Shade Shelters

Shade or relief and protection from the sun is very important on the salt. There are many different styles of shade shelters and some work better than most. There are some that we don't recommend and the reason why is not how much shade they provide, but how they stand up to the wind.

The wind is your enemy. Ideally during the day we hope for as little wind as possible, but it is not uncommon to have a breeze of 10-15 kph. But out on the salt we can experience winds much higher than that, especially a night and it can blow for hours. Every year, for those first couple of nights we have to go around the pits pulling down peoples shade shelters. If we don't the wind will destroy them in an instant.
For this reason it is a requirement for all shade shelters to be lowered or have the covering removed before leaving the salt each day.

Which designs are best?

Flat roof, Some of the dome roofs aren't bad.
Something with a substantial frame, look for 2mm thick wall, 40mm section

Which designs to avoid

Anything with a small section / thin wall tube frame
Anything with a peak roof (it's not going to rain)
Pop up or Easy up gazebos

The other thing to consider is how you will secure your shade shelter to the salt. Tent pegs do not work. Containers filled with water or sand do not work. You need to buy some 65mm Tek screws and bring a cordless drill and 8 or 10mm bit drivers.

Depending on your shade shelter, you may need to make some brackets (anchors) for your poles or guy line / tie downs that you can screw to the salt first.

You will most likely have a tarp under your shade shelter, you can use roofing nails to fix these in place or 50mm tek screws with panel washers. When buying tarps or shade cloth always look for the ones with the reinforced eyelets.

If you wish to have walls on your shade shelter we recommend shade cloth rather than a solid wall, once again it's because of the wind factor.

Lastly what ever shade shelter you decide upon, it's your property, your responsibility, when you are gong home, you must take everything with you, do not leave screws or anchors or tarps on the salt.