Light and insulating material for wet conditions? Just had down failure.

[D M]

Dawn dishwashing liquid is the best for cutting grease, sweat and fatty deposits. As a wife and mom I have found it to be the best for that purpose, but I cannot tell you if the soaps will degrade materials. I spot wash bad stains with Dawn, rinse until NO suds form, then use the Sports Wash.

I’ve used the Sierra Designs Cagoule and Chaps with Melanzana fleeces and am completely satisfied. If it really rains hard I am definitely also using my umbrella.

Sorry the OP had such a crummy experience, street smarts through experiences are costly but you sure have learned a LOT. This is why I continue to come back here, huge wealth of knowledge AND experience.

[Roger Caffin]

I spot wash bad stains with Dawn, rinse until NO suds form, then use the Sports Wash.

That sounds just wonderful.
And smart.

Cheers

 

[jared h]

i doubt the eVent fabric failed. i have used a few jackets/pants and the material itself has never had an issue, even with seasons of hard use. and the eVent HH rating is 30,000mm (~42 psi)…comparable to (if not slightly above) Gore-Tex fabrics.

a few possible reasons:

1. sweat. seriously…two down jackets under a hardshell? even walking around you are going to perspire, and it will wet from the inside out or condense on the inside of your jacket and travel around from there.
2. high humidity outside can travel through a membrane. not common, but in the PNW or Mid Atlantic, definitely happens. try a poncho, jacket that has a lot of ventilation–OR Foray is the best i have seen, with zips from hip to arm pits, or just plan to get wet and use different mid layers.
3. seam sealing and zips. never owned a jacket from REI, but cheaper jackets sometimes skip or do poor job sealing the seams, and cheap out on non water-resistant zippers. if this is the case, your jacket is just WP fabric with lots of holes in it. this is really noticeable when the DWR wears down.

solutions:

1. more breathable fabric/jacket construction and/or better seams/zips. Check out that OR Foray, it is fantastic. Or a Neoshell jacket, depending on how waterproof you need.
2. wash in a natural laundry soap (no fabric softeners/surfactants). i use straight castile soap with dissolved washing soda, on gentle or hand wash. do not forget to reapply DWR when it wears down and dry with some heat (DWR recommended to ‘activate’ the coating, whatever that means. i follow the directions and it works for me).
3. regular down can be dangerous. try fleece (polartec alpha (my favorite), thermal pro, power stretch pro), wool insulation (ibex aire, smartwool smartloft, icebreaker merinoloft), primaloft gold, or waterproof down. i have used them all in wet/rainy/sweaty conditions, each works better than traditional down. as far as the down, i can only speak for the Rab waterproof down…have not tried another companies hydrophobic treatment. works well enough for me to trust in the PNW.

[Roger Caffin]

the eVent HH rating is 30,000mm

But only when CLEAN. Dirty – can be very low.

Cheers

 

[jared h]

by very low you mean…?

if the outside gets dirty enough it can block moisture moving from inside out, or if the inside gets saturated with oils in can cause reverse osmosis, but neither or those would qualify as ‘very low.’

is there some resource online that shows the degree of WP degradation when dirty and how dirt on a membrane causes it to leak?

[Roger Caffin]

Is there a resource? No. Too many possible contaminants!

How low: almost to the leak through from rain. This has nothing to do with ‘blocking moistrure’: just a total loss of surface tension on the Teflon. It makes like a sieve then.

Cheers

 

[Ben C]

A down jacket is great for sitting around doing camp chores at most.  For continuous walking, you’re going to sweat in it.  If you have WPB on, the sweat can’t get out and your down will wet.  If walking about for any time, I think a fleece is better.

[Dena Kelley]

My go-to combination for cold/wet is an impermeable shell (yes, heavier, but it doesn’t wet out) and either a fleece long sleeve or my Patagonia Nanopuff for insulation (I’m sure any Primaloft or similar jacket would perform fine). I gave up on WBP’s for everything except winter snow sports where contact with moisture would be minimal. I’ve never found one that performed well in rain.

[Eric Blumensaadt]

My REI Kimtah has NEVER failed, rain, snow of heavy fog. The reason is that I wash it at least once a year in Nikwax wash.

Then I wash it again in Nikwax DWR.

Then I dry it.

Then I spray it with Revivex.

That gives me a durable DWR for about a year, even in all day crap. Yes, pack straps and pack backs will sear off the DWR. I just re-spray the areas with Revivex. There is one slightly better DWR spray out there but I forget the name.

[Eric Blumensaadt]

My REI Kimtah has NEVER failed, rain, snow of heavy fog. The reason is that I wash it at least once a year in Nikwax wash.

Then I wash it again in Nikwax DWR.

Then I dry it.

Then I spray it with Revivex.

That gives me a durable DWR for about a year, even in all day crap. Yes, pack straps and pack backs will sear off the DWR. I just re-spray the areas with Revivex. There is one slightly better DWR spray out there called Grangers.

[Roger Caffin]

Hi Eric

Mixing Nikwax and Revivex does not seem like a real good idea to me. They are not necessarily all that compatible. Why not Nikwax wash-in followed by Nikwax spray-on?

Cheers

 

[Nick Gatel]

I don’t have to wash my poncho, soak it in chemicals, or spray stuff on it, plus I can hike with a down jacket and not worry about it getting wet from rain — although perspiration is another matter.

;)

 

[Anonymous]

Once the shell becomes a cold, soaked, wet layer, it appears to become no longer breathable, in my experience. So even if you are just walking around, and not working up a sweat, condensation of your body vapor against that cold outer layer might become an issue. I don’t know if that is a likelihood in the amount of time you were walking around. What would make for a fascinating ( for me anyway) is to see what would happen if you had been wearing a vapor barrier shirt close to your skin. I wonder if that down would have been so soaked in that case? I generally do not have any condensation against my VB layers because they are kept warm. Condensation loves to happen on contact with icy cold outer layers. Moisture will only become a problem with my VB if I overheat and sweat, but even then it is still not condensation, it is sweat from too much heat. Plus, the wet against my skin is unpleasant, but warm, because it can not reach my insulation.

I have tested this by making no attempts to either vent or remove an insulation layer or the VB itself, and just pushed myself to sweat and soak my near skin layer on purpose. Insulation remained totally dry. I have tested this sense I have worked up so many sweats over the years no matter how supposedly breathable my gear was, getting my insulation wet. But I must say even that wet insulation ( usually from sweat ) has worked out for me, because it has almost always been fleece or some other synthetic, which precedes to dry even under my GTX or similar shell after I stop sweating. For example, going down a 3000 ft ski slope as fast as I am capable, maybe with the occasional fall buried in deep powder, working up a sweat. Only to get on a ski lift and sit fully exposed to below zero wind chills for however long it took to get back to the top, with or without blowing snow. But wearing my synthetic long johns and fleece layers, I never had a problem. At the end of the day, I would feel pretty dry. And usually stayed warm enough.

But whatever the actual cause, I bet most of us have either had it happen to us or our friends more than once over the years: whether from sweat, condensation, or exterior moisture making it’s way in: wet despite high dollar rain gear, and also cold depending on the insulation that was under that rain gear.

[Anonymous]

Not sure if this was already quoted: https://backpackinglight.com/lightweight_guide_to_backpacking_in_sustained_rain/

“<b>For even a waterproof/breathable fabric like Gore-Tex, the DWR determines how well the fabric will breathe in the rain.</b> If the DWR fails, the outer surface of the fabric becomes saturated with water which leaves no pores open between the fibers on the outer surface of the fabric. Without these open pores to pass water vapor, the inner waterproof/breathable membrane cannot breathe. At this point, your waterproof/breathable fabric breathes little better than a totally non-breathable material like a plastic bag. ”

 

[Roger Caffin]

+1 on what William wrote.

Cheers

 

[Eric Blumensaadt]

But wait – there’s more…

I recommend you get a down jacket with Dri-Down, or other reliable down water-resisting treatment and also spray a good DWR on the down jacket’s shell.

This, along with a regular DWR re-treatment of your WPB shell should get you through most situations.

 

[Hiking Malto]

Perhaps you should consider an umbrella, excellent breathability and generally pretty waterproof. Every other option that I have used results in wetting out either from the inside or out. So I’m in complete agreement with Skurka.

[Brett Peugh]

I took of one those Greg Norman Epic jackets I got for a cheap price and had sil nylon sleeve extensions and a hood made.  Not the lightest thing but it sheds the rain and breathes a little bit.  I use it when the rain becomes a little bit too much for my R2 to shed as I am walking.

[Steofan M]

Reflective umbrella will keep rain & sun off which allows you to dress to the air temperature. Francis Tapon has carried one for years.

 

 

[Author]

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