Bushwalk Australia

Just wondering- is it normal for down quilts to leak more and more down as they age? Mine has got to the stage that, when I wake in the morning and move around in the tent, it’s like a fine dusting of snow. It doesn’t appear to be coming from any particular place in the quilt and I can’t see any holes in the seams or fabric.

I’m just wondering how much warmth it is losing.

It's possible; my winter bag lost 160 grams over a couple of decades, although never saw what you describe.
What fabric is the shall made from?
Was it very high fill power down? What I lost from mine was mainly small pin feathers even tho it was very high quality fill with minimum feathers

It’s a quilt from Undercling _Mike, Performance down, HyperD 1.0 shell and Argon 67 liner.

Doesn't sound right but maybe ultra light down is a bit more fragile, it sounds like it may be fragments of down plumule working though the fabric. Have you contacted him yet?

I usually find the odd bit of down floating about either on me on in the bottom the tent, I think it is just par for the course for quilts or bags made from ultralight materials and filled with high fill power down as they get a few year's worth of wear on them.

Though ironically the problem seems worse with my Sea To Summit bag (Spark IV - 850fp) which also has had a few weird nicks/tears around the top and (less surprisingly) the god-awful zip baffle cover over the past few years. The much cheaper Enlightened Equipment Revelation (also 850fp) has been much less problematic, just the occasional pin feather poking through.

Never thought of weighing them every so often to track down loss, probably not a bad idea.

I didn’t want to bother Mike, not sure how he is doing these days.

And yes, I will be weighing the quilt, not sure how much down needs to be lost before this shows up on the scales and whether buildup of body oils might counteract any minor loss of weight. It never smells so I don’t wash it often. (hardly ever ) I’m not keen on having it dry cleaned as the extended tumbling will only increase the down loss.

Quilts will usually only leak down when the fabric used is not downproof enough. Argon 67 is not very down proof in comparison to something like 10D taffeta. It also depends on what down is used, some downs have more feather quills than others, even if it is 900FP, it still varies

Feathers leaking isn’t anything to worry about as the feathers themselves don’t add much warmth for their weight and it would take serious amounts of use to see any noticeable drop in warmth/weight.

Although leaking feathers can be very annoying especially when they stick to thermals etc

I'm not sure if its my age or the quilts, but over time, they do appear to lose some of their C rating.

When you think about it, being shoved (compressed) into a bag time and time again must do some damage to the Down. My guess is the powder is damage done to the Down fibers, that is now leaking out.

I'm not sure if this applies to synthetics. I have a Holifill* bag, which has still retained its C degree rating from when I bought it in the 80's. I really need to throw that bag out, but there are too many good snow touring memories.

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