Camperland News

We do have some fun with customers chasing sleeping bags.

When looking for a new bag some people get obsessed by size or weight and don’t put the other considerations in place.

You have to remember that a Sleeping bag only has one way of generating heat and that is you.

I have a several questions I ask everybody when selling bags.

Who is the bag for? Men and women sleep at different temps so what will be suitable for you normally isn’t always good for your partner.

Teenage boys tend to generate a lot of heat, whereas teenage girls tend to freeze. This is important and will make quite a difference with hand me downs.

Then you need to take into consideration what temps you expect to use it in. So a bloke in a -5 bag at -5 is probably going to be ok, but a woman in the same circumstance may not. Actually, probably won’t.

I don’t recommend buying a bag for a one off trip. Buy one that will suit most of what you do and be aware that you may have to add a light blanket, a silk liner or tracksuit to be comfortable in for colder situations.

Having said that I have three bags ( all Romans by the way) +8, +3, and a -5. That covers just about everything here in Sth East Queensland. And on one memorable weekend I had the +8 inside the +3 and was quiet happy at Minus 7 ( I do sleep hot though).

Final consideration is size. What keeps you warm in a sleeping bag or just about any other insulating item is the loft. All the little particles of air trapped between the fibers. On a cheaper bag this is done by monofilaments; hair like threads of material. Now, to make a bag smaller ( packed size), AND maintain the same insulation qualities some thing has to give. The one way to do that is use a better fill. Better quality filaments will have one, three or five holes travelling the full length. This increases the surface area and the insulating abilities of the bag.

But, and here is the catch, that flash, multi hole thread is expensive. So two bags with the same rating. The smaller one should cost more.

Now you’ll notice I didn’t mention weight. That’s because it really shouldn’t be a consideration.

You need to work out if you are a hot or cold sleeper?

What temperature will you be expecting (most the time)?

And if packed is size a consideration (Are you hiking with it)?

That has to determine your choice. If you make the choice on price or pack size there is a very good chance you will end up with something not warm enough.

One last, very connected thing. What are you sleeping on? When you lay on a sleeping bag you squash all the air out of the bottom layer. Basically there is no insulation under you. You have to get off the ground. I have two self inflators (again Romans, and in case your wondering, I don’t get kickbacks from Roman. Perhaps I should)

This entry was posted on Friday, June 26th, 2009 at 3:48 pm and is filed under General News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.