When we are talking about the fabrics used on camping gear, and the weather sealing used in our offroad electronics, the term “Waterproof” gets thrown around a lot, but what exactly does this mean, how reliable is the waterproofing rating, and what does it mean in the real world?

We’re going to cover the technical aspects of what exactly constitutes “waterproof” when we are talking about our new camping fabrics and electronic gizmo’s so buckle in and pay close attention, this is an all stations ride to understanding your new camping gear better!

WATERPROOF FABRICS

When we are referring to waterproof fabric particularly in an industry full of shonky salesmen, it can mean a lot of things. When we are referring to a material’s waterproofing, we are referring to a strict testing procedure to ensure it is satisfactory in performance.

Water repellant VS Waterproof

Whilst many materials used in the camping industry employ modern water repellant coatings on the surface, eventually through dirt, abrasion and prolonged moisture exposure these water repellant coatings tend to not withstand the abuse encountered and allow moisture to absorb into the fabrics.

These water-resistant coatings can be identified by the moisture beading up on the surface and rolling off, like water off a duck’s back, as they say.

However, for absolute waterproofing you require the fabric to also be able to withstand an amount of water pressure, to prevent it simply seeping through the weave of the fabric, this can be done by an extremely tight weave of fabric as with canvas, where the fibers tend to swell together when wet, preventing water from seeping through all the way to high tech coatings of polyurethane, or even several layers of tightly woven fabric to slow down the seeping to a level that is undetectable over a reasonable period of time.

As all things are not created equal, a testing method is used to measure the amount of water pressure a fabric can take before seeping, this is called “hydrostatic pressure head” and will be measured in mm of water pressure, which can be compared to a column of water held above the fabric before, moisture is detected underneath.

When looking at The Adventure Kings range of waterproof fabrics, you can consider the Adventure Kings Roof Top Tent Range takes advantage of an Outer fly sheet which is a 210D polyester Oxford PU with 2000mm of water head rating, this means 2m of water are required above the fabric before it will leak, making it extremely waterproof and resilient in any circumstance!

Another example would be the Adventure Kings Awnings which use a 170gsm ripstop polyester fabric which has a 1000mm waterproof rating, which offers a staggering level of waterproofing before it seeps!

For those, questioning whether this is a good enough rating for relying on in the bush, there is one thing to say to that, if you find yourself in a situation where your Adventure Kings Awning has more than 1m worth of water on top, you will have bigger issues than your awning potentially leaking on you!

Knowing this about fabrics will help you in deciding on the perfect fabric to cover your campsite with to stay high and dry no matter what the weather is doing all year long!

WATERPROOF ELECTRONICS

Whilst the fabric industry is somewhat vague about standards when it comes to waterproof testing, the electronics industry is required to be somewhat less ambiguous about what makes a device “waterproof”.

IP SCALE
Introducing the IP Scale, we have a large range of possible ratings and abiding by EN 60529 an international standard, to help consumers determine the ability of a device to handle the environment around.

IP stands for Ingress Protection, when considering an IP rating. The IP will be followed by 2 numbers The first represents solid particle protection i.e. dust-proof, and the second digit represents the liquid ingress protection, which determines a devices waterproofness.

When looking for a device that is dust proof in operation it requires the first digit to be 5 or higher, whilst sometimes this portion of testing is not applicable with an ‘X’ being substituted for a number.

The second digit, can typically range from 0 – Non-waterproof, to 8 – which can withstand continuous submersion below 1m for a specified period of time.

You can find an IP68 rating on most of the Adventure Kings LED Lightbar range, as well as the LED Driving light range, and on the whole range of Adventure Kings Solar Panels range including the solar voltage controller!

This means no matter what the weather is doing, you can rest assured Adventure Kings gear will keep on ticking no matter what the weather is doing at camp!