Well hello there it's Shug here. Now i've gotten asked this about 10 times already this uh
late Fall or is it early Fall ..EARLY! is people wondering if they uh how low they can get if
they put their under quilt and a pad together does that does that help them get to lower temperatures
yes indeed it does it's about 31 degrees right now getting ready to crawl in here so what tonight's
experiment is is i'm sleeping on my three-quarter climate sleeping pad which has a rating i think
of uh 1.3 which is good to about 48 degrees and on the outside of my hammock i have my
wilderness logic summer series under quilts about a 40 degree under quilt with sewn through baffles
and with that i'm sleeping with my 20 degree top quilt and i have my therm-a-rest foot pad
inside the foot box of my top quilt so we can take a look and see for some of you folks out
there that want to do a little bit of cold weather camping you're kind of new to this maybe you have
a sleeping pad you should have that from your tent days and you have an under quilt maybe it's a 40
degree or 30 degree but you want to get down to a little bit colder so we're going to put the pad
and the underquilt together a pad when you're sleeping on it on the ground it's
insulating you from the cold ground even if the ground doesn't feel cold it will be through the
night it's sucking the heat out of your body whereas an underquilt you know is hanging
up underneath your hammock and it's capturing the heat from your body that you already have
and keeping you warm that way your enemy there are like breezes and cold air blowing underneath
now in a hammock uh if you sometimes if you sleep with just a pad and the weather's cold but you
have this heat coming out of your body you can get a little condensation on a pad everybody's
a little different with the way they sweat and put the heat out from their body and the way that cold
air outside is hitting the warm air the warmer air from the pad with your body heat on it so uh all
right i've said too much i'll say no more until the morning see ya and this pad has an r value
of 1.3 which is about 48 degrees and the underquilt of course is about 40 degrees
and we got down last night to 27 it's 33 right now that's the therma drop thermometer
and let me uh see what the low was and hold the little button and our low was 29 last night
slept in a pair of light merino wool tights and
merino wool shirt and pretty much wearing this uh orange shirt underneath this
what i slept in last night assured i've been wearing videos for at least
10 or 12 years now and and slip fine so my conclusion is yes if your under quilt is light
add a pad to it and it'll get you down but let's talk about the r value of your pad
so a lot of you have these kind of pads if you're a backpacker closed cell foam
uh something similar to this whether it has the ridges or not they have an r value of about 2 to
2.1 2.1 2.2 you're just above freezing now if you have something like a neoair one of those models
you're probably good down to about 28 degrees if you have a pro light therm arrest that's going to
be above freezing so look at the r value of your pad to give you an idea of what your pad will get
you to on the ground the r value measures the capacity to resist heat flow resist r that's
what the r stands for to resist the heat flow coming from you through that pad to the ground
and that cold ground coming up into you that's my understanding of it i'm going to put a link
below in the description box right down below this video that you can click on and we'll take you to
an r-value chart give you an idea in fahrenheit and celsius make sure when you go to sleep you
know people stand around go man i'm cold i'm going to go crawl in my sleeping bag or get my hammock
get warm before you crawl in do some jumping jacks run in place for a minute have a hot drink take a
couple of laps around camp go down and fill up your water do a few chores to get yourself warmed
up you know sling your arms get these hands warm get yourself just a little bit warm before you
crawl in and you will have a warmer night's sleep because then your body's warm and in something
like an under quilt when i'm sitting in here you know it's like this down jacket i'm wearing it's
not creating heat for you it's what's happening is the heat from my body is going into this down in
here which is why you see geese and ducks and all that swimming on these really cold lakes
their heat is being held inside this down so it's holding the heat that you have in you in here so
if you're looking at r values well the higher the r value the more insulation there is so that four
is going to be twice the insulation value of your two pad something like this pad i showed
you right here or most pads that you inflate um you can adjust your your level if they're fully
blown up you're gonna get a little more insulation if you've got a you know let's say you've got a
a pad like this and a 40 degree under quilt and you want to go camping in 30 degree weather
this is going to get you by you know you you'll be okay the important thing is make sure that you
don't bring like a 40 degree top quilt make sure your top quilt or your sleeping bag is
you know if you're going camping out in let's say 28 degree weather try to bring a 20 degree one you
know it's nicer if you're kind of worried about your under insulation to have a little bit more
insulation on top something else people ask is uh can they put two pads in let's say they got
two summertime pads like uh you got a closed cell foam let's just say this is rated at two
and you have like an rai pro light which is probably let's just let's just say it's three
so just uh add those r values together you got a five that's going to get you lower and that'll get
you through the night you just might have to tuck some something behind your arms in a hammock to
keep you warm or look for a wider pad i guess the bottom line is at the end of the day when it's all
said and done you get out there you're thinking of going on a cold weather trip your friends are
going it's going to be 25 degrees you don't feel like your gear will get you there double it up
now a lot of that depends on you what do you sleep in are you over insulated are you under insulated
are you a cold sleeper or you're a warm sleeper is it a damp night is it a windy night is it a dry
cold night so a lot of these little things come into play but you know if you bring two pads and
go camping out in cold weather in a hammock you're uh and i am talking hammocks here specifically
you'll make it and even if you get a little bit cold well you might have to get up early early
in the morning and jog in place or something if you want to go back to sleep you won't die
the worst thing that can happen is you just have a cold night shivering and we all had
those as boy scouts in the 70s now i have a way that i like to stay warm want to see
we all stay warm differently ain't no count double up
because it's always good to do a little bit of your own research because it just teaches
you more about it other than listening to me who may not even know what he's
talking about but you're listening anyway but hey double check the facts