Standardised Benchmarking for Insulated Jackets (beyond R-Value)

Is it a good time to bring up the fact that “R value” was created solely for the purpose of improving the sales and marketing of building insulation products?

Also, dealing with teeny tiny U values and trying to add them up all the time was a pain in the a$$ for the building industry?

I come to the same conclusion – just use r-value.
Trouble is, the definition of R-value does not come anywhere near being able to handle clothing on a body.

Cheers

Well all this lends support to the notion that some alternative is required and my heated crash-test dummy can’t wait to get started.

Andy

Google “Copper Man”

Already been done

Hi all,

Hope everyone is doing well amid the “pandemic” (I have two letters for you all in regard to that: C and D – as per the vitamins or rather the hormone in regard to D).

Just wanted to round out this thread.

Firstly, I have a confession to make. My original post was a favour to a group I was doing some work for (of the Sil-Nylon tarp variety – I’ll update that thread soon).  They asked if I would channel their concerns regarding insulation for feedback from the experts at Backpacking Light.  I did my best and Scramble’s Editor (who kind of outed me in his recent piece) asked me to pass on Scramble’s thanks to all who contributed to this thread.

I thought you may find Scramble’s piece of interest, though re-reading this thread, I’m not sure many will agree with their take on this topic. Still hopefully some of you may find it a fun read, I did — there were some gems in there that made me laugh.

Here’s the piece that hopefully some of you may have provided some inspiration for:

“A Fraud of Meaningless Measures“

Enjoy and stay well !!!

Andy

Andy,

The, when new, insulation measurement for your Mountain Equipment Rampart Hooded Jacket review:

R-Value = 1.77

Clo = 2.01

IClo = 1.41

It will degrade in insulation value as used to approximately 30% less than the “when new” value and then stabilize. If used like a down garment for UL backpacking (tightly stuffing during the day and sleeping in), the 30% reduction will occur after approximately 2 weeks of use.

The US cost for a thermal dummy test costs in the $1,000s and Leeds University should be about the same. You have a noble goal but the economics don’t make since for fashion garments like jackets (rapid change).

Let’s combine the Scramble article which Andrew referenced and Richard’s comments. What we get is that is that the big brands are not aiming their products at the mountains, but at High St. They are selling fashion items which are meant to make you look macho and give you lots of sex appeal. They are, for the most part, NOT meant as mountain clothing.

So what can we do? We have some (limited) options:
* Use the stuff anyhow, while accepting the obvious deficiencies (and ignoring the marketing spin), plus HOPING that it will be enough.
* Try to find a genuine cottage company selling genuine mountain gear (but one which has not yet slid into the Dark Side).
* Make your own gear to cope with mountain conditions (OK for experienced MYOGers, but otherwise hard).

It’s no use demanding genuine measurable specifications: we are such a tiny fraction of the market. We have no power. Profit is king.

Mind you, rock and ice climbing gear does have legally enforceable Standards – but those areas are not competing with High St.

Cheers

Hi Roger

Yes I think this is the key point:

“Mind you, rock and ice climbing gear does have legally enforceable Standards – but those areas are not competing with High St.”

By the way @richard295 — I want to make clear that I have done some work for Scramble (we provide some of their web, design and other logistical and support services), but I don’t represent them in any way.  I probably confused things by posting on their editor’s behalf.  I’ll keep things clean in the future. So from now on you’ll be getting 100% me (perhaps not so interesting).

Richard – how did you get those figures for the Rampart? — Thanks by the way.
Is there a database somewhere where I could compare how that measures up against similar jackets?

My impression from the Rampart review, is that the jacket is used as a “belay jacket” / for short stops in cold conditions – not for sleeping in.  The degradation issue interests me.

I agree with Roger, re. the smaller manufacturers. They should connect with the people interested in running the kind of tests I’ve come across on BPL. Ultimately, if small companies like Crux (UK) started using some of you guys to thermally test their gear – they could provide usable specs (tested @ Richard-BPL lab) and that would help separate them from the non-testing high street fashion pack.

Perhaps one day we’ll have mountain certified by BPL :)

Andy

Hope everyone is doing well amid the “pandemic” (I have two letters for you all in regard to that: C and D – as per the vitamins or rather the hormone in regard to D).

This has here been discussed by virologists and lots of medical specialists and there is ABSOLUTELY NO evidence that those help in preventing to get COVID19. The only things that can help for sure (but without 100% guarantee) are:

1. social distance yourself from other persons at least 1,5 meters = 5 feet
2. wash your hands often
3. quarantine yourself and everyone that lives in your home from others, so even from parents, grandparents, …

Who said anything about preventing it?

“It is recommended to use large doses of vitamin C and unfractionated heparin. Large doses of vitamin C are injected intravenously at a dose of 100 to 200 mg / kg per day. ” – Expert Consensus on Comprehensive Treatment of Coronavirus in Shanghai 2019,  Journal of Infectious Diseases.

IV Vitamin C “Widely Used” To Treat COVID-19 In NY Hospitals:
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/iv-vitamin-c-widely-used-treat-covid-19-ny-hospitals

If you are unaware of the how vitamin D regulates the immune system, do some research:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166406/

Vitamin D for prevention of respiratory tract infections: A systematic review and meta-analysis:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3543548/

A regulator of serotonin; damping serotonin’s potentially over-active immune function:
https://www.giantpygmy.net/gp/index.php?id=blog&post=health-vitamin-d-as-regulator-of-multi-role-serotonin-in-brain-and-gut

Vitamin D Supplementation Could Reduce the Risk of Type A Influenza Infection and Subsequent Pneumonia:
https://journals.lww.com/pidj/fulltext/2010/10000/vitamin_d_supplementation_could_reduce_the_risk_of.30.aspx

I said nothing about prevention. There are ways to fortify your system to mitigate bad outcomes.

Also you may find this helps to calm the nerves:
What’s Up With The Italian Mortality Rate?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM9aZflBoOU&feature=youtu.be&t=240

Anyway, hopefully back to insulation …

Andy

The conclusion from your first ncbi article

“As immune cells in autoimmune diseases are responsive to the ameliorative effects of vitamin D, the beneficial effects of supplementing vitamin D deficient individuals with autoimmune disease may extend beyond the effects on bone and calcium homeostasis.”

Maybe taking vitamin D if you’re deficient or have a autoimmune disease will improve your immune system

But for normal people no good evidence

Even for deficient or autoimmune people the evidence is weak

Stay 6 feet away from other people

If you touch a surface that someone else could have touched or coughed on, don’t touch your face until you wash your hands (20 seconds with soap) or sanitizer if washing isn’t possible

It’s difficult to reliably do those so just stay at home as much as possible

It may not be bad, but as COVID19 is unexplored territory, I woudn’t count on it too much.

And if you already get enough vitamine C and D in by food, extra dosages by using supplements do nothing. Your body only uses a certain amount and nothing more. And if you eat healthy, you get already all you need.

Jerry, are you sure you understand the sentence you quoted?

It relates to this:

“suggesting that mortality might be due to virally driven hyperinflammation” – source:  COVID-19: consider cytokine storm syndromes and immunosuppression, Lancet (March 16, 2020)
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30628-0/fulltext

i.e. a modulated, dampened immune response helps ameliorate the cytokine storm syndrome that is responsible for many of the fatal outcomes.

“Maybe taking vitamin D if you’re deficient”

Vitamin D deficiency in Europe: pandemic?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5527850/

Conclusions: Vitamin D deficiency is evident throughout the European population at prevalence rates that are concerning and that require action from a public health perspective.

We are not in disagreement – we’re simply talking about two different topics. You are talking about prevention, I’m talking about mitigation and fortifying oneself in case you are unlucky enough to catch it.

Now, please can we get back to insulation.

Andy

<p style=”text-align: center;”>@Andrew the journal article you cite does not mention vitamin c as a pharmacological agent it just mentions the usual suspects when treating Acutec Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome form a viral cause. Antibiotics, corrticosteroid anti-inflammatories, antiviral agents, interferon and so on.</p>
The ‘evidence’ you’re going on is an article by the new york post.

Even if vitamin c is a treatment in ICUs in NYC it does not mean that it is effective as a treatment as no randomised clinical trials woukd be published yet and certainly no evidence as a preventative or even a recommended clinical treatment for readers coukd be inferred from this.

Coincidentally, I’m an ICU nurse working in a non-clinical role but am  going for an interview today to look at relief work in a local ICU.  I will ask them what the recommended treatments being used are at the moment.

I doubt if randomisedtrials would haved been published yet and, either way, best to use the health advice published by your local health jurisdiction rather than random posts on BPL as advice on prevention and treatment.

re-read:

Expert Consensus on Comprehensive Treatment of Coronavirus in Shanghai 2019,  Journal of Infectious Diseases.

“It is recommended to use large doses of vitamin C and unfractionated heparin. Large doses of vitamin C are injected intravenously at a dose of 100 to 200 mg / kg per day. ”

I imagine they’re using this in NY because it worked well in Hubei.

As for clinical trials:

Vitamin C Infusion for the Treatment of Severe 2019-nCoV Infected Pneumonia
From: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04264533

“Vitamin C, also known as ascorbic acid, has antioxidant properties. When sepsis happens, the cytokine surge caused by sepsis is activated, and neutrophils in the lungs accumulate in the lungs, destroying alveolar capillaries. Early clinical studies have shown that vitamin C can effectively prevent this process. In addition, vitamin C can help to eliminate alveolar fluid by preventing the activation and accumulation of neutrophils, and reducing alveolar epithelial water channel damage. At the same time, vitamin C can prevent the formation of neutrophil extracellular traps, which is a biological event of vascular injury caused by neutrophil activation.”

China is conducting a clinical trial of 24,000 mg/day of intravenous vitamin C to treat patients with coronavirus and severe respiratory complications.  In this clinical trial, participants will receive IV vitamin C for seven days straight at Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University.  (source: https://innovationcompounding.com/coronavirus/ )

Good luck with the interview.

Andy

“And if you already get enough vitamine C and D in by food, extra dosages by using supplements do nothing. Your body only uses a certain amount and nothing more. And if you eat healthy, you get already all you need.”

That may be true, but that’s making the (naive) assumption that people ARE actually eating healthy on a consistent basis. It’s also not taking stress into consideration.

Since humans are one of a small handful of mammals which have lost our ability to produce our own Vitamin C, its especially crucial for us to be supplementing it, especially during times of high stress. I’d wager that being quarantined at home while thousands of people are dying from a global pandemic is likely causing a little more stress in everyone’s life. Therefore, don’t you think the “recommended daily intake” of Vitamin C might need to go up a little?

While social distancing, staying at home, strict hygiene (and immediate quarantining of  affected individuals) is essential, I believe its equally essential that those of us who have the capacity to tend to our health and well-being, should do so, no matter what.

If I believe that there’s any remote chance that taking an extra gram or two of vitamin C during this time of global stress might keep my immune system just a little more resilient, should the virus float by, than what’s the downside? A soft stool?

Because as far as I can tell, the data seems to infer that adding 1 to 2 grams of C during times of stress or in advance of getting sick has the potential of helping a lot, with very little side effect.

Here’s a great article regarding vitamin C use and infections.

And another regarding vitamin C use and the common cold. 

It seemed clear from the analysis that regular vitamin c supplementation won’t necessarily  prevent one from catching the cold (in normal population), but if they were to start taking high doses of C at the early onset of feeling sick, both the severity and duration of the cold would be reduced.

But there’s is an interesting “exception” noted:

“Interestingly, a subgroup analysis found that regular vitamin C supplementation in persons under high physical stress (marathon runners, skiers, and soldiers) decreased the incidence of the common cold by 50%”

And regarding Covid-19, a gathering of doctors and scientists took place a week ago to specifically discuss the effectiveness of IVC treatment with Covid-19 patients.

http://www.drwlc.com/blog/2020/03/18/hospital-treatment-of-serious-and-critical-covid-19-infection-with-high-dose-vitamin-c/

“Dr. Mao discussed one severe case in particular who was deteriorating rapidly. He gave a bolus of 50,000 mg Vit C IV over a period of 4 hours. They watched the patient’s pulmonary (oxygenation index) status stabilizing and improving in real-time.”

Doing everything necessarily to maintain a healthy immune system should be just as important as social distancing, washing one’s hands, and not becoming another potential vector. As far as I can tell, there’s clearly no risk in adding a gram of vitamin C to my diet, and a lot of evidence to suggest it’s a very good idea, especially if I’m very concerned about getting sick.

Andy,

With this threads now substantial drift to COVID-19, I will defer additional insulation related question responses to some future thread.

I can accurately measure insulation values because I own an environmental chamber and a commerically produced insulation tester. The insulation tester was last calibrated, by the manufacturer, on 12/31/19 against NIST standard reference materials. Their equipment is specified to accurately measure from .01 R-Value to 80 R-Value. The vendor’s specified accuracy is +-2% in the .01 – 5 R-Value range (most UL backpacking insulation) to +- 7% in the 70 – 80 R-Value range (uppler limit of testing ability).

I can also closely estimate insulation values as a result my regressions based on my prior lab tests.

I primarily test only what I own or am considering owning. I neither solicit nor accept any payment that might influence a testing result.

Ironically, I took the above actions for similar reasons to the author (s) of “A Fraud of Meaningless Measures“. 10 years ago, I to was frustrated with the lack of honest objective information to make informed outdoors clothing decisions.

Vitamin C has been used for sepsis on and off for a while but there is little recommendation for its use, despite its theoretical benefits.  It’s unlikely to do.harm though.

That said there is no evidence that vitamin c suplementation assists someone who is healthy from preventing or assisting with septicaemia. But, unlikely to do harm.

You can easily cherry pick excerptsfrom journal articles to support your position but the consensus is thatvitamin c has limited evidence as a treatment for sepsis, multiorgan failure etc.

@richard295

That’s very cool indeed Richard. And thanks a) for the info and b) for helping to rescue the thread.  I had no idea that two letters of the alphabet could be so triggering.

Just a quick final question – when you say insulation tester, I’m assuming this is testing a layer of the specific jacket?  And thus is encompassing the lining, stitching and all that jazz?

Thanks,

Andy

Holy thread drift, Batman!

Andy,

Yes.

Holy thread drift, indeed.  I’m kind of hoping that a moderator is bored somewhere and will get out an axe and chop the Covid-19 stuff into a new thread called “The Covid-19 Panic Tangent Thread” (or something like that).

Yes, let’s stick to insulation from hereon, please.

Andy

I’m kind of hoping that a moderator is bored somewhere and will get out an axe and chop the Covid-19 stuff into a new thread
It would be an awful lot of work …

Cheers

apologies for supporting the thread drift :(

Back to insulation.

Andy, I still don’t understand why try to use R values for insulated jackets? I’m even surprised that it’s adopted for sleeping pads (since most pads AREN’T uniform homogeneous materials).

Even the building industry itself isn’t entirely happy with the unit of measurement, the first being that it has been proven to not be entirely reliable. (The sum of various R values in an assembly DOES NOT perform the way that it’s supposed to as advertised.)

As a well-known building scientist said about a decade ago:

“R-value is the poor stepchild of building science metrics”

As an architect (and a building science enthusiast), I can fully understand the need for trying to keep things “simple” for a client or consumer to understand. But the large-scale over dependence on R value in the building industry has caused just as much harm as it has good for our profession. While it’s simplification has helped consumers (and building officials) compare and evaluate various homogeneous insulation products, it has done so at the expense of ignoring the evaluation of entire floor/roof/wall ASSEMBLY construction.

Given your desire to apply this UoM to insulated jackets, I’d highly recommend reviewing the real-world shortcomings of it in the building industry, first and foremost. (Probably talk to this guy at Building Science Corp.)

Matt

I was actually glad of your sane intervention, but I’m even more glad we’re back on topic.

Reading Scramble’s piece, I have to say, as a consumer I’d find that metric (time to x temperature drop via thermal mannequin) more appealing. Afterall, as per your building analogy, that measure would include the floor/roof/wall assembly.  To quote:

• You make a standardised, simple hooded down jacket (fill weight = 120g, 90/10, 700 fill power).
• The thermal manikin is heated to 40°C, the chamber is 0°C, the windspeed = 40mph and relative humidity is 20%.
• How long before the manikin’s temperature drops 5°C (or whatever drop is decided upon as meaningful).

Personally, aside from the scientific, I’ve found R-Value and Clo profoundly non-intuitive and hard to translate into the experiential. But I’m less expert than many on BPL and likely much more like your regular consumer.

I don’t really have a point of view, as I said earlier I was helping out Scramble who were interested in the feedback from the BPL community (and being cheapskates and not entirely aligned to the UL world-view) they’re not members here.

Andy