FAQ

Down products maintenance

Quality down products are produced in a special way so the maintenance is easy. It is recommended to wash them once a year. This regular maintenance keeps it fit and prolongs its performance and life cycle.

We recommend to use a specialized cleaning service for down products.

In case you decide to wash it yourself, then it is important to follow the wash care symbols on the product.

• We recommend to hand-wash or to wash in a washing machine up to 30 degrees Celsius, using special programme and special washing detergent for down.
• Do not dry clean. No chemical cleaning. Don't use any detergents which may damage the down.
• Rinse properly (it is recommended to rinse twice).
• Do not wring! Only manually push the water out.
• The products need to be dried in drying machine with large volume, maximum 25 degrees Celsius. Or you can dry it freely spread (2-3 days) in room temperature, ventilate well and repeatedly shake and hand spread the down across the chambers.
• Do not iron

It is very important not to clean the products too often so the down would loose internal fat, natural elasticity of down would be lost by this.

Other tips for long performance:

• If you don’t use your down products, let them loose, free hanged. Long-time folded or rolled position takes away the sown elasticity needed for enough loft (fillpower). The down gets rough and loses its physical parameters. For short period of time it is no problem to have the down product in storage or compress bag.
• Do not pack sleeping bags by rolling but stuff it gradually to the transport bag. You can do the same with wet sleeping bag on the occasion, but you need to dry it correctly soon,
• Down sleeping bags or jackets with membrane outer material needs to be packed (compressed) inside-out.

Tirol wool products maintenance

You can follow similar maintenance rules for wool and down products.

It is important to follow the wash care symbols on the product.

• We recommend to hand-wash or to wash in a washing machine up to 30 degrees Celsius, using special "WOOL" programme and special washing detergent for wool.
• Do not dry clean. No chemical cleaning.
• Rinse properly (it is recommended to rinse twice).
• Do not wring! Only manually push the water out. (Don't twist, just push the water out.)
• Do not tumble dry.
• Do not iron.

No, we don't refill to add the down insulation. That would be a "new" product with new insulation parametres different from the original product and we don't do that.

We do refilling only as a repair service - if you tear your down sleeping bag or jacket and the down leaks out accidentally, then we refill the damaged part to the original volume.

Everyone who loves nature and wants to enrich his or her experience by spending a night outdoors needs a sleeping bag.  A sleeping bag plays a key role in keeping you warm and comfortable during the night. It can be made of different fabrics and insulation materials that are very important and significantly influence the essentials of outdoor activities- your feelings and comfort.

Probably the most important is the quality and type of insulation materials. Even if a satisfying substitute for a goose down haven't been developed yet, there are some synthetic insulation materials that are commonly used in low temperature sleeping bags.

Typical synthetic materials that we can find on our market are microfibres: Liteloft by 3M and Primaloft and hollow fibres: 4-hole fibre Hollofil and 7-hole fibre Quallofil both produced by Dupont. There are even more materials such Polarguard HV or 3D etc...

In terms of material structure, only microfibres are almost similar to down. When compressed, microfibres, as well as down, squeeze out almost all air which makes the sleeping bag more compressible and when unpacked, it gains its volume again. Unfortunately, unlike down, synthetic materials lose this quality (loft) very quickly.

For example, a sleeping bag filled with 4 layers of 2.1cm thick Lite Loft by 3M (which results in 8.4cm thick sleeping bag) reduces its loft 4 times after 20 compressions! The sleeping bag flattens and it insulates 4 times less then a new one. Synthetic materials retain shape much worse than down which loses its loft by only 5% after numerous compressions.

What makes a good insulation is the air „trapped“ inside the material. The volume of  the air is described as „loft“. Best synthetic materials have loft around 420cuin/oz but high quality down has around 800cuin/oz. It means that a down sleeping bag would be twice as warm as a synthetic one of the same weight.

In addition, if we use Teflon-treatment, down will outdo synthetic materials in all terms. Be sure, there's no wet sleeping bag that would keep you warm no matter if it's made of Teflon-treated down or synthetic materials.

The trick with the synthetic materials is that the temperature range (Comfort, Extreme temperature) is set for new sleeping bags. That's why you enjoy the declared heat comfort for only a couple of nights until the bag loses its loft.

If a 1.5kg product with synthetic filling declares -15 C, it sounds suspicious and I can guarantee that at about 0 C you will feel cold. In this case forget about those -15 C! This is a temperature suitable for a 2.5kg synthetic sleeping bag but you won't fit this one into your rucksack. Thus, for extreme conditions, down sleeping bags with high quality goose down are solely used. This is the way to get optimum weigh-insulation ratio. Down sleeping bags made of lightweight membrane materials can reach the thermal comfort of -20 C without weight exceeding 2kg.

Just for your interest, one single down particle (cluster) weighs around 0.001g and contains over 1000 air chambers. To fill one sleeping bag we need about 1 200 000 clusters which means about 1 200 000 000 separated air chambers!

The use of outer fabric EXEL DRY (44g/m˛) improved the quality of our sleeping bags. The material is elastic and allows the filling to expand. It protects the filling from moisture, it's also windproof and water-permeable (allows water vapors to go through). For you imagination, average person exhales about 0.25kg of water vapor per night and it must get through the inner fabric, insulation and the outer fabric of the sleeping bag.

So, the last advice: Before you enter an outdoor shop to buy a warm sleeping bag think about where, in what conditions and how often you want to sleep in your bag. Don't try at all costs to save money on your peaceful sleep. As Classic says: „It's not important to win, but to have a good sleep!“

Keeping the body temperature is from the beginning one the basic needs of a human being. To achive this, people were dressing in natural materials which were available – leather, wool, down. Until today modern technology was not able to create material with such isolating parametres as down has, in ration of keeping the warmth and weight, size of compressed item and lifetime. Crystal down is not only the best isolation but also the most ecological material as it is 100% recyclable side product.

Goose or Duck down has a hollow scape as carrier. This particle is further branched twice. At the very end there are small hooks which hold the individual particles together like a zipper. Because of this construction and specific shape, the important feature of creating isolating chambres has began. The chambers are filled with air, so called loft or fillpower. This specific feature is carried only by water birds (earth don´t have it). Crystal down compared to regular down looks more like a flake. Crystal down doesn´t have any hollow scape and is formed from almost transparent fine particles. In the middle is the core from which few centimetres long branches grow. One crystal down particle weights between 0,001 to 0,002 gramms. That means that 1 g of down contains around 1000 particles. Maximum 20% of a goose´s down is a crystal down. So if we calculate that one goose gives 30 g of crystal down, we need ten to twenty geese for one jacket.

Duck down is very similar in structure as goose. It is not as rich and dense, it hardly gets rid of its characteristic smell and has cca 10% less fillpower (loft) as goose down.

Crystal down is differentiated  by two main criteria, fillpower (loft) and volume of down particles.

1. Index of fillpower – Loft

Ability of down to fill specific space under constant weight and pressure. This measurement is being done in standardized cylindres and the results are in cubic inch per ounce. Pay attention to different measuring between American and European standards. American one are cca 8% higher that ones measured according to Euroepan norm. The best loft is between 600 and 800 cubic inch/oz (EU norm).

2. Percentual content of down particles

Down is evaulated according to the ratio between clear crystal down compared to regular down and small feathers. This percentual ration is visualized by numbers ssuch as 85/15; 90/10; 96/4. Crystal down with value 85/15 contains from 85% crystal down and 15% of regular down. Only very silly producer states using 100% crystal down. This parametre is for commercial use not possible. It is possible to achieve it only in laboratory conditions and in small quantities.

We can repair the most of the mechanical damages in our production facility. Contact us by using the contact formulaire (here).

Temperature limits are set according to EN 13537 norm. According to this norm sleeping bags are being tested on humanoid thermical figurine which transmits signals of change in temperature on various parts of its body for usability in various temperatures. Figurine is being put into the sleeping bag and outside temeprature is being changed in laboratory conditions. From measured values the temperature determination of a sleeping bag is being mathematically calculated.

This European norm specifies the definition, general requirements, also rules for marking and information provided by the producer of aleeping bags used for outdoor activities. It is valid for adult sleeping bags.

At this moment we custom make only Gaiters 8000 (see instructions here). In case of your interest we are able to custom taylor sleeves or trousers legs on our standard products.