Performance Technology
EXTENDING YOUR COMFORT ZONE
The unique approach of Páramo® to performance technology.
- Páramo’s goal is to produce clothing that keeps you comfortable in the harshest conditions, and allows you to reach the wildest places safely.
- Páramo aims for functional excellence whilst having minimum impact upon the environment.
- Páramo combines ingenious, rigorously field-tested designs with innovative textile systems which are specified and tested by Nikwax.
- Páramo is a specialist in the use of directionality. Páramo clothing directs condensation, sweat and rain to where you need it to be, which is usually away from you.
DIRECTIONALITY®
Why Páramo® has chosen Nikwax Directional Fabric Technology
What does directionality® mean?
Directionality in fabric means “the ability of the fabric or the fabric system to move liquid water to where you want it”. Liquid water? Isn’t all water liquid? Well, actually, no! Water dissolves in air in relatively small quantities to form moisture vapour. Most people who own an Outdoor jacket these days know about Moisture Vapour Transmission fabrics, or, in other words, breathable membranes. The theory goes that these fabrics can transmit the evaporated sweat from our bodies.
So, water exists in three forms: LIQUID, which we drink and which we feel as condensation inside our garments, VAPOUR, which we cannot see, but which surrounds all of us, and ICE – frozen water, which we find building up on the inside of breathable membranes in extremely cold conditions.
Why would you want to move liquid water within a fabric, instead of moisture vapour? The answer is quite simple; it is much more efficient to move liquid water. Why? Because liquid water occupies so much less space than water vapour – in fact even fully water saturated air at 20 degrees centigrade contains less than 1/70,000 of the amount of water than the same volume of liquid water. Therefore, if you want to move water, moving it as a liquid has to be more efficient than moving it as moisture vapour.
