Gore Tex jacket failure

[shannon stoney]

My partner wore my LL Bean Gore Tex parka this past weekend on a backpack in the rain, and it failed utterly. He was soaked through. This jacket is maybe ten years old, but has not been worn that much. Why did this happen? It is lined.

[EndoftheTrail]

Three likely reasons.

1. Hiking in the summer rain, and especially carrying a backpack, most likely, your partner generated a lot of sweat and overwhelmed the jacket’s ability to “breath out” the vapor — thus soaking the jacket thoroughly from the inside.

2. Goretex breathes best when it’s cold and dry and worst when it’s warm and humid (or raining) on the outside. In other words, performance degrades as outside temperature / humidity increase.

3. The jacket’s DWR (durable water repellant) has probably worn out with age. A wp/b jacket relies on DWR to repel water (i.e. making the water bead up and roll off instead of clinging on to the garment and compromising breathability further).

Despite Goretex’s marketing hype, breathability can only do so much. Hiking in a summer rain, often, the only way to prevent excessive sweating from wetting out the jacket is to hike slowly and not get worked up — something not always possible, especially when hiking uphill.

[cary bertoncini]

I had silnylon poncho, 2 others had vinyl ponchos – one guy had a Patagonia (I think – he worked for an outdoor shop & it was a big brand) gortex jacket – it was pretty new.

After about 1 hour of STANDING IN THE RAIN (we were waiting out a heavy thunder and lightning storm above treeline, hoping to get through a narrow pass), he began wetting through and getting cold. At two hours or so, we had to set up a tarp and kinda huddle together because he was getting kinda dangerously cold after wetting completely through.

[kevin davidson]

I had a 12 year old Montbell Goretex jacket that failed, luckily this was noticed on a day hike and the consequences were minimal. Cause was delamination of the membrane and was a fabric defect (that just took a leisurely 12 yrs to show up). Montbell very kindly replaced it w/ the latest generation of XCR Goretex Jacket.

I’ve had PU coated tarps that had inconsistencies in the coating of the fabric and leaked from the start. I’ve seen defects in the weave of Cordura nylon that led to failure of the packbag.

In short, I think just about any material used in the Outdoor industry is subject to (hopefully only) occassional manufacturing boo-boos. And that’s not beginning to touch on the issue of user abuse.

I think that B.T.’s explanations sum up what is most likely in the case of the original poster. I’ve had #3 happen to me.

[Joseph Rothstein]

If the problem is not just sweat and condensation, then you might want to check the seams. In a ten year old Gore-Tex jacket that’s had little use, I’d expect that failure of the seam tape would be a likely source of leakage.

[Dale Wambaugh]

Looks at LL Bean’s guarantee policy, I would send it back:

http://www.llbean.com/customerService/aboutLLBean/guarantee.html?feat=gn

My experience with outdoor clothing manufacturers replacing defective garments has been very good. GoLite did an incredible job. Marmot repaired a garment with a seam failure and did a great job on the repair and turn-around time.

I live near the REI flagship store and go through the “garage sale” area whenever I visit the store. The tags on the used items are a study in customer service. You will see tag after tag where items were returned because the buyer simply didn’t like it. Others show some product failures and the rest are fit and performance issues. My point being, don’t be afraid to return an item that doesn’t work as it should. There’s no doubt in my mind that a portion of the high prices we pay for gear goes to fund customer service issues.

[Scott Toraason]

I totally agree with Benjamin Tang. I would also like to offer up another potential problem with Gore-Tex, micro cracks in the Gore-Tex fabric which can cause leaking.

I’ve always looked at Gore-Tex fabric like folding a tent the same way and seeing creases in your hard shell turning into cracks. Therefore after a trip or day in the snow, especially if outwear has not been used or needed no real cleaning, I toss in the dryer under low heat for three minutes, just enough time to remove the outside creases and do a slight re-melt of the Nikwax into those creased areas.

Weather it has been my older Gore-Tex hard shell, my newer XCR and Pac Lite, or PreCip, it has worked great, caused no delaminating, and in my opinion improved water resistance. I wash and recoat a minimum of every year as I also experienced a wet out my second year backpacking with a two year old REI Elements coat and felt it had failed when in reality it was just condensation. That was over twelve years ago. To be fair, REI now does a much better job of coating their jackets.

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