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Comment by thaumaturgy | Hacker News Reader

Not to "rain" on their parade (heh), but the ability to pass water vapor effectively while also remaining hydrophobic for water droplets, and doing that for a long time on surfaces that are exposed to constant wear, is sort of the holy grail of the outdoor gear industry.

The company's page for their product (http://www.neverwet.com/product-characteristics.php) doesn't mention breathability. Considering that breathability would be a feature that would make them the next Gore-Tex, I'd expect them to trumpet it pretty loudly.

There are already pretty decent spray-on coatings for outerwear, they just don't last very long in the fabric and have to be re-applied after a few uses.

I used to work for Northern Mountain Supply back when they were a sort-of big deal.

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I'd like to see what happens when you flex the material a few dozen times and then reapply water. That shoe demo doesn't mean a thing if you can't walk in the shoe.

These types of coatings also tend to fail miserably under salt water conditions.

I love the graph on that page, where 160-175 "degrees of hydrophobicity" are illustrated as a huge, exponential increase over 110 degrees. To me, more than the breathability or durability or whatever other technical issues, that graph is a huge red flag that this is 90% marketing, 10% engineering.

The scaling, though not noted seems to be about 10 degrees per line. Which means the 160-175 is actually shy of where it should be (about 5 lines up from the 110). That bar actually shows it's at 150 degrees, which must mean their marketing is actually very conservative if we are to make grand judgement calls from one graph on a company's page. ;)

The parent was referring to how they didn't start from 0, so it seems 160 degrees is 5-6 times larger than 90 degrees.

Here you go, an accurate graph: http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n147/IDKAA/graph.png

Actually the graph states that 90 degrees is the zero line because anything less doesn't count as hydrophobic. The whole page in fact explains what the graph means.

Right. This product is just silicone. Thousands of similar products are already on the market. RainX is silicone. Boot/gear spray is silicone. It's not terribly durable with heavy use (clothing, etc) and it's not very breathable. But it does shed water!

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