As I have noticed wall beds have too much "whoow" prices, I was thinking to buy a good mattress, get some help and setting up a very simple flat wooden bed frame and spring mechanism to embed it in an alreading existing closet.
Where can I find spring mechanisms (I am even not sure this is the right word)? Are they sold in diy places like B&Q?
Also I have googled a bit but not found anything as simple as I want for diy wall bed frames projects. Do you have any link or reference book for me.
The challenge would be to work out the right size and capacity and fitting position. This is all about mechanics and levers and the objective is to be able to balance most of the weight so that the item to make lifting easy while making sure that the bed isn't going to sail up on its own when the bedding is taken off.
I looked at this issue when I wanted to come up with a way to handle a power feeder on one of my woodworking machines. Basically it's a motor geared to sprung, rubber tyred wheels which sits at the end of a metal tube mount which can be adjusted in all directions. The idea is that it's positioned where the material is going to be run through the machine. By design, it's very heavy (several 10s of kg). For certain operations, it has to be dropped to below the table level. Doing this involves a swivel in the bottom of the mount, but with the feeder on the end of 700mm or so of the arm, lifting and stowing it is quite a challenge.
Fortunately, there is an after-market product consisting of a substantial metal plate which fits to the feeder mount plus a gas strut which is attached to that and the base of the machine. A simple solution which cost $100 from the supplier in the U.S. The effective lifting weight for the feeder comes down to 5kg or so, but only at the point when it is lifted away from the table.
Now one can look at that and realise that the gas strut costs about $20 max and although there is cutting and machining of the plate, it's not complicated. So I looked up the details of the manufacturer of the struts and found that they have a very wide range of them. Clearly this one had been carefully selected for the job.
So the point is that while gas struts might well be a good solution, there's more to it than just getting any old thing and hoping. It does need some design and probably experimental work. I know that the guy who made the power feeder solution tried out at least 6 different struts before being happy with the result. By the time one has done that, it may start getting as costly as the off the shelf solution and there is still the frame to do.
Using a weight as a counterbalance is a big advantage in this respect, it can be altered easily to suit. However I'm doubtful you'd get a weight to move either far enough or to be heavy enough for a bed. So you're going to have to struggle with balancing a gas or spring mecha. Unless you go for electric power, but beware the cheap mains electric hoists are very noisy.
My garage door has an arrangement with weights on each side to counterbalance the door (no springs). The works are relatively complicated in terms of gearing and cables to make this work, but the door will comfortably sit at any position.
I suppose that for this bed application, it could be interesting to use a garage door opener adapted in some way, although I'm not sure how
I wondered about torsion bars from the front suspension of an old Moggy Minor. You'd probably need to join 2 end to end - 'cos I doubt whether they are designed to twist through the required 90 degrees. You'd also need some fairly substantial fixings onto the wall - otherwise they're likely to tear out when you lower the bed.
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