Air mattress

[Donnegan]

I LOVE mouth inflating airbeds.

[inbox_pm]

I LOVE mouth inflating airbeds.

Of course, I also mostly inflating them by mouth!

[heaviest]

You can get 18-pocket suntanner-style floats (with colored bottom rather than intex silver, so they aren't really suntanners) from Target for $10. Here are my observations on this style of air mattress.

The pockets are closer together across the width of the float than they are along its length, so very fully inflated they bulge more between rows than they do between columns, and the circular tops of the pockets pull more tightly in one direction than they other. I love inflatables that are stressed unevenly, but this is a weakness of this type of float. Those pockets are where it usually fails, and because those aren't big seams, the pop isn't loud at all.

These mattresses generally hold women well over 700 pounds, outside the pool. You have to teach them not to hook their heel in the pockets to move themselves around, because that sometimes causes a leak in the pockets. They don't even have to be careful, otherwise. The mattress just holds that much weight, for hours. They can even load it unevenly, compressing part of the float and leaving other parts bulging. 7-800 pounds will eventually cause the mattress the develop a leak, but you sometimes get several multi-hour sessions out of them, first.

A woman that size is wider than the mattress in the hips, by quite a bit, but the roundness of the hips is such that all of their butt is on the mattress and not overflowing onto the floor. Their legs are another matter. They are almost twice as wide as the mattress, lying down, and their thighs spill onto the floor, keeping them from getting all their weight on the mattress. But most of it is on the mattress. Their CALVES are wider than the mattress, but don't overflow onto the floor.

When they lie on their back and hike their knees up, sliding their feet toward their butt, they can get the full weight of their thighs on the mattress, but then their butt bottoms out, and that takes some of their weight off the mattress, too.

Lying on their side they are still wider than the mattress. Their butt and belly hang over. But all of their weight is on the mattress, except that their hip bottoms out.

A 770 pound woman, lying on her belly on an air mattress, her butt sticks up as high as my desk, and most of the mattress isn't visible under her. I can see it a little under her waist, and from her calves down, and I can see the pillow. Below her waist she is so much wider than the mattress and her belly bottoms out. Her thighs are so much wider that they overflow onto the floor. This is my favorite view, belly down and butt up, way higher than the rest of her, and it looks like they thing should just burst, but it actually holds that much weight.

We've had four people on these mattresses in a hotel room. Two normal-sized people up to about 300 pounds with two very large women sitting on them. It's tough to get most of the weight of all these people on the mattress, because there are hands and feet taking some of the weight on the floor or bench, but it's still a sight to see. I've had 1200-ish pound's on these mattresses often, sitting with a very large woman, and I've had 1500-ish pounds on them, two of the women sitting side by side, or lying on top of each other.

Over 1000 pounds, and I mean well over 1000 pounds, it becomes important to completely cover all the pockets. If you load these mattresses unevenly with that much weight on them, leaving some pockets unencumbered, those are the pockets that will blow. But developing a leak, or a disappointingly not loud pop, happens a lot with that much weight.

These mattresses almost always pop or leak around those pockets, but sometimes, rarely, a baffle under the pillow breaks, and then that end of the mattress bulges ridiculously. Very fun, but rare. For some reason, the double-wide version of these, no longer made, breaks a baffle more than the singles.

There's a variant of this mattress that has a pillow more the thickness of the rest of the mattress, with three baffles. Some of these are two chambers (boring) but some of them (e.g. Bestway) are one chamber. That means as you load the mattress, you displace air into the pillow, and those baffles pull really tight. Very exciting. It's easier to break a baffle (merging two segments of the pillow) with this style. There are also double wide 36-pocket versions of the pillow-not-on-top variety, and I've had five really large people on those.

The most I've ever seen a one-chamber 18-pocket mattress loaded was a man over 900 pounds sitting with a man over 700 pounds, and a woman of about 300 pounds on the pillow. That one burst the pillow, but it lasted a while before it burst. The two men got quite a bit of time on it before the woman joined them and burst the mattress. Unfortunately, I only saw this on video. I'd love to see it live.

I also have those Parentswell mattresses that are beam-style baffled mattresses. I've made a post about them already.

[heaviest]

An overinflated air mattress, funny to find as stock photography

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/welcoming-raft-floating-in-tropical-ocean-royalty-free-image/77285661