Down items, including garments and sleep systems, are typically static / inactive insulators. One of the many reasons for this is that they are not easily washed. It is an extensive process that shouldn’t be performed unless absolutely necessary. Additionally, precautions should be taken to avoid the need to do it. Obviously, using down items in active scenarios will quickly cause sweat and oils to transfer into the inner shell and the down fill. There are a multitude of other reasons that make down a very poor choice for active use, and this is just another reason on the list. Down is a static insulator, to be used at camp or during stops. Its performance in this scenario is simply head and shoulders better anything else. However, it is a terrible active insulator, with real negative consequences for using it this way.
Even if used strictly in static scenarios, down items can accumulate oils that will compromise its ability to loft up. This is fairly common during long term use, but there are some precautions that can be taken to minimize the likelihood of oil accumulation. When oils from a human body soak into the inner shell and transfer to the down fill, it tends to cause the branches of the delicate plumes to stick together. This removes the ability of these branches to hold up and create dead air space. So the first thing we can do is to wear something between our bodies and the inner shell of the item. It is much easier to wash a base layer or mid layer than it is to wash a down item. We sometimes will see sleep systems that have been on extended thru hikes build up oils and lose loft in the torso area where the body is most oily and where it is most likely to press those oils into the shell. To some extent, we can minimize this by wearing layers to absorb those oils and then wash some of the oils out of those layers so they don’t transfer it to the sleep system.
Of course, during extended use, there is only so much you can do, and oil transfer will sometimes be inevitable. Eventually you’ll likely need to wash. I have a different opinion around this topic than what is commonly recommended. Typically the recommendation is to wash by hand, in cold water, with a specific down wash, which is usually a very gentle detergent. I think this is a good process if your down item is minimally dirty. For instance, if you have some soiling on the shells, but you don’t really have oil accumulation into the fill. However, when we are talking about extended use items, or items that have been used in active scenarios that have heavy oil build up, I think we need something more aggressive than that. I have seen many unsuccessful attempts at washing items like this with down wash in cold water and it just doesn’t have enough power to remove those oils. Cold water isn’t good at removing oil and down washes are designed to be gentle so they don’t strip the natural oils from down. However, a down item that is in this state of oil build-up really needs to be stripped of the oils that are clumping it together. I have taken in thru hiked systems that people couldn’t get unclumped and put them through a hot wash in harsher detergents. Just like how the grease on your dishes in the kitchen sink are best removed by hot water and soap/detergent, the grease that is causing your down to stick together is also best removed by hot water and a gentle detergent. I would recommend using a tub and washing by hand, following the usual gentle agitation methods. Agitation, soaking, more agitation. Keep the agitating fairly light, with more of an up and down squeezing motion. With sleep systems, the baffles are made out of mesh. If you twist and pull on them too hard, they can pull out of the seam. Always lift a wet system from underneath so the load is not going through the baffles.
How hot should the water be? Unknown. I have had great success with hot tap water that was too hot to keep my hand in for too long. “Hot tap water” is variable from household to household and “too hot to touch” is subjective so I would use discretion and experimentation. I don’t think we want to boil your sleeping bag here but I think we can go with fairly hot tap water. Again, we are actually trying to strip oils away from the down and heat does a great job of this. Yes, technically we probably don’t want to fully strip all oil away, but in this case, we are dealing with a system that is coated in way too much oil. We are likely to strip oils down to a more manageable level. Even if we were to strip most of the oils away, the main purpose of the down oils is to create a hydrophobic coating. As we know, down is not very hydrophobic, so we aren’t really sacrificing a huge benefit. Also, we are likely to be putting body oils right back into the down when we use it again.
From this point, unfortunately, we really should have a washer and drier. The gentle spin cycle of a washer is great for spinning out most of the water so that we can use a tumble drier. It is a good idea to use discretion here to make sure that the washer is going to spin it and not accidentally start an agitation cycle. Probably a good idea to spin it on a slower setting too. Most recommendations are to use no heat in the drier with a bunch of tennis balls. The tennis balls bounce around and hit the clumped up down and the chambers, which will help break up clumps as they dry out, but often the no heat setting will take soooo long. I’ve dried some down systems on low heat but you want to be VERY careful with this. “low heat” might mean totally different things in different machines. I’ve checked this by running the machine and using a scrap of shell material to check how it deals with the hottest part in the dryer. Once the down is fairly dry, just like when filling, I lie the system down on a hard surface and slap the chambers pretty hard. From one end to the other and back until things break up and distribute. This forces bursts of air through the chamber that will break up the clumps, assuming they are dry enough and the oil has been removed. I would definitely avoid the recommendation of manually pulling down clumps apart. This is only going to result in what is essentially ripping the plumes apart. You don’t want to do that. There may be times when this is your only option, but I would leave it as a very last resort. I will pull the item out many times through the drying process and do this until all the fill is dry and loose.
Bear in mind that this page is my personal opinion and not a recommendation. Timmermade is not responsible for any damage caused by attempting this process. It is very easy to cause damage to a down item if washing is too aggressive or a drier is too hot. It is a very delicate process where you need to be very, very careful.