What is the consensus for the life of a waterproof jacket as mine seems to expiring after five years.

Depends on how often you wear it and how hard a life it has.

I get 2 – 3 years, tops.

Have you followed the manufacturer’s instructions? Over-washing is bad, as is infrequent washing. Detergent needs to be non-bio and definitely no fabric conditioner.

I’m a softshell convert and happy to put up with getting wet after around 3 hours of rain.

They last me until they are crashed and ripped.

I have washed as per instructions and rinsed it in the shower on ocassion.

Depends completely on usage.

Five years for a waterproof jacket seems like a fair life to me

New jacket it is then.

What’s the matter with it? You can reproof them to make them (mostly!) waterproof again…

I washed it using a reproofing wash but it totally leaked on Saturday. Then again the last time I got so wet was when I fell in the sea.

Depends on how much of a flogging the wind gives it IMO.

I shredded a cheap one while sailing in the tail of a cyclone once. Been much fussier about quality since. 🙂

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/gearandmountains.wordpress.com/2014/10/30/help-my-waterproof-leaks/amp/

Fairly interesting blog for any gear geeks…

Replaced my walking jacket the other day which was 6years old, on chatting to the bloke in the shop he said a good jacket is expected to last 5-8yrs.

Cheers, Steve

In reality you should have a selection of jackets ,lightweight waterproof (own brand type coating/ membrane) ,full on mountain jacket , synthetic jacket with selection of mid layers ,base layers would account for 95% of UK activities … got my mountain jacket paclite goretex is 12 years old and still great

Great article! Thanks for posting! 🙂

I have Goretex jackets that are 20 years old and still work.

Thanks for the article Charlie.

Matt has quite a few interesting posts, it’s definitely worth checking out the rest of his blog.