AirBed for on- and off-the-Playa?

Emane · Post by **Emane** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 2:07 pm

Could someone recommend a good air bed/mattress for both on- and off-the-Playa.

Is there one that does not leak air, especially out on the playa in the heat and cold (I am assuming if I find one good enough for the playa, it would work at home as well ...). Can one find a pump that is both battery-operated but can also be charged at home?

Pls help, I looked all over the net for reviews, can't find good info. So I figured maybe fellow burners might help me out!

Thanks!

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 2:08 pm

there are some pumps that can be used off car batteries. With an inverter, you should be able to use at home.

BitterDan · Post by **BitterDan** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 2:25 pm

I use a Coleman Camping Air Mattress on the playa and I have never had a leak. Coleman also makes a battery powered pump.

Toolmaker · Post by **Toolmaker** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 3:07 pm

I brought a NEW Coleman that was tested for 5 days pre-playa with no problems. Once set up on the playa it blew out on me the first night as soon as my ass hit the mattress. Granted I am a big dude but a large size should have held my 250lb. ass when the mattress is supposed to handle 350 or so. This is not the first time an air mattress has given out on me so I have given up on em. I even gave my pump away to a gigs camper since I will NEVER use an air mattress again. Bring a couch, you'll be much much happier. Even though my couches from craigslist were stolen along with my pain meds and a bunch else I made out OK. The couch is the best way to crash, hammocks are nice too.

Post by **AntiM** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 3:31 pm

I nightsweat like crazy on the plastic of an air mattress, even with sheets and such below me. There's two of us, so the load is 300+. All air mattresses we've tried have deflated somewhat during the night. The Coleman we have was the worst even though it seemed very well made.

We gave up on them and have switched to a self-inflating double-sized backpacker's sleep pad with a memory foam topper, flannel sheets, blankets and quilts.

regynalonglank · Post by **regynalonglank** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 3:50 pm

that sounds cozy :) I'm thinking the temperature shifts on playa wreak havoc on the air in the mattress, it contracts and expands at all the wrong times. last year I tried an air mattress with a futon on top of it, and that sucked, it was like sleeping in a birds nest.

BitterDan · Post by **BitterDan** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 3:54 pm

Bring a couch, you'll be much much happier.

If you have the room to bring a couch then you could just bring a mattress. I think the point of bringing an inflatable mattress is that it doesn't take a truck to haul it to the playa. But I would agree, couches are very nice to sleep on.

Post by **AntiM** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 4:05 pm

regynalonglank wrote:that sounds cozy I'm thinking the temperature shifts on playa wreak havoc on the air in the mattress, it contracts and expands at all the wrong times. last year I tried an air mattress with a futon on top of it, and that sucked, it was like sleeping in a birds nest.

Considering we have a tiny 2 person backpacker tent and the bed fills it entirely, it is extremely cozy. I likes it!

phil · Post by **phil** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 4:10 pm

Louise and I have used air mattresses for years. Overinflation is your enemy. I've overinflated an air mattress and it failed. Not fun at all.

I've had Coleman air mattresses that leaked, too. Not fun to wake up in the middle of the night on the ground. And it's very aggravating trying to find the leak.

We have no had failures caused by heat/cold changes on the playa. For mattresses with slow leaks, we keep our pump in the tent and reinflate as necessary - slow leaks being ones that don't put us in contact with the ground over night.

Buy an air mattress ahead of time and _test_ it the night you get it. Sleep on it. We've inflated air mattresses and thought they held up, but when we slept on them, they leaked. Air mattresses develop pin holes from repeated folding and refolding when you put them away. Expect leaks. Bring patches. Be prepared to refill during the night.

Coleman's air pumps are battery-powered, and the ones I've seen use four D cells and the latches fail. This means the batteries fall out while you're trying to inflate your mattress. Depending on circumstances (are you in the tent during a sunny day and it's 110 degrees inside), this can be mildly irritating or murderously aggravating.

We have an Intex rechargeable pump which we haven't used yet. It is solid, and it won't fall apart. It can be charged from 110VAC mains or 12VDC cigarette port.

Getting a double mattress into our tent isn't going to happen. Getting a couple of twins in the tent _might_ be doable, but then we're talking the cost of two twin mattresses, loading them in the van, hauling them out in the playa and putting them in the tent, putting them back in the van, and storing them somewhere when we're not camping. Instead, I have two air mattresses that we've used and know didn't leak the last time.

Everybody's mileage varies. Yours will, too.

Post by **AntiM** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 4:14 pm

>>Everybody's mileage varies.<<

That sounds like a marvelous virgin burner book!

Post by **mdmf007** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 4:46 pm

After years of camping professionally and being a light sleeper who has tried everything for a good nights sleep - I believe I have cracked the nut on squishy air mattress syndrome.

I believe there are two factors that make a squishy mattress overnight.

1. The air inside cools in the night and contracts - less volume
2. other factor is in the fact that the material stretches under the increase pressure, creating more volume.

thats my figuring

oneeyeddick · Post by **oneeyeddick** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 6:03 pm

We have gone through 5 queen matresses (coleman is the WORST brand)
we tried one of those 3 level inflateable beds(woke up in a taco)
they all sucked and had you waking up with your ass on the ground.
Solution... Twin sized inflateable
not comfy for more than one person, but with a foam pad 2 of them
will stay side by side pretty well. Never had a leak and only had to
add air every 3 days. and these were coleman , also (go figger).

BitterDan · Post by **BitterDan** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 6:11 pm

Oh yeah, I guess I should have mentioned that my Coleman mattress is a twin. That's strange that so many people have had problems and mine works like a champ.

Barbie · Post by **Barbie** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 7:48 pm

FOAM is the answer...Yes It takes up more room-But I'm a WIMP and can not sleep on the ground (my hips hurt) EVERY blow up mattress I Have EVER bought has left me on the ground-
TIP- DO NOT HAVE SEX ON AN AIR MATTRESS-have sex on the ground sleep on the mattress

Also I have found if I put a blanket on the air mattress and then the sheets I don't sweat as much...

Post by **mdmf007** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 7:58 pm

I finally mastered sleeping, an simply buy 2 double sleeping bags, lay one down for ground cover, and sleep on the other on top. seems to work the best and be simplest for me.

Emane · Post by **Emane** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 8:42 am

Thanks to everybody for responses! :D

Not only I have gotten tips on my air bed problem but I also had a good laugh reading all the comments! I MISS YA'LL! :wink:

Cheers and happy holidays! Be safe! Stay away from shopping malls and madmen (and women) with guns!

asp3 · Post by **asp3** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 1:52 pm

We've had no real problems with our double bed size Coleman mattress. We've had it for two years and have used it both of our times at BM. We bought the one with the mattress pad that zips on top. I think there's memory foam under it as well, but I don't remember for sure. We put a synthetic pillow top on top of that and then put the sheets and blankets on over that. We've used it camping normally and at BM. I do need to "top it off" about every three days at BM, but it's worth the effort. We sleep almost as well as we do at home when we use it.

It came with one of the pumps that takes 4 D cells and it works wonderfully. I continue to blow it up by mouth for a couple of minutes after the pump has done it's work to firm it up to the point I want it to be.

We weigh over 300 pounds together and have had no problems. I think the pillow top and the mattress pad keeps us from having the sweaty bed problem. It has been a fantastic product and I would definitely purchase it again.

BitterDan · Post by **BitterDan** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 2:54 pm

I get the sweaty bed thing too but I just assumed it was because my tent is a sauna at 8:00am. I never attributed it to the mattress.

Other people in our camp just bring a shitload of blankets and sleeping bags and line the bottom of their tents with them.

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Fri Dec 07, 2007 3:29 pm

Sleeping on the plastic hospital bed mattress means I often get that awful sweaty stuff. Can't wait until I buy a bed...

BAS · Post by **BAS** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 11:58 pm

I was toying with the idea of getting an old futon to put in a school bus if/when I get one..., but that would get permanently playa-fied with dust... An air mattress wouldn't, but getting one which stays reasonably inflated sounds like trouble. Hmmm.

I think I need to do some more research and think some more on this....

(Still another month or two before I find out if I can actually take time off for the event anyway!)

BAS · Post by **BAS** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 12:01 am

I was toying with the idea of getting an old futon to put in a school bus if/when I get one..., but that would get permanently playa-fied with dust... An air mattress wouldn't, but getting one which stays reasonably inflated sounds like trouble. Hmmm.

I think I need to do some more research and think some more on this....

(Still another month or two before I find out if I can actually take time off for the event anyway!)

CapSmashy · Post by **CapSmashy** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 7:58 am

I have an Aerobed and it works pretty good around the house for company and for the tent camping trips we have had it on.

I did not take it to the Playa, but if you had access to electricity, it seems it would do fine there. A small inverter would work to plug it into the car and it only takes like a minute to inflate.

My only complaint with air mattresses is their tendency to pick up the ambient air temperature. If it gets really cold at night, your bed gets really cold.

I used a Cabella's Outfitter cot out there with a backpacker sleeping bag pad and slept as good or better than I do here at home.
http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/templ ... hasJS=true

I'm buying a truck camper this week to upgrade my sleeping accommodations.

phil · Post by **phil** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 9:56 am

My only complaint with air mattresses is their tendency to pick up the ambient air temperature. If it gets really cold at night, your bed gets really cold.

I used a Cabella's Outfitter cot out there

So talk about the ambient air under the cot.

CapSmashy · Post by **CapSmashy** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 10:06 am

phil wrote:
So talk about the ambient air under the cot.

Easier to insulate against?

A cot has always seemed warmer than an air bed in the cold.

Post by **mdmf007** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 6:09 pm

BAS -
I see a few of the do it yourself bean bags on playa - make a fabric cover for a bean bag, and you can always throw it away, or wash the cover. Just make sure them little styrofoam beads dont get loose.

BAS · Post by **BAS** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 10:49 pm

That's not a bad idea, although I haven't tried sleeping on a bean bag since sometime in the 1970s. (The newer, fabric covered ones have to be an improvement over the old, vinyl covered ones!) I know that the beads can make quite a mess, since we used them once for insulation to ship a frozen penguin to the Twin Cities.

Of course, I still need to arrange for about US$5,000 to buy the bus in the first place...

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 11:40 pm

Shipped a frozen penquin to the twin cities?

Wow.

Fanfuckingtastic.

Much more interesting than air beds.

BAS · Post by **BAS** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 9:47 am

Yeah, a guy I knew was a grad student studying ice at the U.W. (apparently because the only jobs in the field were with oil companies, and he refused to work for an oil company.) The penguin had been shot down in Antarctica sometime in the late 1950s (or so) and had been shipped up here to Madison. It had spent much of the intervening time being used as a marker in the warehouse of a local ice cream plant. One day the health inspector finally noticed the frozen bird, and decided that it really shouldn't be around food products, and ordered the company to get rid of it. The U.W. didn't have anywhere to keep it, so it fell to the grad student to do something with the penguin. The museum in the Twin Cities was working on a display and offered to take it off the U.W.'s hands, so Drew (the grad student) recruited some of us to help him ship it. Drew needed insulation to keep the dry ice and penguin cold, and he just happened to have an old, leaking bean bag chair lying around, so its contents got drafted to serve as insulation.

After getting the penguin packed, I drove Drew and the penguin to a FedEx office, where we found out that frozen penguins packed with dry ice needed to have special paperwork filled out and then the box needed to be labeled properly-- so I drove Drew and the penguin back to where Drew was living, and, since I had to work the next day, Drew found some other means to get the penguin to the FedEx office. The penguin arrived at the museum, and, due to the fact that sometime in the decades between when it was shot about thirty five or so years ago and when we shipped it, the beak had become damaged, it was put into storage. So, somewhere in Minnesota, there is still a frozen penguin which I have handled and been photographed with. (You don't think that any of us, except maybe Drew, passed up the chance to be photographed holding a penguin during a Wisconsin summer, do you?)

Post by **mdmf007** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 7:37 pm

Bas -
That kicks ass, but I have a simpler solution - Taxidermist!
get that little tuxedo wearing bird stuffed

mereth · Post by **mereth** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 6:01 pm

Found an article on Slate that reviews several air mattresses.

http://www.slate.com/id/2177978