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  1. #1
    Senior Member OneClick's Avatar
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    Wet top quilt, again!

    I posted a little about this in the vapor barrier thread, but gotta mention it here and figure things out. I'm not sure why, but only since last winter has my TQ been getting wet on the top/outside when below freezing.

    This past weekend was a good example.

    -38° high, 25° low. I'd guess 5 mph wind.
    -Superfly tarp hung at a reasonable level in porch mode. Doors open.
    -20° TQ and UQ
    -Wearing very thin long underwear bottoms and top
    -Fleece beanie on head
    -Medium thickness wool socks
    -Sleeping from about 9pm to 7am
    -Basic gathered end hammock with 1.6 Argon
    -I had a "frost bib" around my neck and flipped up over to cover my face. So basically a layer of t-shirt material over my face. It was soaked and froze solid in areas away from my mouth and nose.

    When I woke up around 6am to pee on a tree, I felt the TQ and it was very wet. Some spots even began to freeze. I wiped it down the best I could with an extra sock and went back to bed. It's usually only the mid section between my chest to knees. I wasn't sweating at all and never felt too warm. Certainly not cold.

    I really wish I brought my vapor barrier liner to test again. That's the only other solution I can think of.

    Or is this fairly common and something I just deal with as "normal"? I just don't remember it so much in the past 7 years of hanging. I'm not sure if it's my breath, body vapor, or a combination of both.

  2. #2
    cmc4free's Avatar
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    Curious your thoughts...

    With the frost bib draped over your face, the vapor isn't freezing in the warm areas around your mouth and nose (where it's coming from in the first place). Once that area of the bib is saturated with moisture, do you suppose it's unable to take on any more moisture and the rest just passes through the bib and into the air, where some of it then condenses on the TQ? If the bib were hanging from the hammock RL, the area that moisture condenses on would be far enough away from heat sources that most of the vapor would freeze. The new vapor would condense on the cold, frosty bib where it would continue to freeze on top of the previous frost.

    In short, having the bib right over your face is preventing the vapor from freezing (in the local areas of mouth/nose when the vapor is coming from) and then I wonder if once the bib becomes saturated, it loses most of its effectiveness.

  3. #3
    Senior Member
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    Dew maybe?
    20191103_060528.jpg

    Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

  4. #4
    Senior Member OneClick's Avatar
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    I thought about hanging the frost bib, but I really hate stuff on the ridgeline. Seems like a pain, but a possible solution.

    Dew came to mind but being under the tarp...and the fact nothing else had it makes me discount that. Or would it be just me that had dew since I was much warmer than anything else lying around?

  5. #5
    Senior Member cmoulder's Avatar
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    High relative humidity seems likely. The air contains a lot of water vapor so moisture from body and breathing that would normally evaporate has "nowhere to go" and condenses.
    Five Basic Principles of Going Lighter (not me... the great Cam Honan of OZ)
    “If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.” ~ Gen. George S Patton

  6. #6
    cmc4free's Avatar
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    Dew would form more readily on colder surfaces. The outer shell of your TQ should be warmer than the outer surface of your tarp (for example). Was there more moisture on the outer surface of the tarp than there was on the TQ? Also, if it were dew, I'd expect there to be just as much moisture on all parts of the TQ, and just as much on the UQ as well. But it seems based on your description that the moisture was more concentrated the closer it was to your face. So I believe vapor from your breath is the primary suspect.

    Picture that you'll often see dew or frost on the windows and sheet metal of a car parked outside on a cold morning, and on the blades of grass in the lawn, but you won't see dew or frost on the driveway as often. The driveway is warmer than the car and the grass because it's in contact with the earth, and the dew/frost forms more readily on the colder surfaces of the car and blades of grass.

  7. #7
    cmc4free's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by cmoulder View Post
    High relative humidity seems likely. The air contains a lot of water vapor so moisture from body and breathing that would normally evaporate has "nowhere to go" and condenses.
    I agree with this point, as well. The higher the RH in the air, the more condensation will occur regardless of the source of additional vapor from yourself.

  8. #8
    Senior Member OneClick's Avatar
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    Yeah, I was not far from a lake. 1-2" of snow just melted that day. I guess that humidity was unavoidable on these past few trips.

  9. #9
    all secure in sector 7 Shug's Avatar
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    Sure your not over-insulating yourself in the TQ?
    Shug
    Whooooo Buddy)))) All Secure in Sector Seven

  10. #10
    Senior Member OneClick's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Shug View Post
    Sure your not over-insulating yourself in the TQ?
    Shug
    I thought about that, but the clothing was minimal and the quilts were only rated for 5° above actual temp (20° quilt in 25° weather). And two weeks ago it hit 19° on two separate nights with the 20° quilts. The only other time I can remember a wet TQ was years ago, sleeping tarpless, so the answer is obvious in that scenario (dew).

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