Getting the loft back

[RSD]

I (stupidly) but my new Marmot sleeping bag in a compressible dry sack and compressed it too far so it has now lost about half of it's loft. Any tips for how to restore it to full loft?

[Franco]

is it down or synthetic ?

[ninjapuppet]

Bit hard if you've broken the micro fibers down. Have you tried putting it in the dryer for an hour or so?

How long did you leave it in the compressed state?

[RSD]

It's a down sleeping bag, it was compressed for a couple of hours.

I haven't put it in a dryer.

[corvus]

If it is good quality down a couple of hours in a compression sack should not really have any effect on the lofting aspect(I only ever use the supplied stuff sack with mine) if you consider that many walks with a compressed down bag in your pack can be much longer than two hours.
I personally would hang it out on the washing line in full sunshinefor a few hours and if you do not get a full loft contact the supplier and ask why
corvus

[Ent]

Hi

Down is reasonably resilient stuff. In fact one supplier I chatted to mentioned that it is highly unlikely that a human can over compress down as it is shipped mechanically compressed. Step one is as Corvus recommends. Step two would be wash and dry but based on what you have said this would sound rather unnecessary. I have high loft down bag and straight out of the compression bag it can look rather average but in less than half an hour you would never know it has been compressed.

Not familiar with synthetic bags but I agree with the poster's comments that once damaged there not much you can do.

Cheers

[Pongo]

I have heard that if you include a tennis ball or two in the dryer it helps beat the bag a bit and should help break up the clumping. Makes sense to me.

[Franco]

OK, as stated above , there is no need to do anything apart from giving it a good shake and let it loft by itself.
I had an sb inside a tiny bag very much like a compression bag for 2 years it puffed up no problem in a short time.
Does not work the same when dirty. The oils/sweat and grime will damage it , still it can be washed and mostly revived.
Franco
Tennis balls and all of that is only for when it's wet

[Orion]

I'd add to this that the time spent compressed is mostly irrelevent. My understand -- and I could be wrong -- is that damage slowly accrues due to cycles of stuffing and unstuffing, not the time. Storing a bag unstuffed is recommended mainly to avoid trapping moisture.

One might suspect that using a compression stuff sack regularly would degrade the down faster than using a normal stuff sack. But I haven't seen any test results on down durability under various conditions. For instance, how does the fill power of different grades of down change with use? Is an 850+ fill bag still a lot fluffier than a 700 fill bag after 5 years?

[Moondog55]

My limited experience says that the 900 fill power down lasts longer and is less fragile than 550

[Mark F]

Down should just slowly loft back up if it left out and given a shake every 1/2 hour or so unless it is dirty. Dirty, body oils etc will stick the down plumules so they don't loft up.

A couple of comments on nylon and polyester which are relevant to synthetic bags. The basic difference between nylon and polyester is that nylon will tend to return to it's uncreased shape whereas polyester maintains creases created by temperature and pressure. You will notice that you can iron (temperature and pressure) a permanent crease into polyester shirts and pants while nylon pants shed their creases once allowed to hang free. This is largely the reason for nylon shells on sleeping bags, rainwear etc. rather than polyester. The temperature point for this crease setting is around 80C I think.

All polyester wadding (lots of trade names) used in sleeping bags is processed by having a crimp set in the fibres using high temperature and pressure. Leaving a polyester filled sleeping bag tightly packed in a stuff sac will over time reset the crimping in polyester fibres and so the loft disappears. This can take a very long time as long as the temperature is low. Now put the same synthetic filled sleeping bag in its tight stuff sac in the sunny back window of car on a hot day and you can destroy it in only a couple of hours.

[madmacca]

Try the dryer, but with no heat. Just the tumbling restores the loft quite nicely. Heat can dry out the natural oils in the down.

[Wolfix]

Get in it and shimmy about! Down just needs a bit of a tease to loft up again. No joy? Return it.

[ninjapuppet]

Heres some good tips to look after your down bag from feathered friends.

Nothing new, we've covered it all in detail on this forum, but its easy to read all in 1 spot.
http://www.featheredfriends.com/Picasso/Headmenu/DownCare.html