Waterproof jacket
A garment whose performance is a finish rather than a fabric, which means the wrong wash does not dirty it — it stops it working.
Start here
What this is, what goes wrong with it, and where CleaningHQ can help.
Made from
What tends to go wrong
The one stain where the first move is mechanical and the chemistry barely matters — and where the folk advice to let it dry first is not what the trade body says.
Fats and oils, which water alone cannot lift. Removed by surfactants, by heat, by solvents, or by alkalis that convert the fat into soap.
Why it is difficult: Why oil resists water, Emulsification
Sweat itself has almost no smell. What you can smell is bacteria eating it — and which bacteria depends on what the garment is made of.
Why it is difficult: Classifying a stain by its origin
Two stains in one bottle: an oily film, and a UV filter that forms a coloured complex with the iron in your water. The second one is why the mark comes out orange.
Why it is difficult: Chelation, Water hardness
The science behind this: Water-repellent and water-attracting surfaces, How care labels work, Adsorption of odour molecules
In detail
A waterproof breathable jacket is a laminate: a face fabric, a membrane that passes vapour but not liquid water, and a durable water repellent finish on the outside. Only the middle layer is waterproof, and the outer finish is what makes the face fabric shed water rather than absorb it — when that finish fails the jacket wets out, feels like it is leaking, and stops breathing because a saturated face fabric blocks vapour transfer. That is why the commonest complaint about these garments is a cleaning problem rather than a fault. The manufacturer's care guidance excludes fabric conditioner, because a cationic coating deposited on the fibre is the opposite of a water-repellent one, and it excludes ordinary detergents whose residues have the same effect. Body oils, sunscreen and general soil also defeat the repellency, which means washing is part of maintaining performance rather than a risk to it — the guidance is that a dirty jacket performs worse than a washed one, provided it is washed correctly. Warm tumble drying or a cool iron is commonly specified to reactivate the finish — the one case here where heat restores a property rather than destroying one.
Related
- Waterproof jacket is made from Waterproof outerwear
- Waterproof jacket is made from Polyester
- Waterproof jacket is commonly affected by Mud
- Waterproof jacket is commonly affected by Grease
- Waterproof jacket is commonly affected by Perspiration
Aftercare and prevention
- Dry cleaning requires the aftercare Waterproof jacket
Sources for this page
Sources
W. L. Gore & Associates (GORE-TEX brand) · Manufacturer documentation
Relied on for: That fabric conditioner is excluded from waterproof breathable outerwear, that the water-repellent finish is affected by soil and by cleaning products, and that the manufacturer specifies a care routine for maintaining performance. (states this directly)
Verification: a person has read the passage relied on.
Read on — The outerwear care instruction list, including the SHAKEDRY note, and — from Sprint 31 — all fourteen question headings. Supports the claim as stated. Turns a treatment specification into a maintenance one. The frequency answer is a refusal to schedule, which is itself the evidence for the condition-triggered pattern. The stain-remover entry is a substitution rather than a prohibition, and the ironing entry states a manufacturer instruction in the GINETEX two-dot vocabulary this register already models, which links a brand's own page to the care-symbol family.
GINETEX Technical Booklet — international care labelling system
GINETEX, The International Association for Textile Care Labelling, 2018 · Standards body
Relied on for: That care symbols indicate the maximum severity of treatment an article can withstand without irreversible damage. (background and mechanism only)
Verification: a person has read the passage relied on.
Read on — The introduction and implementation section; the definitions of treatments and bleaching agents; and the description of the symbols. Supports a wider statement — our claim was widened. This reverses a Sprint 2 downgrade and corrects an attribution. The chlorine-versus-oxygen bleaching distinction, withdrawn in Sprint 2 because ISO 3758 could not be read, is restored and cited here. More importantly the source model was wrong: CleaningHQ treated ISO 3758 as the authority and GINETEX as a commentator, when GINETEX is the origin and ISO the licensee. The ISO record is now marked as deriving from this one. The 'maximum severity' principle and the definitions of the two bleach classes are new and now carry the laundry vertical.
Last reviewed by a person on .