G'day everyone, we're here today looking at the Darche Nebula... Nebula? No it's the (laughing).
Darche's Dirty Dee Swag, in particular the 1400. It comes in three sizes - 900, 1100
and 1400, with the 1400 being and double, 900 a
single and the 1100 a nice roomy single or squeeze double, however
you want to look at it. We had a customer looking at our Darche Nebula video
and asked if we get to a bit of a review on the Dirty Dee. It's just slightly simpler,
lighter weight swag, so we thought we could set it up for you today.
So let's show you what's in the box. We haven't set it up yet, we're going to pull it out and do
it right from scratch for you. Let's have a look.
So, straight out of the box there's
quite a few bits and pieces, they all roll up together eventually. So, got the, the
main swag component here, the mat comes rolled up in his own stuff sack. You'd want
to take that out as soon as you get it and let it expand for a few days. It
wouldn't be real comfortable to sleep on straightaway with the foam in it's compressed
state. We've got the poles, there's three alloys poles here.There's two ridge poles that give
it its freestanding design. A little bag of pegs in a nice heavy-duty
canvas bag. I'll just have a look at what's inside there.
No hidden surprises, just, just a few pegs. They're quite reasonable pegs, fairly
heavy-duty. And it comes with a zippered, it is a zippered canvas carry bag.
So, we'll put it all together for you, show you how easy it is.
I couldn't find any instructions in the, in the box
for this. There's actually three lengths of hoop pole here,
So I had a bit of a play around to work out which one goes where. So the
longest one of these, goes in the centre. There's three, three hoops that make up
this swag. And then we've got these two spreader poles or ridgepoles that go in
between each of the hoops to give it its freestanding design.
So that's it. That's the swag setup. We haven't put the mattress in, haven't
setup any awnings or anything but as it stands you could, it's ready to
sleep in. Probably the hardest thing about setting it up it, it was really
easy, but the hardest thing or the most tricky thing was just sliding these
poles through these canvas sleeves here because the canvas, being a heavy duty
canvas, is a little bit of stiff, you just gotta persevere to get it through.
That'll probably soften up a little over time. Apart from that, very easy tent to setup.
We'll start opening up all the doors and windows and show you all the features now.
So that was a bit of a 360 degree tour of the Dirty Dee for you. You've probably
noticed, it's symmetrical, so the windows and doors that exist on one side also
exist on the other and there's ventilation at both the foot and the
head ends. At the bottom half of the swag you've got mesh windows on each side
with canvas panels. You can't open the mesh on the sides or the foot end but at
the head end of the swag you've got both canvas and mesh panels so you can
access from each side of the swag here. And as well as the head end here, you've
got both the canvas panel and a mesh panel that are both openable at this end of
the tent. We haven't unrolled the mat that came with the swag because it is in a compressed
state. It wouldn't look very good coming out of the box, so we've pulled one out of a
display swag that's had a chance to puff up. It's five centimetres thick, it's
pretty comfortable. You could benefit in the future, when you're ready to replace it
by using a self inflating mat or maybe a thicker foam mattress, but, hey it's
perfectly comfortable as it is. Tonnes of head room in here. It's the same head
height for all three sizes of the dirty Dee. I'm six foot one and I can quite
easily sit up in this section of the swag - plenty of room. Nice and spacious, heaps
of room for two people in the 1400. Small storage pocket at the foot and head
to keep your keys or essentials handy. What else do we say about the swag?
People are being concerned about pooling of the swag of water, on the roof of the swag.
We've had no concerns about that and looking at how this is set up now we
can't see where water would pool. It's a heavy-duty 420 GSM canvas and I can see
where I'm sitting now that its all seam sealed on the inside so I don't think
water ingress is going to be a concern. It's a PVC base which you're not going
to get water through a PVC base. So one of the really cool features of the Dirty
Dee are the awnings, that you can see. One of the really cool features of the Dirty
Dee are the awnings that you can set up on each side. Each of these doors, the
flaps that extend down over the top of the mesh have got
small eyelets in each corner, so you can use something like this, this is the
Darche swag awning pole set - alloy poles with all the
guy ropes and pegs you'll need to set up an awning on each side. They're about $35 - $40
dollars, so you can extend a small shaded weather protective area on each side. You
can do that at the foot and the head end as well, sorry, foot and head but it's only
a very small awning. People would also benefit from a tarp under
the swag, protects the floor of the swag. Just a basic tarp like this - polyethylene
tarp starts at about $10, or you can go slightly upmarket and get a mesh tarp,
which gives you a nice, dry clean area around the tent if you want to get a
slightly larger tarp. So that guys is the Dirty Dee swag (1400), also available in two
other sizes, as mentioned earlier. Pretty much all there is to say about it. Great
value, nice, roomy, comfortable. I think it's time for me to hit the sack.