I have the option of adding down to my Golite Ultra 20 through the fine people at Down Works in Santa Cruz CA. I was thinking of adding 2 oz. Nick at Down Works said to add 4 oz. The price difference is minimal between the 2 amounts. How much would you add and what boost to the actual temperature rating would I expect to get per oz added?

How warm do you want it to be? I've used mine into the mid 20s and was fine. I'd be afraid that adding 4 oz would make it too warm to ever use.

I'd sure like to know how they open it up. I have a couple of chambers in mine I'd like to top off, if I could figure out where to unstitch it.

2 oz would probably make it a solid 20 degree quilt. 4 oz should put it closer to the 10-15 degree range.

2 oz was my thought seeing how Nunatak puts 11oz in the Arc Alpinist and this would put the Ultra 20 fill at 11.5oz.

Patrick,

I agree with Nick. The labor to open up a quilt and add fill dwarfs the cost of the down itself. A size Regular Golite Ultra only has 9.5 oz of 800 fill and tests ~28F with a R 4.8 pad. Nick's modified quilt (+4 oz) would provide a rating ~16F.

You will pick up ~2.6F for every ounce of fill that you add.

Edited by richard295 on 01/04/2010 14:03:50 MST.

Richard,
Thanks for your insight. That helps a lot. Labor will run between $35-50.00, the down is $8.00/oz for 850 fill.

Another question for you Richard.

I asked this in another post but you may have not seen it. What is the iclo of the Golite Roan with hood?

I've been trying to crunch the numbers for the Ultra 20 to see how low I could take it in it's stock form with the Roan and MB Tech pants on a BA dualcore (r-value of 5).

Thanks again.

Pat

Patrick- please let us know how it goes, myself and others would be very interested in doing this if it works out well. I think I would either do 2 or 3 ounces of down, 2 should make it a true 20* quilt as I have used mine down to 26* by itself and been warm enough.

I am going on a trip this weekend that unfortunatly might be in the single digits (that's a little cold for me). I am thinking of trying the Ultra20 with a Nunatk Skaha Plus with overfill and Mont-Bell UL Down Pants unless I wuss out and take my Mountain Hardwear Phantom 0. I will let you know how it goes.

Patrick,

The Golite Roan with hood has an Iclo of 3.64.

Thanks Richard

Bradford,
If and when I do this I'll post the results.

Please report back about your night out in the Ultra 20 with the Skaha/MB setup.

Edited by lightingboy on 01/04/2010 15:43:51 MST.

Patrick, I would say 2 oz should do it...three if want to push it. I would question adding much more as the quilt is only baffled to 2". I'd question how much down adds if there is not way for it to loft.

My question is how in the heck are they to go into the bag and add the down. The ultra 20 is somewhat unique in that it has 2 horizontal baffles running from the top to the footbox. These baffles will prevent someone from opening one side of the quilt. The quilt would need to be opened on both sides and then somehow in the middle. I can not imagine how this is done without loosing the existing down. Now that I think about it I really dont know how golite fills this quilt in the first place.

I'd like to know how this is going to be done.

Jamie

I'll be the contrarian and say add the full four ounces. I've heard good things about the folks at DownWorks, so I'd trust their judgment on the amount of fill to add.

It seems that the amount of down in an Ultra 20 varies somewhat from quilt to quilt, so it may help to know how much loft you have now. My Ultra 20 weighs 544g (19.21oz) and lofts up to 2.8" which is well above the 2.2" minimum of single layer loft that BPL says is required (in their opinion) for a 20F rating.

If your Ultra 20 seems underfilled that you may be able to go with 3-4oz, but if it's filled pretty well like mine then it may be inefficient to add this much as it can't loft fully.

for comparison, my Ultra 20 weighs 19.55oz and lofts pretty well too. It has as much single layer loft as my WM Ultralite.