Don’t Let It All Come Out In The Wash With Care, You Can Remove The Dirt And Preserve Apparel’s Waterproofing

Procrastination is easy when it comes to laundering outdoor gear. First, we know it’s just going to get dirty the next time we wear it.

Second, washing waterproof pants and parkas is scary.

I have to admit I messed up. Don’t tell my husband, however, because he’s been banished for life from use of the washer, drier and anything that resembles hot/cold/warm settings. (You see, the poor guy sees few hues - Jacob’s coat of many colors is a beige blur to my better half.)

Anyway, back to my flawed laundry. I made the erroneous step of following the directions on my ski clothing: Wash in cold water, hang dry and head back to the slopes.

What the tags in those synthetic vestments don’t say is that regular old laundry detergents eliminate both the dirt and the waterproofing substance impregnated in the fabric.

In a panic, I called Chris Hyatt, of Ski Mountain Sports in Whitefish, Mont. “Yeah, you did screw up,” he said. “But I’ve got a solution.”

A product called Polar Proof by Nikwax bailed me out of laundry purgatory. The company offers water-repellent products for everything from cotton T-shirts to climbing ropes.

In hindsight, I should have washed the non-Gore-Tex ski clothes in Nikwax’s Tech Wash (about $9 per bottle) and hung them to dry as the clothing manufacturer suggested. Tech Wash would not have removed the water proofing on my coat. Since I flunked this step, I moved on to Polar Proof (about $10 a bottle,) which replaces the water repellency that my suds removed.

Since I did not wash the matching ski pants, I was able to compare their waterproofing to that of the coat treated with Polar Proof.

I held the ski pants under the faucet. Water beaded and didn’t soak in. Then the Polar Proofed coat got the test. Amazing! The water, even under highest pressure ran off the coat. The water couldn’t bead because the new treatment made for an impermeable coating on the fabric.

Chris offers several tech tips that make sense. He suggests using a waterproofing substance on all synthetic clothing and sleeping bags because the waterproofing adds durability.

“When you keep the water out, you’re also keeping the dirt out as well,” the laundry genius says. “It makes sense. Water and dirt are often together. Dust particles stick to water drops and become attached to clothes that lack waterproofing.”

So Hyatt uses Nikwax to wash everything from fleece to down, and adds, “I know this stuff works because I’ve used it for years.”

I’d heard that synthetic fleece is susceptible to pilling unless it’s washed inside out, and that fleece should not be washed with liquid detergents.

Lis Gammelin, suds guru for Patagonia clothing company, agreed, saying that because of enzymes and something called surfactants (a cleaning agent) present in detergents and especially liquid detergents, the water-hating treatment is dispersed into the wash along with the dirt.

To make your outdoor gear last longest, we recommend use of non-detergent soap like Tech Wash, Ivory soap flakes, or Woolite,” says Gammelin. “The soap flakes are great, but you must fill up the washer then dissolve the soap by hand before putting in the garments.”

Nikwax’s Amy Gombiski adds that “detergent is water attractive, so you are defeating the purpose when using a detergent.”