Compressed TQ & UQ

[Peter_pan]

I'm sure that there was no damage...Plus 1 to the just shake them out and they will loft to spec...

If not you are probably due for a washing and proper drying as you didn't note how much prior use these qult had.

pan

[Nhott]

Two years ago I purchased a 20 kelty light year down bag that was manufactured in 2010. It was compressed in the original box for at least two years before I got my hands on it. No loft lost. After a few days laid out on the spare bed, it was good as new.

[The Old Boot]

It's a good idea to store them uncompressed. I hang mine on clothes hangers in my wardrobe.

I do the same thing but I took two of the cardboard rollers from paper towel rolls, cut them lengthwise and put each of them over the hangers so that the diameter of the 'fold' is larger. It might not make a difference in the short term but in my mind I'm doing good!!

[The Old Boot]

Synthetic filling have one more problem, repeated compression/decompression (or even normal use when twisting and turning in the sleeping bag) cause the filling to "tear".
I have recently butchered my old synthetic bag (budget no name brand) to see whether I can DIY it in to a quilt. Innards looked like a shredded paper. No loft or fluff.

As you said, it was an old synthetic bag of unknown origin that you were using as a test. Who knows what the fiber was!! Or how old it was.

I just took a scrap piece of climashield left over from my DIY and tried pulling it apart. It has some give in one direction (lengthwise with the fibers) and very little give in the other direction.

I pulled way harder than I ever think that it would be abused inside of a quilt and I'm confident that it's not going to come apart under use. YMMV.

I've not tested other synthetic insulation fibers so they may react very differently.

[MississipVol]

You can always put them in the dryer on the lowest heat setting with a couple of tennis balls for 5-10 minutes and they will be good as new.

While it's best to store them uncompressed, they can be in their stuff sack for a lot longer than that without damaging them (unless they are REALLY old).

[genixia]

My down from a MyLuxe firm pillow fluffed up well too over the course of a day or two. I suspect that the major problems from keeping down compressed are:

1. When dirty or damp down is compressed it is less likely to separate and fluff up later, until washed and dried. Storing damp down compressed is a recipe for mildew anyway so this should be avoided.

2. When down is stored compressed for a long period of time, it takes longer to recover. A study on the effectiveness of the recent EN standard for sleeping bag ratings examined how each variable could affect test results and discovered that it would take several hours for down to recover 100% of loft after being unpacked. You can very easily 'lose' 15% of loft this way. I believe that overstuff helps correct for this effect - a 20% overstuff should allow for 102% volume fill when only 85% lofted.

I suspect that most guidelines about storing down uncompressed are based on experiences where people stored damp dirty bags compressed, or failed to give a non-overstuffed bag enough time to recover loft before using it after prolonged storage. Only in recent years have front-loading washing machines and dryers capable of rectifying down clumping been common in homes - prior to that prevention was much more important. One interesting data point is that US Air Force emergency sleeping bags issued to artic flight crews were vacuum packed by the manufacturer and stored that way for years. They would have been clean and dry when packed.

Yes, I store my down quilts and bags uncompressed. I would love to not need to do that though.

[davidatrout]

Dryer with tennis balls is what manufacturers recommend.

[CampWalker]

Thank you for the replies folks…it's alway good to get info from fellow hangers…

[Shane]

Good way to decompress down is with static. Put down product in the dryer with an old ragg wool sweater on no heat for a while. You know how your hair stands up to static? So will all the little barbs of down.