There’s shade, and fewer bugs than outside the screenhouse. Will I come home and just find the screenhouse gone, or will I see it blowing around in the street, trailing pipe segments? What about the rain, or the potential for 120-degree heat? For the moment, my dream of an extra room in the back yard has come true. We’ve had this piece of garbage for 2 years now and haven’t been able to use it since we purchased it. We set it up one day, and by the next day or so it was down.
Though the two tents have the same footprint, the REI’s roof is 6 inches taller; we found that the higher ceiling made the REI shelter feel significantly roomier inside. In between trips, we turned a neighbor’s large, flat yard into an ad hoc camping-gazebo testing ground. We erected our shelters just in advance of a 24-hour rain and checked for leaking and rainy-day ambience midstorm. We also timed setup and breakdown times for each shelter, and we repeatedly zipped and unzipped doors and windows, looking for annoying snags. In early March, we took our second trip to the oceanside Sycamore Canyon Campground (PDF) near Oxnard, California.
However, this model is too big to fit in the trunks of most sedans, and the muted colors look good when it’s sunny but can feel a bit gloomy if it’s already rainy out. The geodesic ozark trail chairs structure of the Base Camp tents is built to withstand wind and rain. It has two main that thread through sleeves, stretching between the four corners of the tent.
Like the REI model, the L.L.Bean tent uses polyester (ripstop, in this case), which is more resistant to UV damage and absorbs less moisture than nylon by weight. The Woodlands Screen House also has the advantage of eight guylines, whereas the Screen House Shelter includes none. In addition, this model has the same bug-deterring flap of fabric along the base as the REI tent, but while the REI’s flap is about 9 inches wide, the L.L.Bean’s flap is about 10½ inches wide. Several REI reviewers who bought both the tent and the fly for rain protection note that the fly has only two walls, leaving much of the tent exposed. The add-on fly for our runner-up pick, the L.L.Bean Woodlands Screen House, offers four-walled protection, though it’s also more than twice as expensive.
This probably could have been prevented by adding more yellow support poles to the roof. The REI Co-op Screen House Shelter is an intuitively designed, easy-to-erect picnic tent that offers protection from sun, bugs, and mild rain showers. Though the boxy design is basic, in our tests we found that this camping shelter offered the best combination of functionality, durability, and affordability of all the tents we tried. This is one of those products where the instructions are basically a complete fantasy. They make one false unstated assumption after another. What you wind up with is a web of pipes and plastic pieces that falls apart at one end as you assemble the other.
The sloping walls make the interior space feel much smaller than the generous footprint might lead you to expect. The mesh doesn’t seem particularly durable, and given the cap-like roof, the shade provided is much more limited than with our top-pick tents. One wall comes fully unzipped and stashes ozark trail canopy into an internal pocket. Like the REI model, the L.L.Bean tent has ample interior pockets, a lantern hook, and a roomy carrying bag, though the bag is of the typical drawstring-sack variety. The Woodlands Screen House uses six lightweight aluminum poles, just like the Screen House Shelter.
The hubs break and the legpoles bend beyond repair. Got one of these out of a storage unit at auction. We set up the REI Screen House Shelter and L.L.Bean’s Woodlands Screen House side by side in the Mojave Desert in 100-degree temps. Fellow campers consistently gravitated toward the REI shelter over the L.L.Bean. Please get in touch with us before opening any return requests. We offer a 30-day returns policy – if you are not happy with your purchase you may return the item in its original condition for an exchange or full refund.
Once you actually get this thing set up, it is great. My ONLY problem is that I lost the darn instructions, and don’t remember which pole goes where! This product, when properly set up, is wonderful. I actually use mine in the yard in the areas where my trees don’t give shade. Had it up for about 6 weeks last year, and it still looks new. This model has been discontinued and I only need two parts to fix it.
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