Use & Care
Breaking In Your New Bedroll
For best performance, the Thermarest™ self-inflating air mattress inside of your Oregon Bedroll needs to be broken in. Unroll the bedroll, open the valve, and let it ‘wick-up’ the air for about 30 minutes. Add a few breaths of air so that it’s over-inflated a bit, quickly close the valve and let it lie out flat overnight. Next day open the valve and find a place like under a bed where it can lay out flat with the valve open for a day or so. If you can store it laying flat with the valve open, you’ll get best inflation performance. If you prefer to store your bedroll rolled up, it’s inflation speed will benefit from a few days lying flat with the valve open.
Rolling up your bedroll
Only takes a few minutes to ‘crush out’ the air and roll up your Oregon Bedroll.
YouTube video showing how to roll up your Oregon Bedroll, click here.
Open valve, fold from bottom into half, then half again up to the bottom of the pillow, kneel on bedroll let air escape for a couple of minutes. Then close valve and roll the folded mat onto the pillow, burp air again by opening valve while sitting or kneeling on it, close valve. Adjust and fasten straps, one more burp will get it as small as possible, and you’re done.
Clean Up
Clean with a damp/wet cloth with mild detergent. Do not dry clean. Be careful to not store your bedroll rolled up wet. The materials are mold/mildue resistant, but mold and or mildew are your bedroll’s worst enemies.
Having told you how to clean it, we recommend not cleaning it. Let the bottom, which makes the rolled-up outside cover, get dirty, beat and tired looking. Encourage that ‘been there, done that’ look. Much less likely somebody will steal it, most won’t want to touch it. Just our opinion. Someday, with our spare time, we’ll have a beat-up bedroll photo contest.
Strap Replacement
Your Oregon Bedroll was designed to allow strap replacement for the eventual ‘heel of a boot’ taking out one of the acetal buckles. It’s a snap on the Bareknuckle Bedroll to change straps, but on the Oregon Bedroll, you’ve really got to work the buckles through the leather. I suggest doing one side at a time so you can keep the scientifically designed strap position the same. Some leather conditioner, or saddle soap will help the leather to allow the strap replacement. Unroll the bedroll, open the bottom zipper and getting a hand behind the patch may help.
Replacing Air Mattress
Therm-a-Rest mattresses are tough and don’t puncture easily, plus we’ve wrapped it in some pretty stout material, so replacing a bad air-mattress is unlikely, but it’s pretty easy.
YouTube video showing how to install your mattress, click here.
Unzip the bottom zipper, turn the valve to full open and push it out of the valve patch and the mattress comes right out. Put the new mattress inside the bedroll, be sure to get the top of the mattress all the way to the top of the bedroll, get the mattress to lay flat, then push the opened valve through the leather. Straighten the mattress inside nicely and zip the bottom up.
Do I have a leak?
Self inflating mattresses are unique with their ‘sponge’ filling in that they are excellent mats empty of air. We nap on ours with no air at quiet spots during the day.
So I’ve had a leak after puncturing mine on sharp rocks (just the mattress) floating in a cool stream on a hot day. I had to sleep on it a couple of nights to be sure, it’s hard to tell. A good way to tell is to keep the valve closed, and unclip the straps for a few days and see if it fills up with air.
If you have a leak, the best plan is to remove the air mattress from the bedroll and send it directly to:
ThermaRest
Cascade Designs
4225 2nd Ave S
Seattle, WA 98134
Their phone is 1-888-801-5335.
Send a note in the package that your mat is leaking, and they will figure it out, and if it’s defective provide a replacement or fix it. But if it’s a puncture, they fix it for a flat $20 and pay to ship it back. Finding and fixing punctures is hard, leave it to the pros is my advice.
We do have special multi-layer patch kits that are very effective if you have 1 or 2 distinct tears. The hard part is finding the holes.
No new technology has arrived to help, it’s still just over inflate it and submerge in water, look for bubbles. A light soapy solution in a spray bottle and look for foaming bubbles could also work. Neither worked for me for my micro holes, found some, not all.
Warranty Details
The Original Oregon Bedroll carries a lifetime warranty against defects in manufacture or materials. You pay to ship it in and we will repair your bedroll structurally and send it back with it’s battle scar if necessary. To ease the pain we’ll pay return ground shipping.
The Therm-a-Rest self inflating mattresses inside of all Oregon Bedrolls carry a lifetime warranty like ours, lifetime repair or replacement for defects, and low cost quick repairs for damage. The shipping address for Therm-a-Rest is above in ‘Do I have a leak?’.
All other bedrolls and accessories carry a 3 year repair warranty, and we offer quick repair service on a quote basis if you damaged it. The 3 year warranty against defects applies to BareKnuckle Bedroll, Pack-Lite Bedroll, DoubleDown Bedroll and accessories.
If we’ve got a product that came apart prematurely it’s clearly in our best interest to get it fixed and back to our loyal customers who are doing such great grass roots marketing for us all over the world. We can learn much about our design from any returning failure. We had one once, and ended up changing the product slightly.
