Have you washed a sleeping bag?

[balzaccom]

We've owned our REI Sub-Kilo sleeping bags for about six years now, and that means that we've used them on about 750 miles of backpacking trips.  Since we usually hike about 7-8 miles a day, that's about 100 nights in the bag, not counting some of our car camping trips. Ewww. 

So as you can imagine, the bags had started to look a little grimy in places.  We've meant to wash them for a couple of years, but it's such a major process that we never got around to it. Until now.

A visit to REI got us the NikWax soap for down bags, and Ifilled up the tub and away I went, first washing the bag, then soaking it for a while, washing again, and then seemingly endless cycles of rinse and rinse and rinse and repeat.  Then the delicate process of slowing squeezing most of the water out of the bag, and about 3 hours in the dryer on the delicate cycle. But it worked.  

What was a grimy old sleeping bag now looks more or less fresh and new.   And we were surprised to see how well they filled out their big "pillow case" storage bags once we had washed them.  Before washing, they were not nearly so fluffy--although it's possible we could have fluffed them up a bit in the dryer even without washing them.  At any rate, they are now clean! I can hardly wait to get mine packed away in its stuff sack and on the trail again. 

[toejam]

I attended a presentation at the local shop where one of the reasons given for buying a $500 sleeping bag was because you can wash it and it will last nearly forever. So I bought a $9 bottle of ReviveX down cleaner instead of a new $500 bag.

My Sub-Kilo and even my 20 year-old Blue Kazoo puffed right up like new. I'd washed bags before without the same success. The key, as stated above, is to keep rinsing until all the suds are gone. I think I did 3 rinses in the bath tub and one rinse cycle in the front loader, then dried them for a long time with 3 new tennis balls. Both my bags fit in the dryer, but only one at a time will dry.

[ppine]

Washed a Marmot yesterday. I used Nikwax Down Wash which is superior to other things like Woolite and dry cleaning. The bag is clean with good loft.

[Billg]

I recently washed two old down bags and a beater down parka. I took them to the laundromat and washed them with Revivex Down cleaner in the big front loading washers there. One bag and the parka came out well, but the other bag was dripping wet despite the spin cycle. I put them in two different dryers on low heat and ran the dryers for over an hour.I kept feeling the glass dryer window to be sure that they weren't getting too hot. The one bag came out just damp, but with good loft. The other bag was still dripping wet. I had picked this bag up on eBay for next to nothing and I suspect that the fill was mostly dust mites and not so much down. I took the stuff home and hung all three to finish drying. At that point, I sprayed the parka with revives DWR and let it hang for a day. I have never used DWR on bags, so I'm not sure whether I want to start now. After the DWR drys, the fabric gets a bit stiff and crinkly, but a trip through the dryer on the delicate setting helps soften it up. I put both the bag and parka in the dryer for an hour on delicate and they came out nice and lofty.

The other old bag hung on the porch for three days before it felt dry to the touch. It was still very clumpy despite having been in thirty MPH winds. I gave it an hour in the dryer and the clumps pretty much disappeared. This old bag will probably just get thrown in the truck for highway emergencies.

I had been washing my down in the bath tub with Ivory Snow  and letting them air dry before beating them around to break up the clumps. I've used the laundromat twice now and am very pleased with the results. I haven't used the Nikwax product, but believe it would perform similarly to the Revivex. The big front loaders go through a prewash, wash and three rinse cycles, so I believe that the rinse is adequate. I put the down wash in at the beginning, so it goes through the prewash and wash cycles.