H2no and Deluge DWR – Patagonia

I have a PreCip and my friend has the same Pata jacket you do. We just did a 7 mile day trip at Congaree National Park in the rain (steady, but light/medium for about 4 hours). My PreCip was totally wetted out on the hood, shoulders, sleeves, and both my front and back torso. His Deluge wetted out in the hood and shoulders, and dried a lot faster than my PreCip, though I attribute this to his jacket absorbing less water than mine.

It's not a perfect jacket, but it's better than the PreCip in my experience. I'm curious how his will hold up in future conditions, but it's seems to be a step up from the PreCip – but I wouldn't say any type of a jump.

Jason,

The Deluge finish that I analyzed on their Houdini was a silicone Epic-like finish. No DWR needs to be added.

Thanks a lot guys!

So, basically when it starts to wet through too much, there's no chance to renew the DWR.

When it wets out it means the DWR is no longer functioning.
When the outside of your garment is saturated, no vapor can pass through, which means that if you are sweating you're going to get wet from the inside.

When you get home you can restore it. Follow the advice of the manufacturer.

Jason,

YOU COULD JUST MEAN THE DWR

A microscope photo I took of the Houdini encapsulated fibers at 200x

All that any DWR does is reduce the fabric's surface energy so that spray rolls off the fabric surface rather than flattens out and create a water film. If you spray the wind jacket with water and the water beads flatten, then the DWR needs to be restored. You don’t need to go any deeper in this analysis. On a Houdini or Epic family garment, just wash it and then rinse it a couple of times to restore the low surface energy.

YOU COULD BE WEARING A LIGHT LAYER WITH RAIN DROPS >2mm
The Houdini was designed to allow 5CFM of air through it and the hydrostatic head is approximately 1,300 mm. If you wear a Houdini with a thin base layer and a rain drop >2mm hits you on the shoulder, the Houdini was designed to let it go through and you will get wet. Raindrops are commonly in the .6mm to 6mm range but they go up to 9-10mm in the worst case. It is ironical that we use simple descriptors like light, medium, and heavy rain. There is at least a 5,000 times difference in the kinetic energy between the commonly occurring .6mm to 6mm raindrops. You don’t need to go any deeper in this analysis if you were wearing a light base layer and the raindrops were greater than 2mm.

YOU COULD BE WEARING A 200 OR 300 WEIGHT FLEECE UNDER THE WINDSHIRT
If you wear something like a 200 weight fleece or heavier under a Houdini, the "Impulse-Momentum form of Newton's Second Law" (smile/sorry)increases the ability of the wind shirt to prevent MUCH larger rain drops than 2mm from getting you wet. If you are here in your analysis then you should very happy with the performance of your clothing system. You have created a "roll your own" similar to Paramo-Furtech-Buffalo.

YOU COULD BE BUSHWHACKING THROUGH WET BRUSH
This gets too complicated to discuss… sorry.

I think that H2no is a catchall name for both their membranes and PU coatings. And yes, your jacket is a PU coating. I doubt that you'll experience a drastic difference between any "standard weight" PU coated jackets. It should be a little better than the precip, but not a lot. The Precip has been unchanged for about a dozen years (because it sells so well, why change a good thing?). Your Patagonia jacket is a similar jacket, just more "evolved".

Thanks a lot Richard for the detailed response. I'll definitely keep that in mind when I have to replace my hard shell. Very insightful

Jack,

Thanks a lot. That's what I suspected, and I'm sure the jacket will be fine for a couple of years (hopefully).