I am a very warm natured person and get hot very easy. I enjoy a little chill when I sleep. I have a 20° under quilt and am looking to buy a top quilt. Would a 40° top quilt keep me warm on say a 25° night with along with my 20° under quilt?
I am a very warm natured person and get hot very easy. I enjoy a little chill when I sleep. I have a 20° under quilt and am looking to buy a top quilt. Would a 40° top quilt keep me warm on say a 25° night with along with my 20° under quilt?
I would get a 20* topquilt to go with your 20* underquilt. A lot of people say they sleep warm, but you'll be in a hammock so it's a little bit different. The air is circulating all around you, trying to rob your quilts of warmth.
I don't consider myself a warm or a cold sleeper, but I just don't believe in mixing and matching quilt ratings. My first set of quilts was a 20* HG Burrow and 20* HG Phoenix and I used those quilts from 70* F to 13* F overnight lows. It's easy to vent in 70* weather - kick the top quilt off. However, I was miserable using my 20* quilts in 13* weather. Never again.
I now use the 10* buffer rule - always make sure your quilts are rated at least 10* lower than the expected low. There is nothing worse than being cold - it makes for a very long night and can be dangerous, as well.
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Ralph Waldo Emerson
Beyond your quilt selection there are a lot of variables that go into how warm you'll be such as wind, humidity, and what clothes you wear. Even for a very warm sleeper, I would be skeptical that you'd be comfortable with a 40° quilt much below freezing unless you're wearing a lot of warm clothing. In my experience, once you get around that freezing mark, even "warm" sleepers are going to want some decent insulation in order to stay warm. But the best way to know for sure is to try it out in a situation when you can easily bail or add more insulation if necessary.
My experience has been that a top quilt rated for around 20° is versatile enough to cover a wide range of temps. I have a Jacks 'R Better Hudson River quilt. I believe they rate it as 25-30° but I've used it down to 21 or so. I consider it a 20° quilt. I've also used it into the 60s and all temps in between. The colder it gets, the more I tuck it in around my shoulders and really seal it off. If it's warmer, especially up around 60, then it's much looser with more chance to vent during the night. A couple of weeks ago I used it on a 5-day outing with nighttime temperatures between 42-47 and it was perfectly fine.Originally Posted by Caudill18
"...the height of hammock snobbery!"
Even a warm sleeper wouldn't be able to push a 40 degree quilt much below 40.
However a 20 degree quilt can take you up to about 60 and still be fairly comfortable.
Get a heavier quilt for those temps.
Probably not a wise choice. Why risk the discomfort and possibly
ending trip plans because you weren't prepared. A damp 40 degree
quilt can quickly become a 50 degree quilt. Inaccurate weather
reports could make 25 degrees 20 very quickly. You could carry
extra insulation but that often will not be effective use of pack
space or weight savings.
Im sure it can be done but making wise decisions can make trips
much more enjoyable.
I own a 40F quilt and would suggest getting the 20F. Like others have said its easy to vent and I'd much rather have to much quilt than not enough. I learned this the hard way one morning in Vermont when my teeth were chattering under my 50F top quilt. 20F is a good all around bet until you get into the shoulder season and even then you can add layers.
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It never quite worked like that for me. Full disclosure I am the opposite, a cold sleeper. But no matter I believe the principles are the same regardless of our tolerance differences for the cold.
Try to remember you are talking about two halves of a system, not two parts of a mixture. Your 20 degree and your 40 degree quilts wont blend into a 30 degree. Instead on a 30 degree night you will have half your system not only with no margin, but deficient in insulation. Most folks recommend a ten degree safety margin leaving you 20 degrees short on a 30 degree night.
Think of it like two hammock straps. If one was rated at 200lbs and the other at 50lbs, you wouldn't expect them to give you 125lbs of support each. You would expect the lighter strap to fail while the stronger held solid at 125lbs give or take a bit. Same with the quilts.
Cold coming in from above or below still gets to your body and inside your insulation. So if either half fails to do the job, you get cold. Each piece is unable to pull and transfer insulation value from/to the other, they stand alone.
Buy warmer than you think you need. I suggest you give strong consideration to the 10 degree margin train of thought. Just kick a leg out or vent a side if you get hot. A lot of nights, I just don't roll the edges of my top quilt down and tuck them. That makes it a lot cooler, but I can tuck them in if I get cold. If you have an inadequate quilt, you cant do anything about it in the middle of the night except get up, exercise and then add clothes. It isn't a great way to spend the night, I promise.
I am not an expert and compared to many on here, quite inexperienced. But I made a lot of mistakes early and almost all were under estimating what I needed or trying to cut cost.
I too am a warm sleeper, I bought a 20 degree bandit with 2oz overstuff that is almost unusable for me, I sweat way too much in it until around 25 degrees. I have used it as low as 8 degrees so far and was perfectly warm in it. So its basically my winter topquilt only.
Summer I use a costco down throw (gave it a sewn footbox, didn't even bother ripping seams, its good to 40 degrees for me).
My next topquilt purchase will be a 30 degree with no overstuff to cover the shoulder seasons where nights typically are 25-50 degrees where I hang.
SOOO many times before a trip I check the weather and consider taking my 40° when it's close. Every time, come 4am or so, I'm glad I went with the warmer 20°.
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