Showing posts with label drybag. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drybag. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Review: Scrubba washbag



I was lucky enough to be given a new piece of camping and travel gear for my birthday and I've finally gotten around to writing it up. I took it with me to Bali on a recent holiday, although it didn't get a very thorough workout there. This is the Scrubba washbag

The Scrubba is essentially a dry-bag which has been fitted with an internal washboard surface, a viewing window and an air vent, in addition to the watertight bag and roll-top closure

As a modern and convenient take on the old fashioned washboard, the Scrubba wash bag enables you to achieve a machine quality wash in just minutes. I wanted to give it a fairly good test, so I found a couple of t-shirts with some pretty suspicious and gross stains, and a couple of pairs of socks to give a good indicator of what it is capable of, and a standard travel-load of washing.

The Scrubba is pitched as perfect for holidaymakers, business travellers, backpackers or even for washing gym and cycling gear. The bag weighs less than 145g and folds to pocket-size, as with any dry-bag, making it small enough to take anywhere. I used it as a wet-clothes pack when on the last legs of our Bali trip, to stow Tactical Baby and Triceratops Girl's beach clothes before we headed off for the airport.

Here's how you use the Scrubba for its designed purposes:

1. Fill: It takes about 2L of water, on top of clothes, to do a full wash. Add water, cleaning liquid and clothes to the Scrubba. I used dishwashing soap, just a quick squirt, on top of my load, and the wash bag was at about 20-40% capacity. I used the printed-on guidelines, and with my two-shirts, two pair of socks load, I felt I had a good sized volume

2. Roll & Clip: I removed the excess air from the bag by scrunching it down, then rolled down the top around 4-5 times to get a good tight seal, and then clipped the ends shut, as you would with any dry-bag.


3. Deflate: By opening the nipple cap and squeezing the valve, as you would on any set of arm floaties, inflatable sheep or camping mattress, you need to expel all remaining air from the Srubba wash bag. This gives you a good working volume with which to scrub your clothes. Too much air leaves the bag inflated like a bag balloon and makes it hard to work the clothes. Too much water can have a similar effect, but less noticeably.

4. Rub: By pressing down and rubbing clothes against the Scrubba’s unique internal flexible washboard, which is a moulded-in set of nipples set into the back wall of the bag. Rubbing for 30 seconds gives you a quick traveller's wash and going for around 3 minutes should do for almost a machine quality wash. I wondered how my fairly scungy shirts and socks would fare, and was not surprised to see the water darken and grey-up. There was surprisingly little froth, probably due to the lack of air in the well vented bag.


5. Rinse: Uncliping and unrolling the Scrubba’s seal is as easy as it is to roll up. Removing dirty water from the Scrubba is as simple as carefully up-ending it to mouth it from the wide-mouth opening. I took care to retain my freshly washed clothes, and not dropping it in the dirt again. I wrung out my clothes to remove as much of the grey-water, and then tossed them all back in. I rinsed the clothes with another couple of Liters of water in the Scrubba and gave it a good shake, with the roll-top closed but not evacuated of air, and again poured it off, and wrung out my clothes. You could just as easily rinse them under a running tap or shower, but I wanted an all-in-the-bag method.



I hung my freshly scrubbed clothes out, and left them on the line overnight. In the morning, I was pleased to find not only did my shirts and socks look much cleaner, but they also smelled much better. The Scrubba bag had certainly worked well enough for a travel, camping or survival setting. I might not want to do my next job-interview in a Scrubba-washed suit, but if I were traveling and spilled cooled monkey brains down the front of my dress-short, I might certainly look to pull the Scrubba out to set me fresh for my next engagement.



Well worth looking into if you're either traveling off-grid, or frequently grot yourself up. I'm thinking it would make my next Tough Mudder trip home a lot cleaner!




Thursday, December 11, 2014

Review: 15L Dry Bag


Whether you're stuck on the side of a hill in monsoon season or you're kayaking to your bug-out shack, it pays to have a means of keeping your kit dry and safe. When I first got my Aquayak kayak, I saw these, and thought that I should add them into my collection at some stage.

Made from 70D nylon fabric with reinforced and sealed seems,  drybags like these are also treated to 7000mm waterproofness rating. 7m is a lot of depth for a bag, but a deep rating is better than a shallow one!

Attachment loops at the top which tie in to the sealing system give you hanging points, if not a carry system.


One of the key things about these kinds of bags is the closure system. With a seam of webbing along the lip, and a fastex style clip at either end, the bag is sealed by tightly wrapping the lip over and over itself, then clasping the clips together, it locks itself in tight.

The seal it produces is very tight, and gives the bag a near airtight seal. It is in fact so airtight that you need to take that into account when loading it up and sealing it up.

If you don't squeeze all the air out of the bag first, you get an inflated and buoyant bag. Emptied of air and you can get a dense, compacted and watertight storage unit.

I managed to fit several of my Platatac Half-fleece jumpers and a blanket in this one, and have had no trouble filling it with a number other items. The smallish circumference makes it for easy stowage, either in my kayak, slung under a pack or in the boot of the car.

Either way, its a very good way of keeping valuables high and dry.

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