Help With New Sleeping System

[wayno]

@ Orion, i was just correcting Franco on his comment that "the insulation of the head does not change with environmental temperature because cerebral blood flow is kept constant"

[Onestepmore]

Phil, I have the same items you have, the Zpacs front/lid bag and the bottle holders that attach to the shoulder straps of my (GG!) pack. I have had no issues with mine, and have used them for the past 12 months. As others have suggested I'd recommend you get in touch with Joe at Zpacs and let him know about your concerns.

[wayno]

removed, wrong thread

[Onestepmore]

Wrong thread hun!

[Franco]

Wayno,
all the text after :
"from "The Hot Brain", MIT Press ..."
is from a book called "the Hot Brain, by MIT Press, so no those are not my words...

http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/hot-brain

BTW, I grew up a few streets away from this :

This is in town, the village at 900m above where we have the holiday house would get a lot more snow than that.

so it isn't that I have just discovered from the Net the importance of keeping the head warm.

Icefest.
Very good. Yes,it is Domodossola but I spent a lot of time up above Bognanco San Lorenzo at 1100m. That was the base for my hikes then.

[Empacitator]

Interesting thread, I have bought stuff from most of the well known cottage gear suppliers and I have found Zpacks to be the best.

In August I used their Arc Blast pack, -7c degree wide long sleeping bag and the down balaclava on my 1000km through hike and I was very happy with them.

I also agree that Gossamer Gear is a great brand, their Gorilla pack is one of the best I have owned and their LT4 Trekking Poles are my favorite piece of gear out of everything...

[icefest]

Ah, Domodossola. Franco, you are a lucky man.

[South_Aussie_Hiker]

No, I haven't contacted Zpacks... Yet.

While I've done a fair amount of walking and camping, I wanted to gauge some opinion here from the UL experts before I did so... Because UL sleeping gear is new to me.

Don't get me wrong, there is not a really bad down deficiency in the top of the bag, it's just that it isn't as puffy as it is the further down you go towards the footbox.

Like I said, I've weighed the quilt and it comes in 20g over spec, so there is no dramas there.

Generally the quality of the workmanship is fine with me, even though it might not quite be what it was when joe was hand making each piece of gear himself in the beginning.

There is another small, unrelated issue which I will raise with Zpacks before posting about it on here...

The stuff sacks I got at the same time were also of good quality.

Down to 7 degrees tonight so going to have another go. Will definitely need thermals/beanie tonight, so will see how that goes and report back.

[Orion]

I'm interested to see what zpacks has to say.

My own quilt, homemade, may be like yours. But I did it on purpose. That is to say, I overstuffed the footbox because I get cold feet sometimes. The area near my chest is perhaps slightly understuffed so I give it a little shake to move the down to the center when I first pull it out of the stuff sack.

[South_Aussie_Hiker]

Well I tried again last night... It got down to six degrees.

Big meal.
Slept in socks, poly thermal top, my thick fleece hiking jumper and thinsulate beanie.
The only thing I had left was poly thermal bottoms.
Bag zipped right up and cinched around my neck.

Woke at 6am starting to feel a little cold, but was able to adjust and go back to sleep.

I think the limit for me in this setup would be about 5 degrees or so.

I'm a bit disappointed that going from a cheapie Anaconda -5 down bag to a zpacks -7 bag has actually reduced my comfort limit from about 0 degrees up to about 4-5 degrees.

Once again last night, my head and waist/legs/feet were absolutely toasty as. The cold area once again was my chest. I really spent a bit of time lofting the down in the chest area to the middle of the bags, but then I roll a lot when I sleep, so probably doesn't stay like that.

I'll have a chat with Zpacks and see what they say.

[wayno]

eat more and generate your own extra insulation layer!
people keep coming into my office and complaining how hot it is, when i'm barely warm in it.... lifes hard when you've got next to no body fat...

[Franco]

South Aussie Hiker
One thing you could do is to hold up the quilt against the light to check the amount of down in the various areas.
Don't know if that is easy to do with yours but I did that with another quilt (NOT A Z PACKS) to show the lack of down in it.
I see if I can find that shot...
(my thought here is that maybe you do have the right total amount of down but not evenly distributed)

[Giddy_up]

Maybe you should send it back and get another one. If I purchased a -7 bag and I was getting cold at +4-5 I wouldn't be happy. Surely there is a problem in the manufacture given all the other information that you have given. Suss out the seller and see if its possible to swap, you send, they send to reduce time delay on you having a quilt.

[wayno]

or at least send photos back to zpacks, possibly backlit ones of teh quilt if it shows how much down there is or isnt in the problem areas

[Franco]

The quilt and the WM Summerlite were both hanging in the wardrobe.
I did not fluff them up but hang them as they were.
Here you can see that the mid part of the quilt lacks down. The baffles on the left side have had more down added by me , the others also had but to a much lesser extent .

If I fluff it up it looks better than that but because of all the space the down tends to shift to the sides.

This is the Summerlite , again not fluffed up :

Because it has continous baffles , like the quilt, I can shake the down to where I want to but otherwise it can sit even.
This is after a good shake to shift it to the bottom side :


Note. Set the bag up inside and take the photo with the flash turned off.
To be clear . mine IS NOT A Z PACKS quilt, I just used that other brand (the one I own) as an example of what could be wrong.

[wayno]

send the photo to zpacks for their comment.. i'd expect uneven down distribution if the baffles are being hung vertically but theres still a large area in the baffles with not much down in it... could well be uneven filling of the baffles especially given your experience

[forest]

I'd chase joe at zpacks for sure. Something isn't right. It's either your a very cold sleeper which is possible. Or the bag is under filled. You might have to step up to the 10ºf model as I suspect your a cold sleeper.
Ive pushed cottage quilts rated at 10ºC down to 2ºC and that was just in walking clothes and a 100wt fleece vest. (Not planned).
If your not happy chase him up. I've delt with joe heaps and several times on minor issues and he's been great.

[Joomy]

This is sounds pretty weird. Even the coldest sleeper should be able to use a -7 bag in +5 weather in a tent, unless they were quite ill or undernourished. If the bag is close to the expected weight then about the only thing I can think of is that somehow some of the down alotted to your chest area somehow went into another part of the bag. Does the bag fit you properly? There isn't excessive space?

[Moondog55]

This is sounds pretty weird. Even the coldest sleeper should be able to use a -7 bag in +5 weather in a tent, unless they were quite ill or undernourished. I

Cold stress or borderline hypothermia would have this effect to

[Joomy]

I would call that ill

[Supertramp]

i wonder about the owner of zpacks, he'd possibly be the first person to walk the te araroa trail in open toed sandals and socks, uneheard of. He must have wrecked a few pairs of socks if not his toes... seems a bit stupid light and *&%$#! minded to complete such a rough trail all the way in such minimalist footwear... at least hiis wife was sensible enough to wear shoes...

Weren't the Māori people of New Zealand walking barefoot for a few thousands of years?
Joe might not wear shoes or sandals all the time & may have really tough feet, sandals might be used on some of the longer walks. Just a thought.

[wayno]

his trip list for the trip only lists sandals and what photos i saw he was in sandals...

[nq111]

This is sounds pretty weird. Even the coldest sleeper should be able to use a -7 bag in +5 weather in a tent, unless they were quite ill or undernourished. If the bag is close to the expected weight then about the only thing I can think of is that somehow some of the down alotted to your chest area somehow went into another part of the bag. Does the bag fit you properly? There isn't excessive space?

I agree. Something is not right. This is not just a little tweaking around eating a meal or wearing a beanie.

[wayno]

just cover yourself in goose fat... problem solved

[perfectlydark]

just cover yourself in goose fat... problem solved

after the TP thread im starting to wonder if its worthwhile taking a flock of geese for their necks and fat when I go camping!

[madmacca]

Wayno, that was an interesting documentary, at least the part I watched. I had never heard of emissary foramina before or the "Radiator" theory of brain evolution. And that clip of a running naked woman was nice too. But does any of that change the 50% heat loss from the head at -4°C figure that Franco posted?

Orion,

The 50% heat loss at -4C I think comes from Froese and Burton (1957), who found heat loss at this rate for someone wearing well insulated clothing, but whose head was uncovered. But it is somewhat difficult to extrapolate from these specific circumstances, because this is partly a function of what is insulated and what isn't, rather than a true picture of where the body loses heat more generally.

More useful research I have seen coming out of the US military, shows heat loss through the head ranging from about 7% for a body comfortably at rest, up to nearly 70% through the head for someone who is severely hypothermic. Core body temperature is the key factor.

Also, there are some misconceptions due to the fact that babies experience significant heat loss through the head because their heads are much larger in comparison to their bodies than is the case for adults.

[Moondog55]

Are geese the ultimate in Ultralite walking?
Geese carry themselves so no weight on the back and eat grass, are a source of food, toilet paper (LOL) and perhaps insulation too so instead of discussing what gear to take for a 3 month UL trip we may wind up talking about which particular breed of goose is most suitable for the Overland track. you've all heard of the 3 dog night, how many geese are needed for a decent sleep??

[Giddy_up]

Are geese the ultimate in Ultralite walking?
Geese carry themselves so no weight on the back and eat grass, are a source of food, toilet paper (LOL) and perhaps insulation too so instead of discussing what gear to take for a 3 month UL trip we may wind up talking about which particular breed of goose is most suitable for the Overland track. you've all heard of the 3 dog night, how many geese are needed for a decent sleep??

I couldn't find numbers on any goose down but an Eider Duck produces about 40g of quality down per nest. So given that most winter sleeping bags use between 700-800g of fill you would need around 80 birds to build a bag because you need a pair to breed and build the nest. This would also give you 80 reusable wipes for toilet paper and it would also keep you fed, given that they have around 12-16 eggs and that would easily translate into 150 eggs a year and about the same in edible ducklings.

[stry]

A silk balaclava makes a significant difference for me. No science or checking temperatures, but it definitely works for me. I would guess that temps are around 2 to 3 or less when I use it.

[icefest]

These jokes about reusable toilet paper remind me of this: