How to choose a sleeping bag?

Everyone knows how important sleep plays in a person’s life. Special rest is necessary in unusual or extreme conditions. Under this definition, it is quite suitable for hiking, sports expeditions and even just leaving the house with an overnight stay in the field. The basis for a comfortable sleep in such conditions is a sleeping bag, but now shops and companies offer such a diverse choice that the eyes run away and I really want to achieve some harmony between price and quality and choose a sleeping bag that will serve more than one year, will be unpretentious in care, and most importantly - comfortable.

There are no secondary details in the bedroom: the material from which it is sewn, and the cut, and the filler are important. There are several main modifications of sleeping bags: firstly, these are cocoon sleeping bags that cannot be laid out in a blanket, and secondly, blanket sleeping bags, which can be laid out in blankets.

Which sleeping bag to choose is a matter of personal taste, but we note that a sleeping blanket is more suitable for going to an unfinished cottage by car, and cocoons are used for serious tourist hikes, ascents. They have less heat loss and weight. Some extremals use a short waist-to-waist sleeping bag called an “elephant foot” and wear (or fasten) a jacket on top.

According to the materials, sleeping bags are divided into natural and synthetic.

Natural materials going to sleeping bags are usually pure cotton, or cotton in combination with anything. Such sleeping bags are heavier, easier to absorb moisture, less wear-resistant, and again more suitable for short-term trips by car, because they simply look more aesthetically like a bed, softer, pleasant to the touch, do not rustle, they are also necessary for people who are allergic to synthetics.

Synthetic sleeping bags are lighter, more protected from getting wet, more wear-resistant and easier to wash, while they are more expensive than sleeping bags using natural materials.

And finally, the main division of sleeping bags falls on fillers.

The first group is the sleeping bags. Everyone is well aware of the advantages of down as a heater, but the main parameter of choice is the quality of the down, not its quantity. An indicator of the quality of the down is the degree of its cleaning and elasticity, determined by the Fill Power parameter (volume in cubic inches, to which the pre-compressed 1 ounce of down is restored). High-quality down has a Fill Power of 600 or more. It is also necessary that it was necessarily the down of waterfowl, since such down has a natural lubricant that prevents the absorption of moisture. Puff sleeping bags are the warmest and almost the lightest, with a weight of 900 to 1200 g they are comfortable at temperatures below -30 degrees, as at such temperatures in principle can be comfortable. Alas, the down has its drawbacks. For example, the impossibility of use in conditions of high humidity, because despite natural lubrication, despite special impregnation, down perfectly absorbs moisture and dries very poorly. Therefore, for winter hikes in areas with moderate humidity, the down sleeping bag is great, and for other cases, you need to choose other fillers.

Synthetic fillers can also be divided into two main groups - syntepone and hollow silicone fibers.

Syntepone bedrooms are the most famous in our country. They are the cheapest, designed for temperatures up to -5, up to -10 degrees maximum, weigh from 1100 to 2300g and are most common. The main drawback of syntepon is the fast enough “trackability”, as a result of which in a few years the sleeping bag will lose 20% of its thermal characteristics.

More insistently recently we (and in the West - exclusively) claim sleeping bags with silicone hollow inside fillers. They are light (from 900 g), warm (up to -25 degrees), easy to wash, very quickly dry, absorb a minimum amount of moisture. Such sleeping bags have almost no drawbacks other than the relatively high price, although prices are gradually falling with the advent of new, cheaper technologies. The most famous and high-quality brands of fillers are Hollofil, Thermolite, Aerofiber and Thinsulate.

The principle of heat preservation in these fillers is more or less the same: hollow “pasta” contains air, which does not allow your heat to escape from you. These materials differ from each other in density, fiber thickness and the number of internal holes in each fiber.

Below are more details about the new fillers:
What are Hollofil® II, Hollofil® 808, Quallofil, Thinsulate, POLARGUARD, POLARGUARD 3D, Hollofibr and others and how they differ from Synthepon

There are many myths about new insulation for sleeping bags: they say that sleeping bags made of these materials warm even wet, that they are many times warmer than usual, much lighter, much smaller in volume and much more durable than those notorious “ordinary sleeping bags”.
Undoubtedly, only the last statement is true - sleeping bags made of modern materials are much more durable than those made of Synthepone. Other myths are nothing more than myths.

A few words about these materials.
Thinsulate is manufactured by ZM. It is a nonwoven insulation consisting of super thin fibers, externally similar to down, consisting of 75% of lausan and 25% of polypropylene. There are several types of insulation, differing in different specific gravity.

Hollofil, Hollofil® II, Hollofil® 808, Quallofil® is manufactured by DuPont. It is a lausan fiber with cavities inside from one Hollofil to seven Quallofil®.

POLARGUARD 3D is manufactured by The Lessinger Group, Inc. They are a lausan fiber with a triangular cavity inside. POLARGUARD 3D features a thinner fiber, which provides greater softness.

There are many other respected brands of insulation for sleeping bags, but they are not widespread in the world and in Russia. Hollofibr and other consonant names, usually belong to the products of unknown Chinese, Korean and other companies from South Asia, and sometimes Russian Hollofibr. Represent a lausan fiber, the presence of cavities inside the fiber is possible, but unlikely, is of different thickness and different specific gravity.

Syntepon is produced by dozens of plants in Russia and CIS countries. It is a lausan fiber, there are different thicknesses and different specific gravity. It is called “Cloth needle-piercing for the sewing industry”, “Body insulation”, “Sintepon”, “Sintepon needle-piercing”, etc. depending on the place of production and imagination of the plant director.

We deliberately do not use the names Polyester, Dacron, Mylar, etc., but write lausan everywhere because all these fibers are the same in chemical composition and structure and are polyester fibers. In Russia, the understandable name Lavsan, which does not create the appearance of the use of some super-technologies, and it is technically not so difficult to produce fiber with cavities inside (see pasta).

From a physics course for high school, we know that it is not the insulation that warms, but the air between the insulation fibers. The insulation should create the maximum thickness of the air layer and at the same time prevent convective and radiant heat exchange. The best insulator is a vacuum flask with mirror walls, but to make a sleeping bag out of it is quite problematic, hence the compromises.

All modern insulation (except Thinsulate, which is the most “elderly” of this series) are based on one principle – it is a fairly thick fiber, which is resistant to compression and durable due to its thickness. Internal cavities affect the weight, not its thermal conductivity, because the volume of air inside the fiber is very small compared to the total volume of the air layer.

Lausan fiber has almost zero hygroscopicity and with the correct selection of other materials of the sleeping bag, you can achieve its very rapid drying (this does not apply to Thinsuiate). Inside the cavities of the fiber water does not get due to the small size of the holes and low wettability of the lausan. Perhaps this is where the stories about the warming properties of a wet sleeping bag come from. All companies that produce these insulations publish on their sites charts showing how much their material is warmer than “ordinary polyester”, but it should be noted that in fact these charts are not impressive – the difference is not several times, but in percentages.

It should be understood that a sleeping bag of one weight from a modern insulation is warmer than a sleeping bag made of syntepon, it is also longer, but much larger, which is understandable, since it is warmer. If the usual synthetic sleeping bag from the Belarusian Syntepon (the cheapest) will last one season, the modern sleeping bag will last 2-3 seasons under the right storage and washing conditions.

Tips for choosing a sleeping bag with a synthetic insulation:
If you need a sleeping bag for several trips in the summer for kebabs, then you can safely buy any Syntheponic sleeping bag, sleeping bag from Hollofibr or similar. Also, in principle, such a sleeping bag is suitable for hiking on the Karelian Isthmus in summer, for water trips, for summer hikes on the Kola Peninsula, for a garden and a cottage. You will save a significant amount of money, and you will not notice the difference in properties and durability.

If you go on sports hikes, go hiking often or go hiking in the winter, it makes sense to spend money on more expensive and high-quality products. We advise you to use sleeping bags from Hollofil® II, Hollofil® 808, Quallofil, POLARGUARD, POLARGUARD 3D and not from Thinsulate (in the production of a sleeping bag from Thinsulate is even more expensive than down, and the material is already elderly and not the best, but advertising and fashion do their job).

Care and storage requirements for sleeping bags with synthetic insulation:
All sleeping bags with synthetic insulation have similar requirements for care and storage.

Wash in cold water, do not iron, do not use organic solvents for cleaning. Store in a straightened state, do not leave in a strongly compressed state at high temperature and humidity.

Comfort temperature:
Comfort temperature means the lowest temperature at which, according to most, it is very pleasant to sleep in the sleeping bag. These numbers should be taken as indicative of direction. They are based on the manufacturer’s own experience and the design of the sleeping bag.

If you are more thermophilic than others, then we advise you to choose a sleeping bag, the data of which correspond to the upper bar of your requirements.

In addition to the fact that the comfort temperature is completely individual concept, it also depends on external conditions: such as humidity, heat insulating ability of the mat, wind, etc. Whichever sleeping bag you choose, always remember that it should be kept dry because humidity takes away heat and reduces comfort.

The second good advice is to avoid going to the sleeping bag cold and hungry. Jump, move around to warm up and eat a sandwich before climbing into the sleeping bag to sleep.
 

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