MJH

I can't remember the company name, but he pretty much makes everything to the individual. Reasonably inexpensive. Anyone help me with this? It's been a while ago that I last saw someone post about this company. His first name might have been Lou.

Talking about jackets.

MJH

Found it. Foxwear. Anybody with experience with their product?

chas58

Yeah, it is good to wash your body before exercising,

but with synthetic clothes, once they get the stink in, it can be impossible to get them out. They will get stinky just sitting around on a humid day (although I have found some wash at REI that will fix this).

I don't wear waterproof gear when cycling. Waterproof and breathable is a bit of an oxymoron, and gore-tex doesn't work well when the weather is too cold.

PaulRivers

I've read that the Goretex "Active" line uses a material similar in breathability to eVent fabric, so those would be the ones if you wanted waterproof. However, that being said, the Showers Pass jacket has some nicer features for handling a wider temperature range - the flap on the back of the jack and the pit zips let you wear it in warmer temperatures without overheating, unzip the front a little and you get a lot of airflow through the jacket. Also nice for right after it stops raining, lets you release the built up muggy air in the jacket without stopping to take the jacket off. For winter/fall/spring biking I found it very useful. The Goretex Active jackets don't look like they have that.

erig007

Those jackets in the link seem to be too tight at the forearm area. Could be a problem for layering. The only one that seems ok is the light flyer one.

Mvcrash

This is interesting stuff about GoreTex:

"When you sweat, your body produces steam, which is water in the form of a gas. As you probably know, the molecules in a gas are not really joined together. They can whizz freely all over the place, which is why a gas fills whatever it's contained in. Now a water molecule is about 700 times smaller than the pores in microporous GORE-TEX, so when you sweat, the steam can easily flow from your skin, drift through the GORE-TEX (by a process called diffusion), and out of your clothes. But water in rain is totally different from sweat. It's a liquid made up of droplets, each of which contains trillions of water molecules. A single water drop is about 20,000 times bigger than the holes in microporous GORE-TEX, so there's no way it's coming through.That, then, is the clever little secret of GORE-TEX—one of the most amazing materials in the modern world. But you could say it's actually the clever little secret of water—perhaps the most amazing "material" of all time! "

Would'nt one have to wear the GoreTex next to the skin? If you wore anything else would the "steam" get trapped" or cool and make you wet?

wschruba

@Mvcrash
that's all marketing. Waterproof/breathable is possibly the biggest lie ever shoved down the outdoor consumer's throat. Look up the test for breathability, I think you will be very surprised about their definition and yours. As mentioned above, they don't even work in the cold.

Marc40a

I looked into the jacket you mentioned, the Novarra Express, and it appears that it while it is labelled as a bike jacket, it's actually a jacket that you would want put on if you wanted to sell something - or really, anything.

You see, this is a jacket made for "Peddling" - even in sideways rain!

Novara Express 2.0 Bike Jacket - Men's - REI.com

pdlamb

Funny, when I sweat my body produces water (with a few minerals in it). Marketing BS, it only hurts if you believe it.

Mvcrash

Can't say I disagree. I use layers and wool which always works.

erig007

Have you watched a video of a body sweating? A body produces steam. How much will depend on humidity and temperature though.
Esk = Ws (psk - pa) / (Recl + 1/(fcl x he))

Esk: evaporative heat exchange
Ws: skin wettedness factor
psk: water vapour pressures on the skin surface
pa: water vapour pressures in the air
Recl: clothing intrinsic evaporative resistance
fcl: clothing area factor
he: evaporative heat transfer coefficient

revcp 

I certainly agree that there's a lot of marketing hype involved. From personal experience, "breathable" fabrics keep me more comfortable, but I've also learned that they can't keep me perfectly dry, especially when I'm working hard and sweating a lot. And once you get close to freezing and below they don't work at all.

My biggest complaint with the waterproof bandwagon is that it's almost impossible these days to find a decent pair of hiking boots that doesn't have a fragile waterproof layer added that jacks the price up by $40.

PaulRivers

They do work in the cold (I wear one for winter biking).

They're far more comfortable than non-breathable (which I've also tried) - way, way, way more comfortable.

It's often "over marketed" - as in people expect that it will be just as breathable as say a fleece jacket, and waterproof breathable is not nearly that breathable.

But if you've used both - and I have - "waterproof breathable" is far more comfortable when you're sweating than waterproof non-breathable.

erig007

At 45F i'm more comfy with my nanopro membrain jacket than my smartwool midweight merino top (same icebreaker merino base in both case and switching between those 2 outerlayers during the same ride)
The merino top is too warm at 45F but it shows that those jackets are breathable enough that they can compete with merino tops. It's only when climbing than the jacket reach its limit.
Ideal temps while riding: smartwool top : +/-32F, marmot jacket : +/- 40F

pdlamb

Hmm, here I thought experiencing sweat first-hand would qualify me for knowing how I sweat better than doing a youtube search. Live and learn, I suppose...

But then you've got that "Ws skin wettedness factor" in your equation. If sweat comes out of the body as steam, it would have to condense on the skin to produce that wet stuff I've been calling sweat for the past several decades. Wouldn't that imply sweat heats the body up due to the latent heat of vaporization (which seems to be missing from your equation)?

Not to mention that the entire equation only makes sense if not all the sweat escapes as vapor.

Bottom line seems to be vapor-permeable fabrics work best in cool and/or dry air, and they work best when the body's not producing much sweat.

erig007

The full equation is more complicated than that i just gave the part related to this topic.
The total evaporative heat loss is the latent heat, Esk is just part of it.

You can split the sweat in 2 types (at least) extrinsic sweat/intrinsic sweat or sensible perspiration/insensible perspiration or whatever you want to call it. One depends on the effort the other one doesn't. One is noticed by the body the other one isn't.
https://www.biology-online.org/dictio...e_perspiration
https://blog.lili.farm/pages/e/evapor...cooling-sweat/

When the air around your skin get saturated with water (if you wear a garbage bag or if the amount of sweat you produce is too high for the gear you're wearing for instance) your skin won't be able to produce steam anymore and you'll start dripping sweat instead.
When water saturation pressure increase at a given temperature steam becomes water, the lower the temperature the quicker it happens.
Water Saturation Pressure