further your education about bogus rainwear fabrics

WHY IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO HAVE A FABRIC OR ANY MATERIAL THAT CAN BE BOTH WATERPROOF AND VAPOR PERMEABLE (OR BREATHABLE)

To begin with you must understand why air moves. If air is heated it will move up towards the sky and if it is cooled it will move down towards the ground.If you live in San Francisco (S.F.) you know the air movement known as wind occurs in the afternoon and it comes from the direction of the ocean known as an on shore breeze. Why does this happen? East of S.F. is desert and when the sun heats the desert surface the air above the surface is heated and it moves towards the sky and cooler air from the west moves in to take its place. The result is that the air over the ocean moves east to fill in the air closer to the desert and eventually the desert so the end result is wind.

Air does not choose to move something has to act on it; heat.

Go into any retail store that sells the bogus rain garment with the claim that the material used to make it has the two opposing capabilities and put the fabric to your mouth and try to draw air through the fabric. What you will quickly discover is that the fabric is drawn into your mouth as if you were trying to pull air through a plastic bag doing the same action. It is possible that you will get some air through it but not much. If someone were to put a bag over your head that was made from one of these materials you would suffocate.

When you wear a mosquito net garment and you will note that the entire vapor leaving your body easily goes through the netting. On the same day wear one of these bogus rain garments and you will note that the vapor gets trapped on the inside of the garment. In the event that it starts to rain if the ambient air temperature before the rain takes place is 75 degrees once it starts to rain the ambient air temperature drops to a lower temperature therefore causing the moisture inside the garment to condense. The amount of water vapor that air can hold depends up the temperature, when it is warm it holds more than when it is cold. That is why when the air temperature drops and you are wearing garments that do not allow the moisture as a vapor move away from you it gets rid of some of the vapor as moisture which we refer to as sweat and when it touches your skin causes you to chill.

When water evaporates from the ocean it is in a warm vapor state and as it moves towards the sky it cools and the air cannot continue to hold the moist vapor which condenses and we get rain.

I live in western Colorado which has a dry climate so my house like many others have swamp cooler air conditioning. On the roof is an apparatus that has 4 pads which water is pumped into continuously. In the center of the pads is a draw fan that draws air through the pads that can be 100 degrees F and it is cooled. This is evaporative cooling. Once the cooled air coming through a vent in the ceiling, cooled air sinks, it spreads through the house on one condition a window or two are opened slightly to allow the heated air in the house out. This is same action as seen taking place in S.F.in the afternoon each day.

Each and every company that either markets these fabrics or the finished products either does not know what I have written for years is true or they do chose to ignore this knowledge. Unsuspecting consumers come along and think that some of these companies who have been hawking their product for 40 years now do not realize they are buying into a SCAM. There is ABSOLUETLY no truth to the statement that a company has a material that will have both of these characteristic “waterproof and breathable”.