Taking care of your Gerbing Heated Clothing product

Clothing

In our experience, the majority of issues that arise are due to lack of care. Gerbing kit is well made and robust, and treated well it will keep you warm and safe for many years. Some customers are still using kit that is over 20 years old. The following guidelines should ensure you get plenty of wear from your kit for years to come.

  1. Always keep the rubber cap on the battery harness when not in use.
    Even when your Gerbing kit is not plugged in (for instance during the summer months) there is a tiny charge going through the plug and if its damp, over a period of time the plug will corrode.

  2.  Ensure you remove the fuse in the summer time to avoid corroding of the plug.

  3. All the plugs should be treated with a damp inhibitor such as WD40 or ACF.

  4. Gloves should be treated with a leather conditioner/waterproofer such as Nikwax. Our gloves use a waterproof Hipora liner however, this liner is underneath the outer skin of the glove which will still soak up water if not protected. For hygenic reasons, we highly recommend using a silk glove liner when using your heated glove - you can simply pop this in the wash when dirty, keeping your gloves liner nice and clean.

  5. Jackets, trousers and socks can all be washed by hand using a mild detergent. Hang on a line to dry naturally - do not tumble dry. Please download full instructions HERE
  6. All our kit can be rolled tightly when dry for packing.

Batteries

Lithium batteries are sensitive creatures and require a little effort looking after to maximise their life expectancy.

 Our 5 top tips for battery care:

  1. Charge a little bit whenever you can. Lithium-ion batteries do not respond well to being charged all the way up and then run all the way down. They take much better to little bits of charge here and there.

  2. If you need to store your battery for a while, do it in a cool dry place. Lithium-ion batteries despise heat. A li-ion battery that's been exposed to temperatures of around 100 degrees Fahrenheit for a year will lose about 40% of its overall charge capacity. At 75 degrees, it'll lose only about 20%.

  3. Store batteries with a little bit of charge.If you're storing batteries, you give them about a half a charge first. They'll slowly lose their charge over time, and if it drops into the true-zero danger zone, your battery will automatically trip its safety circuit and kill itself for real before it can become unstable.

  4. Avoid physical stress. Drops and falls can damage batteries, causing it to leak a cocktail of corrosive chemicals, all of which are bad for electronics.

  5. The first stage of healing is acceptance...No matter how many times you bring it back to life, your battery will die someday or at least degrade into a shadow of its former self. It's physics. It's unavoidable. Most lithium-ion batteries have a rated lifetime of somewhere between 500 and 1,500 charge cycles.

We offer a 90-day battery + charger warranty here at Gerbing Heated Clothing BV – head to our Warranty page for more info.

Any questions? Feel free to get in touch.