What happened to "water resistant" treated down?

[Roger Caffin]

A very common (here in Oz) trick when XC touring is to pick a fine day, camp early with the tent pitched, then drape all the down gear over the tent while we go pack-free skiing for the afternoon. The down gear dries out fast, and we get some fun turns in.

Cheers

[Edward John M]

With the gear tied down naturally. I knew of one group that did this without tieing everything down and spent a few hours looking for stuff the wind had picked up and blown quite a distance, same group left the tents open to “air out” and also spent quite a time brushing out all the spindrift

[Roger Caffin]

Tied down – yep.
We tie them to the guy ropes on both sides.

We don’t find it necessary to leave the doors open. We close the inner (breathable) doors fully and leave a little bit of the outer doors open. But this is for fine weather, not when there is spindrift flying around.

Cheers

[Rusty Beaver]

“I don’t know. I see a lot of cancer in my line of work.”

…and many cancers (not to mention neurological disorders in kids) have no known causes. Then, understanding how the chemical regulatory process works, and reading what the GAO (Government Accountability Office) has been saying in their reports (the regulatory process is largely ineffectual)…I think most would pause and give second thought. But who reads that stuff…other than geeks like me!?

Many diseases have no known causes…but man-made chemicals are ubiquitous…. and little is known about most. Hmmm….

Wish I could remember who it was that said this but some Canadian scientist was quoted as saying (I’m paraphrasing here) that “we (western society as a whole) are both ignorant and arrogant when it comes to man-made chemicals. Ignorant in not knowing what harm they cause and arrogant in assuming they cause no harm”.

I was leery of man-made chemicals for some time but became especially so after reading “Our Stolen Future” then digging into the GAO reports. Yes, I think that Canadian scientist is absolutely spot on! Ignorant and arrogant. Not a very good combination of traits to have….

[Rusty Beaver]

“Technological marvels do not substitute for basic skills.”

I don’t know about Roger’s taste in pants but this quote right here seems the voice of reason, IMHO. Kudos!

[obx hiker]

Looks to me kind of like Napoleon nude from the waist up and no hat. ;)

Guess that retreat from Moscow was hard on ol’ Nappy.

[Andrew S]

Unless I missed something above, it seems that some have experienced their DWR coated down performing well for many (25-30) years, and none have found that it doesn’t last well.  But suppose it only lasts 2-3 washings.  Why not just re-DWR them with Nikwax’s wash-in product?  I checked with Nikwax and they say that normal down treated with this is as water resistant as the Nikwax down that many clothes and bags are sold with.

If we want to learn more about performance, may I suggest a simple test?  If any readers have down mitts (or socks/booties), why not see what happens if you apply Nikwax’s treatment to one of them, e.g. the right one, and leave the other untreated?  Then weigh them dry, expose them to moisture, squeeze out as much water as you can, and weigh them again.  Then let them sit (or better yet, hang, a better approximation of what they would be doing on your hand or lashed to your pack).  And weigh them again every X minutes.  Then (or alternately), do the same test, but after getting them wet, instead of letting them hang, put your hands in them.  Continue to test the weight, but also note how warm/cold they are.  Now repeat all of this applying moisture in other ways (e.g. spray vs. soak vs. holding them open over steam vs wearing them on a hot day).

Regarding the clumping after clearning concern, some (Nikwax?) recommend that after cleaning you put the garment in the drier (no heat I suppose) with a few tennis balls.  No clue if anyone recommends tennis balls for untreated down.  If not, then I guess there is a clumping issue and, hopefully, a solution.  Though it sounds like none of the users of DWR down here reported any clumping.

Regarding the safety of the chemicals involved, any danger is sure to be a function of exposure.  So if you are wary of the chemicals, use untreated down (and fabric without a DWR coating, etc.?) for a bag you will sleep in 100 times per year for 20 years.  But for a garment you only take out of your pack for extreme situations, or only wear to and/from work/school, etc., there is much less exposure.  And while none of us know exactly how such risks compare to all of the other risks we face, this is not one of the ones that is going to keep me up at night.

P.S. Among the manufacturer’s mentioned, Nunatek actually does offer DWR down as an option.  One could also add Rab and Berghaus.  Possibly one reason a fair number of super light/high-end products do not use it is that it adds weight.  Nunatek says 5%.  So 900 fill power down becomes ~850 fill power down.  A parka with 15 oz weighs almost an ounce more.  And suddenly you are not offering the lightest, sexiest product on the block, and it’s harder to charge high-end prices.

[Andrew S]

P.S. I would do the test myself, but I don’t have, and have no use for, down mitts or socks or booties.  (Though if it turns out DWR coating works far better than I expect, I might revise that.)

[Amber]

I’m pretty new at this, but I recently bought a JRB quilt. I live in the humid south, and would’ve paid more for treated down, had it been offered. Pretty sure this down hasn’t been treated, and it’s been a dream – slept with it in my hammock all week, outside, through thunderstorms and 80-90% humidity (97% at the moment). I had a little misting from last night’s storm, and popped it into the dryer for 20-30 months on no heat, as a preemptive measure, but the down’s still going strong right now. Maybe time will tell, and those of us living in places, where treated down would be a major selling point, will finally know if it’s worth it’s weight.

[Amber]

*minutes…stupid phone

[Ryan Jordan]

Water-resistant down “works”. Caveat: the range of “conditions” in which it “works” is still largely unknown. In my experience, there’s no meaningful (practical) differences. So maybe we’re just adding chemical processing treatments when we don’t need to.

Marketing is powerful, I reckon.

There is a weight penalty – you’ll lose 5-15% fill power (depending on the type of treatment and “care” in “manufacturing” it – ie source, washing, process QC).

Longevity: still unknown. Let’s chat in 5 or 10 years.

Western Mountaineering and Feathered Friends are still not using it.

That’s fine by me…

[Roger Caffin]

Something to remember when the marketeers are selling this product:

The total surface area of all the tiny fluffy bits on every individual bit of down works out rather large. It has to: that is why down is such a good insulator.
You would have to cover every tiny bit of the surface of every bit of down to get the waterproofing they boast about. Even at the level of micron thicknesses, that is a big volume of coating. Big volume = big weight.
It will of course wear off fairly quickly.

Yet another marketing scam.

Cheers
PS: treating the fabric outer cover with some sort of DWR is however a Very Good Idea. I have had puddles of water on my quilt in the morning (bad condensation that night!), and just shaken it off when I got up.

[Jerry Adams]

I’ve been using a vest for about a year.  Half regular down, half treated.  I can’t tell the difference.

I should have made the right side treated, left not.

[Andrew S]

I’ve been using a vest for about a year. Half regular down, half treated. I can’t tell the difference.

Can you tell us a bit more about how you’ve used it, how much moisture it was exposed to, etc?

[Andrew S]

It’s frustrating that neither the manufacturers of DWR down products nor those who tried it and chose not to use it publish test results.  The most convincing criticism of DWR down seems to be that it won’t keep you warm when your garment is soaked through.  But then, neither will synthetics, and that is not what I would be hoping for from DWR down.  Rather, I would hope that it would fair better when exposed to light rain, or to the inevitable moisture inside a waterproof shell in heavy rain, or perspiration, or a small spill.  I would particularly hope that it would return to full insulating ability more quickly than normal down.

Someone posted in this forum (and this thread?) photos where they let treated down sit in a pool of water overnight and it never clumped up.  This being the case, I’d be very surprised if it absorbed as much water as normal down.  And therefore, very surprised if, even if it got wet enough to lose some insulating ability, it wouldn’t more quickly get dry enough to insulate well than normal down.

The test where the intrepid researcher/nutcase sat in an ice covered lake for a minute or so, twice, has been dismissed on this forum (in this thread, if I recall correctly) as merely testing the DWR coating of the outer fabric.  But I had the impression the jacket picked up a fair amount of weight and that some (or a lot of?) moisture got through, and the benefit was that it quickly became drier and warmer.  Shame they didn’t weigh the jacket.

It seems to me that half treated jackets are not the best tests for what happens when down gets drenched.  No one can wear such a thing when they really need it to insulate.  And what can be learned from testing it when it’s warm out?  Also, you can’t determine differences in moisture absorption by weighing it.  Seems to me the mitt/sock/bootie test I proposed is a better one.

I proposed doing it in various ways.  I could have added doing it in various conditions: high and how temperature, high and low humidity.  That would be a lot of tests.  But if someone did just one test and found either a huge benefit or zero benefit, that would still be very interesting.

[Edward John M]

An easy test might be to get two bags identical except for the down treatment. Weigh each. Saturate and reweigh.
Then put into a moisture sensing tumble dryer [ very common] and time how long it takes until the dryer switches off.

But I’m one of the people who always specifies treated down and who has been using Nikwax since it was called TX-10.

[Jerry Adams]

I’ve used my vest maybe 30 nights.  Under WPB jacket, while sleeping.  Sometimes humid conditions but I try to keep it dry.  850 FP.  Half treated, half not.  30% overfilled.  The baffles around my neck are overfilled 50%.  The baffle on my shoulder is overfilled 50%.

I can’t tell the difference between treated and untreated.  I got some treated because that’s what they had.  If I had to choose again I’d probably choose untreated, or maybe a coin flip.

[Andrew S]

So no one out there with down mitts, socks, or booties who wants to try the test I proposed (using the Nikwax DWR treatment on, say, the right mitt/sock/booty and then testing it in comparison with the left one – see my posts above from April & May)?

I finally bit the bullet and bought some down mitts to do the test myself.  Got the cheapest ones I could find (excluding probably Chinese stuff on Amazon with bizarre combinations of down, other insulations, and/or waterproof inserts in the wrong places).  And I was pretty surprised and pleased to receive some very warm, nicely made, box-baffled mitts (another case of Millet delivering good value for money).  Not pleased at all though to find out they already had DWR coated down :-(((  The advertisement didn’t say that!  (To be precise, I bought them on Amazon and Amazon didn’t say that.)

So now I’m back to square one.  But surely there is someone out there with untreated down mitts/socks/ booties, who’d like to find out for his/herself and all the rest of us what this treatment really does, no?

[Sam Farrington]

Had thought that the treatment of down was for DWR, which means durable water REPELLENCE, not resistance. Repellents are hydrophobic and will cause water not under pressure to bead up and flow off fabric for a while, but are not comparable to water resistant treatments that block water up to a certain PSI (or HH) from passing through for long periods.  Have never heard of making down water resistant, and don’t see how you could measure it even if it were so.

There is enough on this thread to provide circumstantial evidence the treatments don’t provide down with much water repellence; but I’d think just spraying a mist of water on treated down would show if there is any protection.  The water would bead up on the down just as it does on a DWR treated fabric. But even if it did, when the down is compacted in a shell, there would be water pressure created that might defeat the DWR.

As far as sourcing is concerned, don’t some of the materials suppliers sell DWR treated down?  And if not, why not.

My own experience is buying a Montbell spiral down bag years ago after reading a review on BPL by Will Rietveld.  The DWR was excellent, just as he said, and has never worn out.  But it would not stop water under pressure as water resistance would.  The bag has been well cared for, and is still good as new.   Cheers for Will.

So, I’d have no reason to buy DWR down, even assuming it exists.  If I could not keep the bag dry, I’d use a Cumulus bag from Poland with synthetic insulation.  But even kayaking in serious water, the pack is kept is a dry bag that keeps the water out.  The synthetic is much heavier than down, and much less compressible.  But I’ve never had a problem with keeping the Montbell dry, and the Polish bag remains stored away.

This discussion sounds a bit like it revolves around Roger’s comment mentioned above:  “Technological marvels do not substitute for basic skills.”
If critical gear needs to be kept dry to stay functional, it requires basic skills to make that happen. This obviates any need to run out and buy every flash in the pan that comes along. Confess, however, that I’ve got a basement full of flash in the pans. Mea culpa. If we were a little more careful, we’d not be blowing away $$$$$$ on gear.

[Jerry Adams]

I think the best way to evaluate is like Andrew said, one mitt treated, the other not

Or one side treated, the other not

You want to subject it to real conditions

I made a vest with treated down on top, untreated on bottom.  Haven’t noticed any difference, but I really should have done right/left

[Roger Caffin]

DWR on down is (yet more) bad marketing spin. Consider:

The superb insulation properties of down are due to the incredibly thin fibres in each down plumule. There are billions of them.
The total surface area of these fibres must be acres.

If you want to put an effective coating of DWR on the down, you are going to have to cover the entire surface to several microns depth. Multiply that depth by the total surface area, and you will probably have kilograms of DWR for every kg of down.

But we are assured that the added weight is negligible.
Yeah, right.

Cheers
PS: DWR on the outer shell is, on the other hand, a good idea.

[Andrew S]

“Had thought that the treatment of down was for DWR, which means durable water REPELLENCE, not resistance. Repellents are hydrophobic and will cause water not under pressure to bead up and flow off fabric for a while, but are not comparable to water resistant treatments that block water up to a certain PSI (or HH) from passing through for long periods. Have never heard of making down water resistant, and don’t see how you could measure it even if it were so.

There is enough on this thread to provide circumstantial evidence the treatments don’t provide down with much water repellence”

Well, when searching to find this thread again, I came upon some other threads and videos elsewhere, which I find very convincing that DWR down does provide real benefits, though I’d still like to understand them better. I’ve found many testimonials of significantly improved performance re. exposure to sweat, dripping from a tent, and puddles, in terms of both absorption and drying. Someone on this forum (I think it’s at least mentioned in this thread) left DWR down sitting in water overnight and it never lost it’s loft or sunk into the water. There’s even a video where a guy pours water into two containers of down, seals them, and shakes. Regular down immediately clumps up. Then he shakes vigorously for maybe 30 seconds, and the treated down doesn’t clump up. Then he opens the containers and takes the down out. The regular down looks like a small clump of soggy toilet paper. The treated down looks pretty much like it did when he put it in. It even floats about in the air!

Some of the treated down did stick to his fingers, which suggests a less than perfect result. Maybe an hour later, there would have been no difference. Maybe although the down still lofted and floated about, it lost some/all insulative ability. (Though that seems unlikely, as I understand down loses it’s insulative ability when water takes the place of air trapped in the down.) Or maybe all this was fake. But if not, then there are at very least benefits in the ability to not take on water so fast.

And yes, it is about making down repellent, not waterproof. Regarding the impact of pressure though, I believe that is mainly to make the water move past the water repellent surface, not to make it be absorbed.

[Nick Gatel]

To me, it is more marketing spin. If an untreated down item gets soaked, the treated down item would have gotten just as soaked. The key to down is to not get it wet. This is the realm of user skill.

Would I buy a treated down item? Yes, with a caveat. Six years ago I bought a Sierra Designs DriDown parka (800 fill wt) at such a steep discount ($150) it was too good to pass up, plus I needed a down parka at the time. If I needed another quality down sleeping bag, such as my WM Ultralite, I would opt for untreated down because I am not going to spend north of $500 on something that may not last the long haul, especially I am not going to spend a premium on something that has not absolutely been proven superior.

[Andrew S]

If you want to put an effective coating of DWR on the down, you are going to have to cover the entire surface to several microns depth. Multiply that depth by the total surface area, and you will probably have kilograms of DWR for every kg of down.

Perhaps, but it would be helpful to have more information about the details, because it seems entirely plausible and even likely that an effective coating would not significantly increase the weight.

For an intuitive understanding of why consider the relative size of what’s involved:  A down plume might seem tiny and it’s fibers tinier still, but we can still down fibers.  So compared to a bacteria, they are not tiny, they are incredibly huge.  As is a bacteria compared to a virus.  And a virus, such as the one getting a lot of attention these days, is covered in a wall of fat with lots of big proteins mixed in, and inside contains some of the biggest molecules known to man – RNA.  And RNA is incredibly huge compared to a water molecule.  Without checking out the exact chemistry, I recall some of the DWR treatment molecules are described as “6 chain”, which almost certainly means that while a lot bigger than a water molecule, they are nonetheless a lot closer in size to water than to RNA.

In short, while a down plume may seem tiny, from a molecular perspective, it looks like a great big oak tree.  And coating it with DWR molecules may be like coating an oak with (more) bacteria.  That’s not going to add much weight at all.

Furthermore, whether you are going to have to cover the entire surface depends on how you define what this means.  It’s not like coating something to make it bullet proof, for instance.  For that, you need a lot of steel or  whatever, with no holes smaller than a bullet.  In fact, you’d probably want no holes smaller than something like half a bullet or else a fast moving bullet would partly or even completely squeeze through.  But water repellency (not proofness) does not work like that.  The water is repelled by inter-molecular forces which have a range beyond the shape of the DWR molecule itself, so the gaps between the molecules can be bigger than the smallest gap a water molecule could squeeze through.  (And indeed, with enough pressure, a water molecule would squeeze through.)

Finally, the weight of the coating depends on whether you just get one layer on the down or several.  I’m guessing the chemists behind these products chose molecules that do not have any significant attraction to each other (as suggested by the fact that the Nikwax product is a liquid or solution at room temperature), in which case multiple layers should not be an issue.  Though I don’t have enough info to be sure about that.

[Andrew S]

If an untreated down item gets soaked, the treated down item would have gotten just as soaked.”

Could you let us know the basis for this conclusion – is it personal experience, or a study, or … . Either way, it would be helpful to know what happened or what you found out.

Based on what I’ve seen in this forum and elsewhere, it seems pretty clear that there are many situations in which normal down gets soaked and DWR down doesn’t. Maybe you can still soak it if you try hard enough. Probably you can. But if you’ve failed to keep it completely out of the rain/snow/etc., and least you still have a chance to do something about the moisture exposure before the down gets soaked.

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