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Sorry, another one for STW middle aged club... 🙁
In between houses right now whilst the developer drags their heels building our new house and our solicitor does their level best to lose all the paperwork and leave us permanently homeless...
Anyway, the in-laws spare bed (for it is they, lucky us/them!) is too soft, or something, and I get out of bed every morning creaking. It usually takes until bedtime the same day to loosen off at which point I'm ready to repeat the whole sorry process all over again.
Short of finding a local Premier Inn to stay in for the next 2 months (not unappealing in many ways) is there anything that can be done to 'improve' a crappy mattress? I see memory foam toppers but I also see reports of memory foam being too warm?
Anyway, sorry for tedious post, it's stopping me getting out for my morning rides so it tenuously relevant...
Ta
'Self-inflating' camping mattress?
I'll ask the obvious one - will you not need a mattress in the new house and can either buy one now to use there, or if sizes don't match (or you have already) can you put their's to one side and use your own?
sleep on the sofa
a lot of the mail-order mattress suppliers have 60-100 day free trials...
Ply wood under the mattress cut to the size of the mattress n side the edging seam. Don’t know why this works but at uni I had an awful mattress that hurt my back and the dr suggested this. It worked and gave me more time to find a good mattress.
Ply wood under the mattress cut to the size of the mattress n side the edging seam. Don’t know why this works but at uni I had an awful mattress that hurt my back and the dr suggested this. It worked and gave me more time to find a good mattress.
What sort of bed frame was it? I'd heard of this but couldn't see how it would make a difference as the mattress is on wooden slats anyway.
Thanks for other suggestions also, getting our other mattress out of storage and transported to us is just the wrong side of too much hassle/expense (and time! our storage/removal guys are crazy busy, not sure when they could slot in an extra run).
I guess I could try one of the free trials, it wouldn't be entirely dishonest as if it was good enough I might be tempted to fork out on it for our spare room...
Was going to try the camping mattress idea tonight, have got a fancy new Exped bikepacking mat which at this rate won't see much bikepacking anyway...
Ta
Try wearing a waist support band to bed to see if that helps. Try not to wrap it too tightly but just enough to support your back. Note that it can get a bit warm with the waist support band. Keep your back warm as cold will make the back pain worst. Waist support band definitely helped me a lot.
Sleep on the floor- not joking.
Put a duvet down and sleep on that.
The most immediate thing you can try is doing something different with your pillows - either more or less of them. If the mattress is putting you in a bad shape changing the shape by changing the height of your pillows might help. Or maybe you’ll wake up a different kind of sore. Seems like you don’t have much to lose by trying though.
When my mattress was getting tired I switched to one thinner pillow - seemed to encourage me to instinctively sleep on my back more rather than on my side and seemed to wake up less crumpled feeling as a result. This was of course at the cost of any kind of restful sleep for my partner as I snored at lot more as a result. Can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs i guess.
Do some stretches for lower back each morning and evening as well before bed. I have to for a muscle condition, can't move without them, but work a treat.
These are basically what my physio has me doing.
Stretches
You can get feather/down toppers. eBay, tkmaxx etc etc etc
MM are ok but I do think they can be warm (mrs has a bad back so we’ve tried lots)
If too soft, a topper won't help.
What's the divan like sprung or solid - ply under might help.
Try wearing a waist support band to bed to see if that helps. Try not to wrap it too tightly but just enough to support your back. Note that it can get a bit warm with the waist support band. Keep your back warm as cold will make the back pain worst. Waist support band definitely helped me a lot.
Interesting! I actually have one, they get a lot of bad press but when your back is in spasm it really does help to take as much load of the muscles as possible. Have a nasty feeling it's in the same storage facility as our 'good' mattress right enough...
Have enough to experiment with for the next week or so, then we're on holiday so just praying our accommodation has a decent mattress!
Broke my back 5 years ago (RTA bike v car).
I really struggle to sleep anywhere !
I put a peice of ply under my campervan foam mattress. It was ok on a surface but when I put it on a slatted base it was too soft. So you could get a tipper and put some ply over the existing mattress.
However mattresses are cheap, is just buy one and leave it at the in-laws for next time you visit!
When I mullered my back in a car accident like fussy though I doubt it was as bad a rolled up towel under my lumbar worked
http://www.exped.com/uk-ireland/en/product-category/mats/megamat-10-lxw-ruby-red
This is the most comfortable mattress (better than my ludicrously expensive bed) - a couple of pumps either to get it just to your liking.
Sleep on the floor- not joking.
Or just cough up for a decent mattress and leave it there for future visits
Are slats crap versus a solid base? I’m having doubts about ours as the slats seem to quickly lose their rise - could be my fat arse - but I really like the bed frame; is there a good hack or bite the bullet and buy a divan style frame?
Crap is probably the wrong word tbh, but they’re definitely different.
Slats give less support to the matress, making it softer.
To firm up slats you just need to add a layer of ply, you can do on one side and not the other if your partner prefers a softer mattress
My personal experience is that slats make a soft mattress a lot softer, I put a very firm mattress on the bed and the slats are no longer an issue I notice
Im not sure slats make much difference to the softness of the mattress, given the mattress thickness, and theres not really a lot of spring in them anyway, they appear to be more about airflow than anything comfort wise. If you look at a divan, that has a solid hardboard top, covered with fabric. Theres no 'spring' in it. This is why mattresses come in different grades of softness.
Im with the above - buy a firm mattress. £300 outlay, or you might even be able to haggle given the lack of business from this past year.
I certainly dont think a camping bed or even lying on the floor are going to do your back any good.
So 300 quid as a minimum and you can sleep on it as long as it takes to sort the rest of the house stuff out. No need to gift it to the in laws, just take it with you when you get set up. Im sure an extra spare wont go unused, or even take this time to replace the old one you have, unless its very new.
Hmm... an early win for the Exped camping mattress, certainly feeling a wee bit better this morning.
Agreed with wife that we could do with replacing the £100 groupon special that we use on the spare bed so I'll investigate proper pocket sprung jobs, looking at JohnRyan website they seem to do 60 day trials with no obligation other than using it for a minimum of 30 days with a protector on it.
By the time you have faffed around with things to improve it slightly, you may as well have just gone and bought a new mattress.
Why not get brownie points, tell the in laws the mattress is shit and you want to bu them a new one.
As posted earlier - sleep on the floor! Or, also as above, the plywood sheet under the mattress works for me......for some years.
dyna-ti
Free Member
Im not sure slats make much difference to the softness of the mattress, given the mattress thickness, and theres not really a lot of spring in them anyway, they appear to be more about airflow than anything comfort wise
There are two types of slats, sprung and unsprung. Sprung slats move, unsprung don't, one has an impact on softness one doesn't
We bought a display mattress at a local bed shop, ticket price was c600 we paid 200 and they even delivered it. It's really comfy no idea of the brand.
I'm liking my ikea mattress on my spare bed. 25 year guarantee too. Bought it for when I have to get up very early. Wife used to complain I made too much noise and woke her up. Wasn't too expensive eithter.
There are two types of slats, sprung and unsprung. Sprung slats move, unsprung don’t, one has an impact on softness one doesn’t
I'd say slight, as in tiny amount.
Slats have some give in them i grant you that, but theres a giant difference between some 12mm thick pine slats and a spring.
The slats will likely have a few millimeters of movement in them, and in reality of timber the effect is rather firm, for example you could depress one slat a few mill, but spread across 30 of them there is little to no effect.
The firmness comes from and resides within the unit of the mattress not its base. The mattress is 8" thick and a person lying on it only depresses it to maybe 1/3 of that depth. What it is sitting on has little to no bearing on the softness or firmness of 6the mattress unit in itself.
For example, you cannot take a soft mattress, place it on the ground and are miraculously rewarded by a firm mattress, no, you lie on it and it is still soft. The same applies if you place it on a soft surface.
2nd for the Ikea mattress. £220 for the Morgedal and its so nice and firm, 25 year guarantee too. Feels like proper quality somehow