Watch: Making a Concrete Tent

This video is less than 3 minutes long, but it shows some really cool stuff called concrete canvas. And yeah, I know this isn’t brand-new technology, but it’s pretty great and it’s certainly worth a look. It’s concrete cloth, which is flexible fabric impregnated with the elements that make up concrete. Flexible as can be — until it’s been wet and allowed to cure, at which case it’s hard as a rock.

The application we see in the video is a prefab building that comes in a plastic bag. Fill the bag with water to begin, and once that happens you have about 5 hours to get it up before the concrete within the canvas begins to harden.

Connect an air blower to inflate the building, and use a vehicle to help unfold it as you go.

Once it’s fully raised, let it cure overnight and then get busy enjoying your formerly soft, now hard, shelter — which comes with its own doors. It can be covered with dirt for insulation or protection.

Pretty cool, if you ask me. I’d love to see buildings like this become affordable. It could make for a really cool emergency shelter.

Russ Chastain

Editor & Contributing Writer Russ Chastain is a lifelong hunter and shooter who has spent his life learning about hunting, shooting, guns, ammunition, gunsmithing, reloading, and bullet casting. He started toting his own gun in the woods at age nine and he's pursued deer with rifles since 1982, so his hunting knowledge has been growing for more than three and a half decades. His desire and ability to share this knowledge with others has also grown, and Russ has been professionally writing and editing original hunting & shooting content since 1998. Russ Chastain has a passion for sharing accurate, honest, interesting hunting & shooting knowledge and stories with people of all skill levels.