So we have a house with 5 tiny bedrooms so that we pay the maximum council tax for the minimum pleasure and convenience.
All the family trot upstairs to sit on the bed beside the phone to make their more private calls. So we have a king size mattress with a huge dip and broken springs waiting to impale the unwary.
I have asked in Bensons better beds, but they seemed about twice the price of elsewhere even with their 50% off offers, and I came out with no more clue than when I went in.
What is the best construction to achieve the least broken springs and least subsidence in the long term? I do vaguely understand the difference between pocket springs and just ordinary and grasp the concept of foam, although the "adjusts to your contour" and the possible lack of airflow put me off.
Our present mattress is a no turn one, and turning would be a bit of a pain in the space available, but is there really much difference?
I see no point in decoration on any mattress, as it's always covered up, so is there any guidance about how to get a good, cheap, industrial quality king size mattress?
The contour foam ones seem to (in 8 years) always return to shape. Other advantage is they comes vac packed from Bensons & easy to transport (in a 107!). Downside - they are warm (if that is a downside!).
I found the chap in our local Dreams store genuinely helpful, they encourage you to try as many mattresses as you want and they'll advise you well. Then, if the price isn't to your liking, you can go home and Google for the same make and models you liked and maybe get it cheaper.
The missus likes those. I can't stand them personally - the sensation of constantly sinking *into* whatever I'm lying on doesn't exactly make for a good night's sleep. Maybe I fell into some quicksand in a former life or something :-)
Bill, good luck in your quest. It is worth remembering that we spend about a third of our lives in bed. A good mattress will aid a good night's sleep and that leads to a better day. Try all that you can find. Lie on them, bounce on them and do what you do on them (almost). A good one is perhaps a difficult personal choice but you, and your family, will reap the benefits. It is a compromise, as ever, tween budget and choice. Nick.
In my opinion springs are totally unsuitable for sleeping on. I think all they have going for them is the ventilation aspect. They offer no support and move out of the way as you roll about trying to get some. For many years my solution was a wooden frame on the floor into which I put an old feather mattress. This was perfect until I became too weak to plump it up to get the full benefit from it.
Then I looked at the then super expensive memory foam, but was disappointed when I sat on a bed and found there was no support on the sides. This means that your habitual phone sitters would tend to sink in and slip off.
I did some calculations of my own and decided that what I needed was something full of balls rather than springs. Practice golf balls seemed to offer the ventilation of springs but good support if retained in my wooden former. However, when the estimated quantity came in at 16-20,000, I gave up on that experiment, and for some more years settled for the security of sleeping on the floor on shag pile carpet with a duvet over. Even in hotels, I generally could only sleep on the floor.
More recently I compromised with a single bed on which I put a sheet of chipboard, a layer of foam and a layer of carpet. This supports quite nicely but is a bit small.
Most comfortable I have found are hospital foam stretcher beds, but they are too narrow.
Before ill health forced me to move, I had began another likely experiment in that places like Woolies and Toys 'R' Us started selling clear plastic rectangular bags full of 'bouncy castle balls'. I bought a few to begin assembling a ball mattress out of these as building blocks. This would have been cheaper than a shop mattress, and I'm sure it would have given support without rolling out of the way like other materials do. It has become one of the many sadly unfinished experiments, that litter my life and surroundings.
For your immediate problems you might be better off trying some diy solution of your own: you want a solid edge for those phone sitters to perch on, but a softer foam or memory foam inner zone.
The hard part (for me) would be making the cover for it all ( I did once fall for the 'pocket spring' gimmick, but the mattress had been folded and a number of springs had become entwined. I spent ages opening up the mattress, stitching the springs back in their pockets and then stitching round the whole king sized mattress by hand. And afterwards, my feather mattress was still much more comfortable and doesn't bounce around when you try to sleep on it.)
There is a lot of design opportunity going to waste over the obsession with springs in beds. I think it was probably more comfortable in prehistoric times, when a stone box filled with heather and bedstraw, must have felt very comfortable indeed by modern standards.
Sorry for the rant: but a good night's sleep is something I have 'dreamed' [or not!] of for many a year!
Dedicated d-i-y ers can surely come up with better solutions than the 'pros' on something as basic as a bed! (Mind you, when you calculate the timber requirements - vast - you may find it cheaper to buy and modify than to start from scratch.)
In a decent properly constructed mattress they shouldn't be moving out of the way. I still find the mattress we chose when we bought our bed 13 years ago(Iron Bed co. - very good salesman, advised us on getting a cheaper mattress, as the more expensive ones they had were not so good on the style of bed we chose - note cheaper, not cheap).
But of course there is big variation - there are plenty of beds I've slept on that were dire.
Sounds awful to me.
I've tried that sort of thing before, in some youth hostels and the like, pretty uncomfortable to me.
Maybe it';s becuase most people find them comfortable?
Have you tried the self inflating mats that campers use? (They use an open cell foam core bonded to an airtight nylon/polyester or somesuch material outer. Open the valve, the foam expands - hence the self inflating part, close valve, when you lie on it the foam can't just compress flat as the air has no where to go, so it supports you.) They are surprisingly comfortable given what they look like
Thermarest is the big brand name, but there are cheaper ones that are just as good for general use. From about 2cm thick up to about 10cm. the thinner ones are more of a compromise really to keep weight down for backpackers etc. Though friend of mine with back problems swears by his. for car camping I find my current 7.5cm thick mat lovely and comfortable.
And to answer the suggestion of buying them all mobile phones a) we are in a mobile phone black hole b) they would still sit on the bed c) they transfer incoming calls up there for privacy
but I am grateful for all the suggestions although I still have grave doubts about ventilation with foam.
I don't think I want to try golf balls.
I am still not sure why some mattresses need to be turned and others don't. That was the question that I asked in 2 Bensons shops and failed to get an answer that made sense.
I've located a Dreams store not too far away and might be able to get there for a lie and sit in the next few days.
Which is exactly what we have - 2870 springs - Can't lift it on my own either - which is no matter as it's not meant to be flipped as it has a separate top (stitched on) which is like a thin futon. (Although we do rotate it occasionally)
Best mattress I've ever had - It's Relyon Connoisseur..
All mattresses last better if turned. Obviously. This is to distribute the wear, and everything wears eventually. However, its possible the act of turning / rotating could cause even more wear ;-) Simon.
Not all mattresses are symmetrical. Some are designed with only one surface to sleep on and with different spring settings at the head, middle and legs. They should not be turned.
And I take it you never bother to read what anyone writes? I sewed a good portion of the thousands of springs back into their individual pockets and it still was too springy to sleep on. You might be some sort of bird or sailor that can sleep on a surface that never stops moving but I'm not. I thoroughly enjoyed burning that mattress in the end, and, for years after, was very comfortable on my feather mattress thankyou.
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