Air mattress

[heaviest]

Re: Air mattress

Having horrible luck with the Walmart air mats now. Lots of leaks.

I need to find something between too sturdy to be interesting and too flimsy to get any use out of. Something that feels overloaded and feels like it should pop, and back that threat up by occasionally popping, but lasts long enough to be useful. If it feels like it will burst for an hour but survived for another session, that’s cool.

The 18 pocket floats are good for the girls, but don’t feel stressed enough with just me on them. Looking for something that size but slightly less sturdy.

Now, an 18 pocket float with Gym Girl on top of me, I’m bottomed out a lot, and that feels like it’s seriously abusing the inflatable. Two big adults on an inflatable made for one person, and it survives? That’s very exciting. And Gym Girl has the patience for it. But not as often as I like.

[heaviest]

Re: Air mattress

I changed my mind about the 18 pocket mats. With a little overinflate 460 pounds is enough to make it really tight. Got it so there is almost no pucker except the outside corners. It held me for a couple hours and felt overloaded enough to be exciting. If it holds several times like that and then pops it’ll be worth the $10 these cost at Target. More likely it’ll just develop a slow leak. We’ll have to see.

If they hold up well I’ll try sleeping on it overnight.

[heaviest]

Re: Air mattress

I’m on the Target pocket lounge, been on it for an hour and a half, going to give it an hour and a half more if it’ll take it. I’ve added air a few times and can only get a couple breaths in each time. The thing is so tight it feels like I have one of the girls on here with me. I’m watching for puckering between pockets, an indication it needs air, and there is no puckering whatsoever. The thing is bulging so much around the three pockets at my feet that it’s hard to believe it hasn’t popped.

Update: it’s been 45 more minutes and there’s a bulge under my upper back, in the row of pockets right next to the pillow. It’s actually uncomfortable and I’m loving it!

Update: still on it, it’s been over three hours. I’ve added air again. There is hardly any puckering even on the outside corners. When I get up there is a single pucker between the pockets across the centerline. I never paid much attention to how these things are constructed or how the material stretches under load, but there is less material between the pockets across the width of the mattress than there is between pockets along the length, so it bulges more between pockets lengthwise than between pockets across the width. It bulges A LOT more between “rows” than between “columns”. And it bulges the most in the ten points that are in the middle of four pockets.

I’m sitting upright at the moment and not bottoming out. I’m really bottom heavy so I’m almost as wide as the mattress, so my weight is spread out. Still impressive that it is so hard I’m not bottomed out.

Breaking the baffles under the pillow has only happened a couple times on these. It’s almost always the pockets. I’ve never much cared for these things because of the pockets breaking, but the way the load is taken so unevenly around the pockets is actually really exciting.

Update: four hours in I bottomed out. Got off it and it’s soft. The leak is so slow I don’t even know where it is. The worst way to ruin an inflatable. But it was an awesome four hours.

[heaviest]

Re: Air mattress

I found where my Target 18 pocket lounge failed. I’ve seen videos of the pockets of these things pulling away from the bottom of the mattress and turning inside out. It’s never happened to me. But the mattress I had under stress for four hours started to do that. That bottom circular seam is partially separated. It could do that without creating a leak, but mine has a tiny hole right where it’s pulling apart. I’ve seen baffles tear the vinyl around them. That’s essentially what’s happening. The pockets are essentially baffles keeping the top and bottom of the mattress from bulging apart. I think of the top surface as under stress, and that’s normally where it fails, but the bottom surface is stressed, too. The bottom probably just fails less often because it doesn’t have holes cut into it.

Nothing a little vinyl cement couldn’t patch, but I don’t have any more.

[heaviest]

Re: Air mattress

I tried a product called Loctite (the one for vinyl, they make others too) because it was available at the home center, and it worked fine to repair my pinhole on a seam, but under load another appeared on the same seam and another in a weld where it wasn’t leaking. Repaired them both, reinforced the whole seam, and it’s holding fine. Have tested with a modest overinflate.

The hh-66 comes in much larger quantities but it dried with age. The Loctite is a tiny tube but I made multiple repairs and still have most of the tube left. It’s easier to apply from the tube, too. And it’s available locally.

I’ve repaired quarter inch rips in seams, possibly larger, with hh-66, and haven’t tried that with the Loctite. Also haven’t reinforced the inner and outer seam of a swim ring. I was surprised the Hh-66 actually worked for that, need to try it with Loctite.

[Whale Rider]

Re: Air mattress

neither are used here in germany I have neer seen these here in home improvement stores.

[heaviest]

Re: Air mattress

I was on it for a couple more hours and two different, adjacent pockets sprung a leak, pretty much simultaneously. The top, clear vinyl split on the outer weld of the top of the pocket. Two holes, not quite facing each other, on opposite sides of a bulge in the top surface. I think I can repair it.

I’m also trying to repair a Walmart mat by folding the extra material at the top of the pillow over itself with a bead of glue under it. It occurred to me that this would be easier to do when the mat is new. That extra material lies like that against the overinflated pillow. Wouldn’t even have to hold it.

[heaviest]

Re: Air mattress

Gym Girl helped me test a fresh 18 pocket mat. I’ve had a crapload of weight on these things, even overinflated, without destroying them. The trick is to not put the seams under stress for a long time. So, I can put 1500 pounds on these things for ten minutes and they’ll probably survive, or I can put 460 pounds on them for a few hours and they’ll spring a leak.

Gym Girl is so much bigger than the mattress that it looks like a toy under her, but she isn’t heavy enough to bottom it out over a large area while it is overinflated. She laid on it for quite a while, and she laid on me for a while. We had it bottomed out under my butt, which puts some of our weight on the floor rather than on the mattress, but it’s still a lot more weight than I can put on it by myself. Didn’t stay on it long enough to destroy it.

I do want her to stay on it by herself to see how long it will last. She has the patience for it, too.

[heaviest]

Re: Air mattress

HH-66 has a solid reputation for vinyl toy repair and reinforcement, but it seems to be an online order only thing unless you happen to live near their six-ish distributors in the USA. And you can only get it in large-ish quantities, and it’s best to buy a syringe to apply it. I’ve dribbled it from the included brush but it’s rough and messy. If you care how it looks, use a syringe.

I’m curious if the Loctite is pretty much the same stuff. It’s easier to get in the USA and it’s easier to apply from the tube. Stand by for testing!

[heaviest]

Re: Air mattress

I’m also trying to repair a Walmart mat by folding the extra material at the top of the pillow over itself with a bead of glue under it

This one failed just the way I thought it would. It split between the vinyl layers. Reinforcing the seam on both sides keeps the vinyl from splitting along the inside edge of the weld on top or bottom, the way a seam normally breaks, but it didn’t prevent the weld from splitting, which normally doesn’t happen. The vinyl is generally weaker than the weld. To reinforce the top seam of the pillow, I’m going to try cutting off some of the excess material and glue it over both sides of the seam.

Way more effort than the mat is worth, but I dream of a slim mat that has a pillow that just keeps growing and growing. Next problem I’ll encounter will be the seam between the pillow and the mattress. I’ve blown that seam, too. That one I’ll try to reinforce with just the vinyl cement. That has worked on swim rings.

[heaviest]

Re: Air mattress

Opening yet another Walmart slim mat I noticed it’s rated to 220 pounds. I find that really optimistic. I know it’ll float that much, but not very well. The weight rating on inflatables seems to be for stability, not for bursting, so it’s normally a lot lower than I’d rate it. These mats I find appropriate for small adults, and I’d think they’d rate them at 80 kg, or 175 pounds, which is a number that is common on the warning labels of inflatables. The woman I called Tank was about 200 pounds and these kind of air mattresses were a bit overburdened by her weight.

But I’m more interested how they’ll hold up out of the water, and I no longer have someone that small I can ask to test an inflatable, so I put a yoga mat, a piece of plywood and 220-ish pounds on the mattress, modestly overinflated. After an hour I took the weights off and the mattress was really soft, so I reinflated to a very modest overinflate, and left the weights on overnight.

The mattress survived the night. It was soft in the morning, but relieved of the weights it recovered and after a few hours was firm but not overinflated. It is permanently stretched some, with just 220 pounds.

I bet if I did this a couple more times it would develop a leak. If I had an infinite supply of these I’d test how well they held up for overnight use at a number of different weights. I know these aren’t good for even one night at 460 pounds.

[heaviest]

Re: Air mattress

Day 2 of simulated 220 pound load on the Walmart slim mat, a little bit of air was added, the mat was used a few times for perhaps a couple hours total, simulated 300 pound friend used it for a few minutes, air was added, simulated 220 pound person then slept on it for almost 8 hours, adding air about twice. Not a lot of air, just enough to maintain that very modest over inflation as the mat stretched. It did apparently keep stretching with just that much weight on it.

It didn’t quite make it overnight because it developed a slow leak, on the seam where it always fails, the top of the pillow.

My conclusion is that a 220 person could not count on this air mattress to be firm as an overnight mattress, even a couple times. Probably not useful as a camp mattress or a sleepover mattress.

Someone that size would definitely get $2 worth of fun out of it, though.

I might repeat this experiment with 175 pounds. The goal of this “yeah I know it’s not made for that but real people will use it like that” test is to determine what size person could count on this mattress holding up as a sleepover mattress at least a few times. Once I determine who this was made for, I can then run scenarios through my head as I use the mat…

My chubby 175 pound friend has brought a Walmart slim air mattress to sleep on, and a spare, because sometimes they don’t last the night. Someone else expresses interest in using her other mattress, so she inflates it, too. But some time before bed time someone of about 300 pounds lays on it and my chubby friend tries to hide her look of alarm. They’re only on it for a few minutes, though. It’s soft, and my friend adds a little air. Then I lay on it. I’m 460 pounds and my friend’s eyes just about pop out of her head. She doesn’t say anything, though, and I pretend to not notice her alarm. And I lay on it for way more than a few minutes.

That’s what turns me on about pool floats. Using them as normal size people might, by people who are way too big for them. I have two extremely large women living with me, and I like to find inflatables that will hold them, but not reliably. These Walmart mats will sometimes last ten minutes or more, and when we get one that holds we get off it before it bursts because it’s a charge to have it survive. They’ll hold me for a couple hours, sometimes. But mostly these mats aren’t up to the task for anyone in my household.

[heaviest]

Re: Air mattress

I had a walmart mat spring a leak around the last bend from the outer tube into the pillow, where the shape gets all bunched up when it's inflated. On the bottom, pink, surface. I repaired that and it sprung a leak on the top, clear surface in the same spot. Totally not worth fixing, but it's a real hoot fixing an abused inflatable.

Anyway, it normally springs a leak, or pops, on the top seam of the pillow, or the seam between the pillow and the tubes. But that bunched up edge seam does sometimes fail. The only time I've ever outright popped an air mattress with just my weight, it was in high school, a slim one-chamber mattress, in that spot. POW, and a quick deflate. I've also had it fail there while I was loading it with sand bags and weight plates. Only got to about 600 pounds before it sprung a fast leak there. And the woman I called New New Girl, 800 pounds, blew out that seem a couple times. I had decided that was too much weight to load on these kinds of mats (the intex transparent mats) all at once, though they'll hold 1400 pounds for at least several minutes if you load it slowly. But now Spry Girl is almost 800 pounds and she's sat on these things.

[heaviest]

Re: Air mattress

I saw an air mattress I want. A single size, one-chamber mat with baffles running across it rather than lengthwise. The sides, though, were bigger than the center, so it almost looked like it had tubes running lengthwise. But what makes it interesting is it's a one-chamber design, so your weight displaces air into the pillow, and there are no baffles in the pillow to keep it from expanding. It was being used by someone of normal size and the pillow was only moderately bloated. I should have asked him where he got it because I want one.

[heaviest]

They don't make Intex "transparent mats" any more. They were slim, single-person, single-chamber, cheap air mattresses, good in the pool for nobody particularly large. I was surprised how much weight they'd hold outside the pool, though. They held me when I was almost 600 pounds. They'd develop leaks eventually, but I could get on them, and the pillow would bloat up a little bit, and pretty reliably if I didn't stay on them long they'd survive. My weight wasn't enough for the pillow to keep growing until it burst.

But I've also had as much as 1400 pounds on them, with sand bags and weight plates. I'd load up the feet end with a pile of plates and dumbells, and then sit on the bare vinyl next to the pillow. Pretty reliably, these would pop the top seam of the pillow, or the seam between the mattress and the pillow, and the pillow would get really large and it would take as much as ten minutes to pop. I never figured out exactly how much weight it takes for the pillow to have runaway expansion, but probably in the 800-1000 pound range.

I only have a few of them left, but I have LOTS of the walmart version. They look identical, except they're made of a different material, mostly opaque on the bottom and completely transparent on top. And I've determined that they made them better this year than last, but they still aren't as sturdy as the Intex transparent mats. But I put it to the test recently.

950 pounds of weight plates, dumbells and ankle weights on the feet end, me sitting next to the pillow. I'm only 450 pounds these days. It takes several minutes to load all the weights.

First mattress lasted just a couple minutes once I got on it. The pillow was already really bloated when I got on, and it continued to grow, but didn't reach a terribly impressive size before bursting. LOUDLY.

Second mattress developed a leak before I even got all the weights on it. When I heard it, I plopped onto it hoping it would burst, but the rush of air just increased and it deflated pretty quickly.

Third mattress lasted several minutes, and the pillow got REALLY large, and leaned against me. It stretched on the bottom more than on the top. It burst on the seam between the pillow and mattress, on the underside. Not terribly loud.

Fourth mattress just kinda went soft by the time I got on it. I didn't even try to determine where the leak was. Very disappointing.

Fifth mattress popped a few seconds after I got on it, on the top seam. Not enough time for the pillow to grow terribly large.

I'll try again with less weight, but these aren't as much fun as the Intex.

The girls aren't much good for this, as they are too wide to sit with me on these, with the pillow exposed. In pounds per square inch, fat women just aren't heavy enough! But it is a lot of fun to see them lay on air mattresses. To get most of their weight on the mattress, though, they have to roll onto it on their hip, because they are way too wide for these mattresses. Even on their side, Spry Girl and Gym Girl are wider than the mattress. But to load the mattress that quickly, even with just their own weight, the mattress doesn't always hold. But when it does...HOT!

The walmart mattresses I've determined take more than my weight for a runaway pillow expansion (last year I could do it with just my own weight), but not a lot more. But the girls, somewhat more than 700 pounds, will generally just cause a leak in the top seam before the pillow get really large.

I think I've determined that a LOT of weight, loaded slowly but not too slowly, gets the best stretch, and the girls aren't heavy enough, but they are too heavy to load quickly.