Carpet-cleaner fumes forced moving to the guest room last night. The guest room bed has a waterbed mattress. We guess that mattress is about 20 years old and that we are playing with fire. Well, playing with water. Lots of water. Anybody in their right mind would drain that rascal and replace it. (We have the awful feeling that this story could get to be one of those where you start out to drain the swimming pool and wind up up to your neck in alligators.) So. Assuming that we survive that - buying a new mattress just could be trickier than choosing a new husband. What's with 'pillow' tops and air controls and temperature foam and all that? Have you found a new mattress that is wonderful? Are the deeper mattresses marvelous or a pain to make up? Any thoughts? And do we need to put the Navy Seals on speed-dial before we drain the waterbed? Polly
From things I have read in a few magazines and heard on TV, the best type of mattress to avoid back pain from the mattress is to get is a water bed, or an air mattress with the controls, or one of those memory foam things. That being said, we have a Serta 7" mattress on our K size bed in SC, a Q padded regular mattress that is 10 years old on the bed in FL, and one of those air mattresses on the full size bed in the camper. I like them all, but we will probably replace the one Q size regular mattress in FL soon and we aren't sure what to get. So I am NO help. Barbara
Consumer Reports recommends going to the store and trying out the mattresses. They say you can judge pretty well after 10-15 minutes on the mattress. When we bought one a few years ago, we went to the local mattress factory & tried out several. I even took my own pillow along. The advantage of buying from the factory was that they could adjust it
-- make it firmer or softer -- if we found after a couple of weeks that we didn't have it quite right. Besides that, I think it was cheaper than buying the brand name ones from a furniture store. We found that the one we liked best was a conventional mattress, a bit on the thicker side, and not a pillow top. It was definitely not the most expensive one they had. I did not like the feel of the memory foam one. I'm not sure that water beds are always best for a bad back; my back felt better after we bought the conventional mattress. The deep mattresses require deep pocket fitted sheets. Are you going to be sleeping on this mattress regularly, or is it for the guest room? I wouldn't spend as much money on a guest room bed as on the one I planned to sleep on regularly.
The easiest way to empty a water bed is to get an electric water bed pump. We rented one from a local water bed store.
Julia > Carpet-cleaner fumes forced moving to the guest room last night. The
The last time I purchased a new mattress, I got traditional, and am very pleased with it! My friends with pillow-top and extra-thick have had to change to all new linens with the extra-deep pockets, and complain that with the beds a few inches higher that dust ruffles, spreads, etc. are too short and not wide enough, so it looks like the beds are ready for high water. I had a waterbed for years and dearly loved it, but decided it was time for it go to a new home when I bought my 110 year old house with creaky floors. If you want a bit of extra softness on a standard mattress you can always use a featherbed. Since this new bedding will be for a guest room, you certainly don't need to buy the most expensive top-of-the-line.
One word of warning about buying a new mattress -- there are major problems with bedbugs in both new and used stuff, so if I were you I would be calling the Better Business Bureau and ask whether there have been any issues with creepy-crawly critters from ABC manufacturer and from XYZ store.
I think I would avoid the pillow top. They are nice to lie on, but they don't seem to hold up very well. It seems like almost everyone I've talked to has has to have the pillowtop adjusted or was told "They all do that". The complaint is that you get a "hole" in the pillow top. I don't have a memory foam mattress, but I think I'd like one. I do like my memory foam pillow! But to be fair, a friend of mine who is recovering from a car accident with lots of bumps and bruises (but no major injuries) said that she was so sore that she got stuck in the dent in her mattress and had trouble rolling over. She's a good sized woman, so I doubt you would have any problems Polly....just don't have a car accident!!
We went through two brand new materess in the last 2 1/2 yrs. First one I bought was supposed to be great posturpedic for the back. Well it was hard when I did sleep on it that I woke up with a sore back all the time. So the second one we got is a pillow top but that's not what I was intending. I would however recommend what they call the bowling ball mattress. The one in the commercial where you can set a glass of wine and bounce a bowling bowl on it and it won't spill the wine. Well there are all sorts of manufacters for this in different firmness and all that. This was not intended as part of my purchase either but now that I've had it I love it. I no longer wake if hubby is rolling over, or getting in and out of bed at all.
When you go to the store and try them on really think about where your pressure points are and how you sleep. Some beds feel like a dream when you first lay down but then a few mins later I could feel a pressure point in my hip. I sleep either on my side or back. I weight about just over 150lbs, but hubby is over 200lbs.
Also beware of the foam mattress. They can hold heat. Which means all your body heat doesn't escape and it doesn't breath at night. So a couple of hours into the night and your sweating. The newer foam ones are better and are made to breath.
I came from a waterbed for 20+ years. So going firm was like sleeping on a rock. However hubby never slept on one. So we went with a matteress that was just slightly on the firm side but has a soft pillow top with foam only in the pillow top part of it. We have had no issues with heat or anything else but this mattress is only just over a year old.
Just in case you are considering it they make wonderful waterbeds now. They make some that look just like a normal matteress and it has a small bladder on the inside. So no need for the old big wooden frame. The matteress unzips for filing and such. While some of these are excellent others suck. Watch for the ones with a foam side. When you get in and out you can feel the sides of the bed. Which means you wouldn't really be able to lay on that part of the bed, it's at a different angle then the bladder. This is a great option if you still want the warmth, but not the waves of a traditional waterbed.
Check the companies where you are at. In Canada there is a company that will let you try your bed for 60 days. If you don't like it then you can exchange it once. I was also told if you buying to replace something go slightly firmer then what you got because there is a break in period. Only slightly though. So if you go soft from the start a year down the road that matteress will be super soft.
Absolutely check around. All stores carry the same matteress but with different names on them so it makes it hard to compare. For example a Sealy Posurpedic in Sears can be the exact same matteress somewhere else, just called a different name. This is where looking at those samples of the beds helps. See what layers there are to the bed, and how thick each layer is. Even if they don't have a sample of the bed they should be able to provide you with that information. Some consumer organizations are trying to get them to change their practices so that it's not so hard for consumers to compare. I spent almost six months looking around and found differences of up to $500 for the same thing.
Pillow tops do require the extra deep pocket sheets. However I've even had issues with these. They say they are deep pockets and I can get them on the bed but the part between each corner tends to ride up. Not sure if there is any fix to this. I have to use those elastic straps in the corners for these sheets. My bed isn't even the thickest on the market. It's classed as a regular materess with a small pillow top on it.
H> Carpet-cleaner fumes forced moving to the guest room last night. The
I have an older rather firm mattress with a 4 in. Memory Foam topper on it(a separate unit). It does tend to hold some body heat, but my arthritis prefers a warm bed, so I use a heated mattress pad all year round- as well as the small amount of body heat held by the Memory Foam topper. I love the Memory Foam but with the artificial hip and bad (naughty! LOL) arthritis it's sometimes difficult to roll over as I am stuck in the slight indentation made by my body. The indent is very comfy but can be difficult to get out of on my bad days.
Can't help you with a new mattress. But, I have drained many a waterbed. It's not fast, but it's not hard and as long as you've got a handy bathroom nearby and a good garden hose with no leaks, you won't have any problems. There is this little gadget you buy and hook up between the mattress and the hose and it creates a suction that pulls the water out. It can drain into a bathtub. Or out a nearby door or window. I lived on a waterbed for most of my adult life (no longer, to my great discomfort and sadness) and never had a water mess. We sprang a leak once when a young'un (not one of mine) stuck something sharp into the mattress to see what would happen. Seal kit fixed it right up. Not the kid, the bed. Although I thought about slapping some of that extra sealing glue on the kid "to see what would happen."
But you are better off draining it on your own terms than waiting for it to leak into the liner. Then you would have a mess.
Aha! and thank you. You all have saved me days or weeks of weighing choices. Our guest room is always occupied during and after hurricanes; usually without electricity meaning no fans or air conditioning. I'm thinking a 'hot' mattress would be even more miserable. Grateful for your thoughts, Polly
"Leslie& The Furbabies in MO." I have an older rather firm mattress with a 4 in. Memory Foam topper on it(a
Actually, you can use capillary (???) action to drain it without any pump or anything other than a hose. 'Burp' the water mattress to get all the air out of it, hook the hose to the water mattress and then the other end to a faucet- I prefer using an outdoor faucet. Run some water *into* the mattress. Then turn off the water and unhook the hose from the faucet. As long as no air gets into the hose you can just toss that end of the hose on the ground or into a bath tub and the water will drain right out! If some air gets into the hose just do it all over again.... and be more careful to not get air into the hose! You can move around the attached hose end like it's a vacuum cleaner hose to get every last drop of water out of the mattress... or kinda roll or fold the mattress to keep all the water at the hose.
I use this method to drain water beds, horse drinking troughs, Simon's (one of The HairyButt Gang!) swimming pool, etc. It always works!
Wow. Thanks, Leslie. Scathingly brilliant. You'll be Proud. I actually do know where the gizmos are that fit into the waterbed. I've kept them for years in great-grandmother's pitcher. Made sense to me at the time. Was such a ridiculous 'where do I put?' that it's been easy to remember. Polly
"Leslie& The Furbabies in MO." Actually, you can use capillary (???) action to drain it without any pump or
Hi Polly -- the last mattress we bought had a pillow top (on top AND bottom).. Oy. It made the bed so.....tall. We just stared at it at first. It was the tallest bed I've ever seen. It was also a pain to find a bottom sheet
*minimum* 22 inches back then. Half the headboard was covered up. I could sit on the bed, and my feet dangled several inches from the floor. I felt like that illustration from "Princess and the Pea." We kept it cuz it was comfortable, and back then I was too timid to return anything for the sole reason that I didn't like it. That was several years ago. Now it is easier to find bedding that fits it. I wouldn't buy another one so thick. My elderly QI needs steps to get on the bed. Sherry
Can't really help w/recommendations either but a comment on sheets if you go w/a thicker mattress. While the deep pocket fitted sheets are fairly easy to find in numerous depths, I find that the sheet manufacturers don't make any accommodations with the top or flat sheet. Ergo - the flat sheets are skimpy on the thicker mattresses. Same for blankets; spreads, etc. We have a king so I can't 'upsize' the flat sheets the way you could w/smaller sizes. Can't really get the coverage I want with sheets to accommodate for me, DH and the QI's.
A friend of mine, who has a bad back, bought the Temperpedic foam mattress topper only - she & DH had just purchased a new bed & her back went south shortly afterwards. Anyway, she hated the darned thing, because, as Joanna says, it held the heat & she was dripping with perspiration all night long. This is a fairly recent purchase; they got rid of it asap & she now has just a conventional mattress.
I was told by a mattress salesman (who I met at the dog park - get my best info at the dog park) that you are pretty safe if you buy from a well known mattress store or whatever you may have that is equivalent to Macy's in the swamp. He said never buy from a fly by night store- that's where you run into the problem with used materials under new cover & of course, bed bugs!!! ICK!!!!!!!
I'm about 6 days behind on reading, but still giving my 2 cents worth if info.
I moved my waterbed twice and used a small pump to empty it, ran the hose out the window, very easy,
As for all those different mattresses, we tried the air mattresses, he liked his side blown up to rock hard, I prefer a little softer. Well his side lasted about 2 years then the part that keeps the air in quit working and would slowly go flat during the night and he would wake me up by running the pump to blow it back up! I thought that he should just let it flat since it was on a platform bed and that was a board which is how hard he wanted his side of the bed anyway!
Now we have a temperpedic, it is wonderful, I love it, it fits my body, pressure points to a T. He's living with it!
As for those super fat/thick mattresses, you will need all new bottom sheets, 'cause the old ones will flip off! Pillow top, I don't know about.
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