– What's up friends? If you don't know mealready, my name is Miranda.
Uh, it's nice to meet you.
That's awkward.
Anyway.
I am back in my tiny studioapartment doing some repair and some maintenance on my gear and today I am going to clean and re-waterproof my Gore-Tex jackets.
While Gore-Tex as a materialis waterproof and breathable, the coating on the outside of it is a DWR or a durable water repellency.
This is what causes the water to bead up on the surface of the jacket and overtime that DWR will wear off.
so then you need to revitalize it or reinvigorate it or re-waterproof it.
So, that's what we're gonna do today.
If you take a look at myvery well cared for jacket you can see that if Ispray some water on it it just kind of beads up and oh it's actually soaking a little bit but yeah it mostly just kind of beads up.
Rolls off right like that.
See? Look at that beading.
And then we have a lesswell cared for jacket.
This is my partner's jacket.
He doesn't love his gear as much as I do.
That's mean.
I'm sure he does.
So if we spray this jacket, you can see that we do get some beading but we also geta lot soaking into the jacket.
So in heavy rain thisis gonna soak through.
So hopefully by washingit we will reinvigorate and make it better.
All right, great, here's what you need! Instead of using standard detergents, you should use a detergent-freecleanser for your jackets and I have one of those right here.
I have the Nikwax Tech Wash.
(bell chiming) So there's actually awhole variety of cleaners on REI's website that you can order and use to clean your waterproof jackets but this is just the one that I use.
This is the one that I've always used.
This is the Tech Wash.
This will be used to clean the garments.
In some cases, this isenough of a treatment to just make your waterproof jacket, or your Gore-Tex jacket, ready to go again.
But in a lot of cases it's a good idea to just go ahead and reapply that DWR.
This is the Nixwax TX Direct wash-in.
(bell chiming) There is also a TX Direct spray-on which is great if you havelike an insulated garment or something that has a wickinglining on the inside of it like a microfleece or something.
But since these are bothjust standard jackets, we're going to do the wash-in.
Oh, and also, the coolest part about this is that they match my jackets.
(laughs) Look at that! All planned.
Optionally, if you havesome really dirty spots on your jacket, you can usesome of this same cleanser in a small bowl with a cloth and then use that to sortof spot clean the jacket and then soak it or runit through a pre-cycle.
I actually don't have anyparticularly dirty spots on this jacket so I'm not gonna do that.
Great, Okay, Let's go to the laundry room.
Okay, so here we are inmy dingy laundry room and I'm going to wash my jackets.
As you can see I have a toploading washing machine.
So I'll take my two jacketsand put them into my machine.
If the machine you're usinghas a detergent container then you just wanna makesure that is totally clear of detergent 'cause youdon't want to get that into your jackets.
And then the next stepis going to be to allow the washing machine to fill with water before I go ahead and add my cleanser.
We're gonna make sure thatthis is set to heavy here and then we'll turn this over to warm.
We are going to put threecapfuls of this into my machine.
capful one, and two, and three capfuls.
That's gonna take about 30 minutes to wash and then we will comeback and waterproof it.
(clock ticking) All right, so here we areback in the laundry room and my garments havejust finished washing.
They're all clean.
We're gonna do the second wash now and use our TX Direct wash-in and this can actually gostraight into the washing machine after you have done the Tech Wash.
You don't actually have todry the jackets in-between, which is great.
Same settings for this.
It does say here on the bottle, but just in case you forgot.
We'll go ahead and start themachine on heavy and warm.
Let that start filling.
(water rushing) I'm not gonna let it fill the whole way 'cause I'm worried thelid's gonna lock on me, but there's some water in there.
Yeah, we're gonna dump that in.
And yes, it is the entire bottle.
And we're off!(water rushing) This'll be done in about 30 minutes and then we'll get to drying.
I'm actually going to hang these to dry, but you can do it low tumble dry.
(clock ticking) I'm going to hang themout to dry.
Awesome.
So it's been a few days since I revived and re-waterproofed my jacket and now it is all readyto go for the rain.
So you can see I've gotlots of beading happening.
So pretty.
Let's go check on Sky's jacket.
His was the poorly taken care of one.
Look! So dry.
Yeah! So beady.
Hurray waterproof! Yeah, care for yourgear.
Care for yourself.
Stay safe.
(dog barking) Oh my god, it's chaos.
(laughs).
