company concerned all year round doesn't mean in winter or in snow. Apparently in winter the correct procedure is to take whatever is being stored in the shelter and leave it out in the snow, to rot. Then the tent should be dismantled and stored somewhere safe. In one of their competitors shelters perhaps? This advice is in incredibly small print on the last page of the instructions. Unsurprisingly, it's not mentioned in the advertising blurb.
Please learn from my mistake. There are some excellent temporary garages out there, but sadly some are deviously marketed junk.
Ed.
I live in a conservation area, in a fairly wild part of West Yorkshire, so once your garage is full the only options are build another one to satisfy the local planning department (i e build a small brick house for c. £20K), car covers (never found one that worked) or various "temporary" shelters that fall outside of the planning laws.
I've used Dancover and Protech portable shelters for nearly 5 years. They are brilliant, shrugging off wind, snow and driving rain with aplomb. The airspace is well ventilated so dampness doesn't accumulate and after years of storage the cars remain bone dry. The point here is that some temporary garages can work extremely well for prolonged periods in adverse weather conditions.
Recently, I needed more storage, haven fallen into the trap of acquiring a couple too many "unmissable" parts and projects. Feeling reasonably confident with the whole concept of PVC and tarpaulin garages, and, after a chat with the local planning officer, I decided to move a little up market and try some thing a bit bigger.
Inexplicably, rather than go back to a company that I trusted and had faith in, I bought a storage tent form a company that advertises on ebay from outside of the UK. To be clear, this was advertised as a heavy duty tent that was suitable for year round use, and it was the company's intent to provide 24/7 Germanic build quality.
Please, don't do the same thing! After a few weeks eight of the tube joiners in the tent frame had failed (the welds hadn't penetrated into the base material to any real extent) and the tent almost collapsed. The company concerned eventually replaced the failed connectors, and I wasted my time rebuilding the tent, because a month later in the recent snow it collapsed completely. Sadly a rather nice Fiat X1/9 and an even nicer Alfa GTV were underneath it. Both have been extensively damaged.
According to the company concerned all year round doesn't mean in winter or in snow. Apparently in winter the correct procedure is to take whatever is being stored in the shelter and leave it out in the snow, to rot. Then the tent should be dismantled and stored somewhere safe. In one of their competitors shelters perhaps? This advice is in incredibly small print on the last page of the instructions. Unsurprisingly, it's not mentioned in the advertising blurb.
Please learn from my mistake. There are some excellent temporary garages out there, but sadly some are deviously marketed junk.
Ed.
