That's the type of info I'm looking for... Is the heavier fabric of such higher quality that it makes it worth the weight penalty?
That's the type of info I'm looking for... Is the heavier fabric of such higher quality that it makes it worth the weight penalty?
Originally Posted by 12trysomething
+1
“All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it.”
My friend just got an HG Burrow which he was nice enough to let me borrow for a few days to examine. It is a 20 degree Wide, Regular length Burrow with the .67 oz weight fabric, and 1 oz overstuff. The fabric feels amazing and it's a nice looking quilt.
My initial observation is that it doesn't loft as much as I feel it should. When I hold it up to the light, I can see spaces where there is no down... it has shifted to the outer edges of the quilt. There are 15 chambers for down on the quilt. When I compare to pictures of the UGQ Flight Jacket I find that the UGQ quilts have 18-19 chambers. The additional no-seeum material needed for 3-4 additional baffles and the .9 oz weight fabric are what makes up the additional weight. If the additional chambers keep the down better in place, and avoid gaps, then the weight penalty is worth it to stay warm.
I can't overstate how much I LOVE the .67 oz fabric on the HG Burrow quilt. For anyone ordering one, I would recommend going with at least 2-3 oz. of overfill to compensate for down shift in the chambers. At least that's my opinion based on seeing just one of these quilts.
I'm looking forward to seeing the Flight Jacket quilt in person so I can make a better comparison of the two.
I am very happy with my Burrow 20, but I will add that I have had several poke throughs in a fairly short period of time. So far, careful massaging of the fabric has returned the errant critters to their proper place.
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who say there are two kinds of people, and all the others.
I wanted to post again and say after letting the Burrow and Incubator quilts lay out uncompressed for 3 days that they have lofted up more than they did on day 1. I am not as concerned about the amount of down stuff as I was previously. I think I would still recommend going with 2-3 oz. overstuff, but the quilts are definitely very nice as/is.
The additional loft over uncompressed time is normal/expected. I think the shifting of down is "normal" too. You need to fluff (shake) the quilts before deploying them.
It's kind of hard to wait 3 day for your quilts to fully loft when out hiking.
Now that the down has full lofted a good test would be to stuff it and wait 24 hours then unstuff for ~2 hours and check for loft and gaps.
This would be more like a real life test in the woods. I would do this test is a garage or outside since a warm house would skew your results.
Yes I agree. I told my friend to store them unstuffed. Hopefully they'll never be stuffed longer than 16-20 hours on the trail.
I had a Western Mountaineering down bag that would puff up almost immediately out of the pack. My Enlightened Equipment down quilt is the same way. That's what I was hoping to see on these. Hopefully they'll be just fine.
I agree, I just recently got an EE 0* under quilt and when I unboxed I almost cried when I saw the spots with no down, a quick shake and it fluffed right up despite being delivered in a pouring rain and left on the back steps in a plastic bag by the mail carrier. I don't know if it will make it to 0* but in the low 30's with a 0* Marmot lithium bag for a TQ wearing mid weight poly/wool under wear and smart wool socks and a light baklava I had to vent down to the waist and I am a cold sleeper. I think I paid around 275 for it with a discount code.
I own 2 Flight Jackets (one with sewn footbox, one with drawstring--definitely prefer the sewn style), and while I don't own a Burrow, I have had the opportunity to check a couple of them out at recent group hangs. Honestly, both products are of excellent quality, and you *probably* can't go wrong with either of them...but with that said, I'm a bit glad that I went with UGQ. One reason is color choice...I don't care so much about what colors are used, only that my top and bottom quilts match--a downside of being a bit OCD, though it does help with telling different quilts apart (green for 3 season, orange for winter/hunting season). Fabrics, I couldn't really tell much of a difference, both companies use really soft fabrics that feel good to me, so that's a bit of a tie. I haven't found anywhere on my quilts where down is trying to poke its way out, so that's a good thing. Same thing goes for stitching, both companies are immaculate in their stitching. The big thing for me though was that the down in the Burrows I looked at (which had been out and in a hammock uncompressed overnight) seemed much easier to shift around, like it wasn't really filling the channels all the way up. That could've just been something related to the weather/humidity, or some condensation from the people who'd been sleeping under them, I don't know. It just seemed more likely that the down could shift and create cold spots on the quilt; the UGQ quilts that I have feel like the channels have more down in each one, and the down doesn't seem to shift as easily or as much. I believe there's something on UGQ's site about purposely adding more down than theoretically needed in order to prevent the down from shifting and cold spots from occurring. My quilts also seem to loft more than the Burrows did.
Again, I've not ordered anything from HG, so I can't comment on their customer service (though I seriously doubt that there'd be as many HG supporters out there without some very solid customer service), but I can say that Paul and Missy's customer service is unbelievable...when I ordered my 20* quilts, I sent them a message at 10pm on a Sat, not expecting to hear anything back til the following Monday...I had a response from Missy before 10:20pm the same night.
Hope some of this rambling helps, though I really don't think you'll be unhappy with either choice.
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