h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Jackets in particular.

I have a couple of jackets which I re-waterproof on a fairly regular basis. i use the wash-in and also spray on whilst wet types. Every time, I am struck by two things:-

1. How it smells like PVA.

2. How it dries around the top of the bottle in little rubbery balls.

Am I paying through the nose for children's craft glue?

PP.

The smell just means the solvent is the same, the reason you can smell it so strongly is that it's volatile and goes away. The rest of the stuff in there will not be the same no.

You probably are getting 'ripped off though' after all, how dare a company try and make a profit out of their product

The content of your spray is likely to be a wax or teflon type material to repel water by the way. Not the job of Polyvinylacetate, although it probably wouldn't be all that bad at it, I recall that you could removed recently applied wood glue with hot water. This would make it an unlikely material to use as a water repellant.

I don't tend to go out in hot rain.

Since my favourite 'Outdoor Store' has a sale on until midnight, I will take advantage and not run the risk of glueing my clothes together.

PP.

Try NikWax - a whole host of different products, the best thing is you can get samples free -check out their website for the web quiz - answer the questions based on their products (clues available) and they will send you a sample - it may not be one you actually want, but it is still free.

I have always considered it a bit of a cheat on the part of the clothing manufacturers to call a material (for example Goretex) 'waterproof', when in actual fact it seems to be the chemicals that the material has to be regularly doused in, which makes it waterproof . Gore make all these amazing claims about their space-age material technology, but nonetheless, after a winter, (or two if you're lucky) of downpours, you have to 'reproof' the material. Sorry, but that feels like a con to me.

No clothing manufacturer has yet managed to construct fabric through magic. So it's rather silly to expect it to be as such. All materials mineral, vegetable or oil based will eventually succumb to the weather.

Goretex is teflon based - you can't get much more water repellent than that.

"Goretex is teflon based - you can't get much more water repellent than that."
and yet, after a few months of normal use, my goretex jacket is hardly more water repellent than a cotton t-shirt; an hour or so of light rain and it's soaked through . I've just never been impressed by goretex. I buy it, because to a certain extent, I succumb to their marketing; because they tell me that each version is better than the last, yet still I have to reproof the fabrics regularly. So.. is it the material that's waterproof or the bottles of proofer? Could I not just wash any old fabric in this proofer and gain the same results?

Try it

I did a few years back and I noticed water starting to bead on normal material, but didn't test it any further. Will put some normal clothes into the wash next time I proof.

Anyway if goretex is the best we can do to waterproof humans, then some serious research money needs to be allocated towards this endeavour. Nature has the problem licked in a wide variety of ways and science normally copies nature quite successfully. For example plant leaves (look at Brasicas in heavy rain). Their micro hairs can bead water off the surface pretty much indefinitely and what about human skin.. You may wrinkle up in a bath after an hour or so, but I've yet to hear of human skin letting water into our bloodstream no matter how long we are wet for. We are 100% waterproof.
I just don't get why it's such a hard problem to solve with current technology. Fishermen wear oilskins which remain waterproof no matter how wet they get; can this not be adapted to an outdoors market? Breathability is something Gore and other outdoor apparel manufacturers bleat on about, but I don't find current materials that breathable no matter what they say. Anyway; you open your jacket for a few seconds in lee of the rain; there breathability problem solved
Rant over..

There are plenty of lightweight completely waterproof jackets out there. The problem is this breathabillity thing since these are made of impermeable plastics.

The result of this is that I don't get wet from the rain, but I sweat like a pig and get just as wet from the inside. Pointless and rather less pleasant.

One of my 'breathable' jackets at least has huge zippy underarm vents which help a little.

Perhaps the answer is to just go out there naked, although this seems to have it's pitfalls.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19625542

PP.