UKH

Hey guys,

Bought the montane icarus flight jacket a while ago now. When i washed and dried it for the first time, the insulation clumped terribly and didn’t separate as suggested during a drying cycle with half a dozen drier balls. Now it looks like this (see pictures) and doesn’t do a good job keeping me warm. Montane were useless when i called them as were primaloft. Both suggested i did it wrong but i followed montane’s instructions to the letter. This jacket has the primaloft thermoplume insulation. Have i killed this jacket it can it be salvaged? Can’t find anything online to help though I’m not sure where to look.

Edit: not sure how to attach photos

 Thanks for reading

When I did this to a cheap down jacket of mine I had to initially tease/pull out the down along each individual baffle. Just had to keep working it back and forth along the baffle, think threading a pole in a tent! Once it started to come away from a clump, it then managed to fluff up OK with a lot of shaking. It's a right pain, but as you say balls in the drier didn't do anything!

It’s a shame these materials are so hard to work with after being washed! If the constant monitoring of the dryer every 15 minutes for 2+ hours to shake it isn’t enough, I now need to mess with each individual baffle which will inevitably take hours. Who has the time for such things. I see why people don’t wash these type of items now. Before i did it i thought, how bad can it be... very!

It could be that you used too much of whatever laundry product you used. You could run it through a wash again with no product (maybe even a rinse) then do the drying side of things. 

By no means should your jacket be beyond salvation.

I'd give it a few days to air and then another go with the  balls at low temperature and also give the jacket a good shake and pummel a few times.  Bunch it up and punch it. Often it isn't as dry as it should be after the first time in the dryer.  It will seem hopeless, then suddenly it gets fluffy again.