These three are one decision, because shade changes the cooling load and cooling changes the watts. Start from the people who are coming and the plot you have.
Water
Headcount times the whole week is the wrong sum the moment somebody arrives on Tuesday. Count the days each person is there, arrival and departure included, then multiply.
CampKit safety line
Burning Man’s own survival guide lands on the same daily figure, and counts washing and cleaning inside it rather than drinking alone. It is a floor. Nothing about the playa argues for going under it. survival.burningman.org
| Person | Role | Arrives | Leaves | Days | Water |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Maya | lead | 30 August | 7 September | 9 | 51.3 L |
| Jules | member | 30 August | 7 September | 9 | 51.3 L |
| Rio | member | 31 August | 6 September | 7 | 39.9 L |
| Sam | member | 1 September | 7 September | 7 | 39.9 L |
| Camp total | 32 | 182.4 L | |||
32 person-days comes to 182.4 L. Booking all four for the whole event would have been 205.2 L, so 22.8 L rides out and rides back.
Demo roster
Shade
The official guidance calls it the biggest challenge to any structure out there, with gusts strong enough that standing up is hard. Sizing shade for the sun is the easy half of the job.
CampKit safety lines
Shade is a requirement, not a comfort. In heat like Black Rock City’s, a plan with no shade and no cooling is one CampKit refuses.
An unanchored structure becomes a projectile aimed at the people camped next to you. Rebar gets capped, and every anchor comes back out at teardown.
Lag bolts of 12 to 14 inches, driven flush with the playa, are the official answer for a shade structure or a carport. Flush matters as much as long, because anything standing proud is what a neighbor walks into in the dark. The cheaper version is half inch rebar, capped or bent into a candy cane so nobody puts a foot through it.
Guy lines want 9 to 11 mm rope. Retired climbing rope holds a knot at that diameter where hardware store line slips. Securing your structure
Cut and tape every panel at home, never on playa. Panels travel sandwiched between plywood with ratchet straps, and the rack has to be rated for that weight before any of it goes up there. Put a smoke detector at the peak and give every unit two exits, even when one of them is taped shut all week.
The safety checklist is from the person who designed the thing. hexayurt.com
Check the bar length and the loadCamps do give up on them. Tape and foam break down as panels age and start shedding MOOP, matter out of place: anything left on the playa. The designer has been asking people to retire tired units since 2017. One camp in a 2026 thread about two free hexayurts said they had moved to ShiftPods after a storm took several of theirs away. What the thread said
Sixteen feet across the corners is the standard hexayurt. The shade footprint is bigger than the structure on purpose, because the shadow moves all afternoon and the structure does not.
Cooling and power
A swamp cooler is not a compromise out here. Evaporative cooling wants hot dry air, which Black Rock City has more reliably than anywhere you would normally camp. What it costs you is watts.
Nameplate watts come off a bench near sea level in mild air. The playa is neither, so CampKit derates for heat and altitude before it sizes anything, and it sizes against the surge draw rather than the running draw. Run the demo camp through it and the numbers come out like this.
16% comes off before anything is sized, which is why the number on the box is not the number to plan with.
CampKit safety lines
Generators and anything else that burns fuel give off carbon monoxide. Never inside a shelter or up against one, never near a vent or an air intake, never in a space that is even partly enclosed.
Any plan with a fuel-burning device carries a CO alarm as a required item, not a suggestion.
No open flame inside an insulated panel shelter. Fire rated is not fireproof. Battery lighting only, and a fire extinguisher is a required item.
Stay inside the rating on the generator or the power station. Do not run DC equipment through an inverter. Size a generator to surge watts, after the derate for heat and altitude.
Placement is the part nobody tells a camp in its first year. If your camp takes the benefit of a generator, your camp absorbs the noise, so it goes as deep into your own layout as it will fit and never on the line you share with a neighbor. Fuel sits at least ten feet away with something underneath it to catch a spill, and a generator never gets buried to quiet it down. Generators · Camp resource guide
When it rains, lift the power connections out of standing water onto blocks of wood and tape them. A generator standing in water does not get started. Survival guide
Before you load
Water and shade are objects. Every one of these is somebody lifting something heavy into a car, and none of it happens because a plan said so.
The clock
6 days to the gate, and nothing clears the lead time from here. Rent, buy used, borrow, buy new, and build all need longer than that.
Those windows are shipping windows. Shade that can no longer be ordered can still be borrowed from a camp with a spare, rented, or bought on the drive in at Reno.
Gear
Shade on one side of the marketplace, power and water storage on the other.