Ideas on salvaging sleeping bags

“I'm looking for ideas on salvaging my sleeping bags - they have some soot smudges on them and a strong smoke smell. One is down (Marmot arroyo) and two are LL Bean Synthetic Fill. I just got them out of a storage container and fortunately they still seem to have some decent loft (at least the synthetics seem to).”

“Two other threads on the topic. May ye have better luck than me.

The second thread details MY "joys" in washing my cold weather bags! LOL! And now it appears I need to wash the one I lost on the trail, which was then found, albeit gnawed upon. *sigh*

Cleaning sleeping bags

My crazy tale of washing sleeping bags

mebbee this all will help??? lol”

“i saw this same question asked somewhere. search in the other site, or maybe whiteblazes or maybe it was here. sorry i can't be more helpful.”

“you can try letting the down bag air out in sunlight. it can't hurt and it did help with an old feather bed i inherited”

“Nikwax makes stuff called Down Wash that might work on the down bag. http://websearch.cs.com/wm/boomframe.jsp?query=DOWN+WASH&page=1&offset=0&result_url=redir%3Fsrc%3Dwebsearch%26requestId%3Dfae2d6a52c81246d%26clickedItemRank%3D1%26userQuery%3DDOWN%2BWASH%26clickedItemURN%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Feverestnews.altrec.com%252Fshop%252Fdetail%252F11759%252F0%26invocationType%3D-%26fromPage%3DWMTRoll%26amp%3BampTest%3D1&remove_url=http%3A%2F%2Feverestnews.altrec.com%2Fshop%2Fdetail%2F11759%2F0”

“run for your lives -- it's the Link from Hell! <VBG>

Hmmmm -- I'm sure fresh air would be helpful, but maybe not the UV.

I can vouch for the Down Wash in the standard side-loading washing machine, but mine wasn't too dirty. It sounds like you might need to run it a few times.


May the Schwartz be wid you.”

“Yeah thats a crazy link because it was through a search engine but I clicked on it to test it and it worked.”

“Downwash is good stuff! Never had anything but BO and Poison Ivy oil to wash out of my bag though. But the campfire odor disapeared with washing.”

“pedxing,

I will check with our disaster restoration unit. They routinely run items through the ozonater and remove soot and smoke odors.

I can probably get a franchisee to do this relatively inexpensively.”

“sounds interesting chili, thanks”

“I've found Ivory flakes to be great for washing just about all camping equipment. They don't have harsh detergents that will strip out the down oils and make everything smell nice and cleans up the nylon. A lot cheaper than the Nixwax stuff.

Works great for synth as well.”

“pedxing, I called our product development and training department and they said the best bet on a sleeping bag is to contact a dry cleaner that has the capacity to perform restoration services.

They advised to call the local cleaners, describe the problem and find one that deals with smoke damage.

I couldn't remember which city you are in but our largest distributor is in Pittsburg and will be in position to recommend someone.”

“Would not dry clean a down bag.”

“They might be able to ozonate it.”