Regatta Launches Heatless Reproofer

Regatta's own brand reproofing spray is in the shops now, to which your response might justifiably be a big, fat 'so what?'

The 'what' is that the new range of Isotex care and reproofing products has been developed in conjunction with German company Storm - 'in conjunction' means Storm make them for Regatta - and the spray-on DWR has the useful quality of not needing to be heat treated before use.

DWR is the water-repellant treatment applied to new water proof and water resistant garments during manufacture and it's what makes water bead up and run off new kit. Most replacement DWRs though, need to be ironed or tumble-dried to activate them.

With some fabrics, notably some of the new soft shell materials like PowerShield and some Schoeller-type fabrics, that's a problem as they aren't supposed to be ironed or tumbled. The Regatta spray is ideal for fabrics of this kind as well as being convenient for use on conventional waterprrofs.

The treatment is fluorocarbon-based, just like original DWR finishes by the way. By way of testing, we treated a windproof top with the Spray Reproofer and went out for a stroll in some moderately heavy Spanish rain. While it didn't make the top completely waterproof, rain beaded impressively on the treated fabric with the result that we barely got damp. Normally we'd have expected a well-saturated top so we were fairly well impressed.

So, if you have a water-repellant garment that's not supposed to be exposed to heat, this could be the answer.

Wash And Reproof In One Cycle

Another interesting development is a cleaner / wash-iin reproofer combo that can be used to clean and reproof garments in a single wash cycle by using the fabric drawer of the washing machine. It's possible says Regatta, because cleaner is a liquid detergent of the kind supplied to fabric mills to clean untreated yarn which leaves no residue, unlike, they say, pure soap cleaners used in hard water areas. Interesting...

The Isotex range of cleaners and proofers is available from selected Regatta stockists, and there are lots of them, details from the Regatta web site.