Mattress Forum

In reply to your last posting....you are correct that too much foam will negate the springs...I think you have found the magical number for inches of layering over the springs...but now just need to get the layers correct.  Too much foam will cause the low backache, IME.  It is such a trick to get it right for the shoulders and hips without losing the support.  For me, the support is IN the hip area, because that is what causes the low back ache.  If it is too soft, then my hips get too much lower than my body and my low back tries to lift it up all night.  Oddly enough, mattresses that address the lumbar region always seem to offer support at the low back, not the butt.  OTOH, the hip/butt area also has to be soft enough to be comfortable.  A real conundrum.
In my bed, there are inches of cotton batting over the springs(offset coils) and then 4" of foam on top of that.  Must be pretty high quality polyfoam because it took forever to break it in.  Added a polyfill topper and it is good.
IME, I don't like the feel of the pocket coils I've slept on (last bed had them)as much as the offset coils.  They are typically thinner wire and for me, seemed to sink without pushing back up as much as the offset.  But again, just my opinion.
Hope this helps.
Kait

Jim, thanks for all the information, it is really helping me quite a bit.

-You're quite welcome!

So where did you find your Englander mattress?  I went around to a few stores here this weekend, and only a couple of them had Englander mattresses.  The lowest spring gauge i could find was 12-3/4.  What I want is the cheapest Englander mattress I can find with 12.5 gauge coil (cal-king size).  I'm guessing i can find something for under $800. 

-I would not worry too much about 12.5 vs. 12.75 springs. There may not be that much difference. If you weigh over 200lb, maybe the 12.5 would be best, otherwise it may not matter that much. Your best bet is to just look on the net or phone book under mattresses and call around and ask if they carry Englander. If they don't, tell them you really want a 12.5 gauge Bonnell spring; maybe they have it. One 12.5 gauge spring is probably as good as another. Maybe Kait can address this, I'm not sure that's true, but "for all practical purposes" it may be true. I paid $229 for a twin so you should be able to get a Cal-King for no more than $460 or close to that. Remember that mattress stores almost always have a LOT of room to discount and if they don't bring it down enough, politely walk out and tell them you're going to "shop around". You can always come back. For example, my Malibu Firm was marked at $400, the first store brought that down to $300, then the next store brought it down to $229. So that's a little over half the asking price. You might find the Cal King priced retail at $900. They should bring it down to no more than $500.

Then I will add the cuddle-topper from Costco.  Then i will wait a few weeks or months like yourself, and if I can back pain or discomfort, I will start the mattress surgery.

-The cuddle bed may or may not work for you. It doesn't provide much cushioning but sometimes I felt it was a bit too much pu foam for my liking. I'm not sure though. Other times, it seemed fine.

As to trying the mattress as-is for a few weeks, my GUESS is you will find it very uncomfortable, as I did and have to do surgery right away. The reason is that it will no doubt be similar to mine and have 3" or so of VERY soft, VERY non-supportive crappy foam; so one's body sinks right in, down to the spring level. With a quality, firmer foam as I have (1" of HR Medium) as my first (bottom) layer, that in itself provides support and keeps me from feeling the springs. Then I have a 1" of Venus - very dense - memory foam, then ¾" of soft latex on top and then a wool layer instead of the CuddleBed. The CuddleBed may work for you or may not. Someone on here just bought one and didn't like it. Maybe he/she will sell it to you? I am not sure if I liked mine or not. All I know is the wool I have is much better. Though I loved the way the Cuddlebed looked. But then again, as I always say, "HOPEFULLY, no one else is going to see it, other than you and your spouse!"

i am completely convinced that the expensive mattresses are a scam.  They might be slightly better, but nothing to justify the cost.  And after seeing the surgery pictures, there's no rocket science to these things.  it's clear that the mattress industry gets by because of a purposeful lack of information to customers.  It is very simply springs and foam, covered by fancy stitching.

-Exactly! It's just springs and foam. The ONE thing that might make a difference is if you bought one of the premium type springs. I'm not even sure those are worth it, but I say they MIGHT be worth it. And from what I can tell, even the expensive mattresses use SOME cheap pu foam, which  - if they do - negates the good foam they may put on top or under it. Better to do it yourself.

Here's another example.  My parents are more well to do than I am.  My mom bought a cal-king Chattam & Wells mattress.  Sometimes, my mom is not the most rational person in the world, but she's pretty good when it comes to shopping.  However, she's the type where she will not admit that the bed is uncomfortable if she spent $4000 on it because that would mean she was wrong about something.  So there's a lot of psychology involved with these expensive mattresses, and the companies know it.  Somewhere in this thread, it was said that 78% of people who bought an expensive mattress were highly satisfied or something.  I call BS to that.  I think, sure, the mattress might be a little better, but i think there's a lot of psychology involved there because the people do not want to admit that their expensive investment sucks.  I think those statistics are highly unreliable.

-I think so, too. Unless one is "filthy" rich, one should not be spending $4k on a mattress. I've yet to see one that had materials or tehcnology that would warrant that kind of money. And I'm sure plenty of people don't like them but just don't report not liking it. Or it may be like cars... With a new Honda, for instance, they get their "stats" by sending the new owner a postcard with questions on it about what they like about it, during the first MONTH. Well, yeah, the chances are that in fhe first month you are going to love it. If they wanted a true measure they should ask you after a year... So the mattress thing may be something like that.

now, back to my mom's mattress...before I even bought my cal-king mattress, i slept on it for a few nights.  My back hurt after anything more than 7 hours rest.  Now, I have never had back pain in my life!  Up to that time, I had been sleeping in a little twin bed (firm, Ethan Allen) my whole life, which is silly because I'm 6'3" and don't even really fit in it.  So, that made me wonder.  I looked at the mattress and I could see a noticeable sag, not that bad though.  It was a very plush pillowtop mattress, so of course there was going to be sag.  The sag makes my back hurt, I'm sure of it.

-I cannot imagine any way that a pillow top could be comfortable for more than a few months, MAX, if it has any pu foam in it. Only it it were pure latex could it last. Even very good memory foam like Venus breaks down or breaks in very quickly. I would not want to buy a mattress with it INSIDE. With a DIY mattress you can just replace it or turn it over or whatever... And even latex does break down or break in, so even that, you're better off doing surgery and putting in your own so you can replace it easily. Also, based on Alexander's revelation of how much profit they (the mattress co's)  add when they add better foams, if a company put in a $150 piece of latex, they would charge you probably $300-400 extra for the mattress.

So later, my dad, who had been sleeping on another full-size pillowtop (cheaper brand), starting having his back hurt because of it.  My dad has at least some history of back problems, and he's older, so it obviously affects him more.  He told me that it was so bad sometimes that he couldn't even walk for half the day.  So he started sleeping on the ground, which was better for him (although not a great, by any means).  I told him to try the old firm twin I used.  he tried it and said it was better than the ground, but not great.  Then, he went back to the cal-king expensive mattress, and he said that's been the best so far, although not awesome.  So, according to my dad, the expensive mattress was the best.

-I wonder if your dad would let you do a mattress surgery on the twin. If you use a cuddlebed topper - very inexpensive for the Twin - it wouldn't look bad at all. You could put some latex from FBM and some Sensus or other decent memory foam from overstock.com on top of the springs... Materials for doing surgery on a twin are anywhere between $200-300.

However!!  I don't get much out of the situation, because all the beds my dad tried (except for my old twin) were these very plush pillowtops.  I think pillowtops are horrible because you never know where the sag is coming from; the plush or the springs?  And after seeing the mattress surgery pictures, I can't be sure of anything now.

-The sag is almost always from the foam, not the springs. Unless the springs are 10+ years old, then maybe it could be the springs. But then again, the older springs were probably built to last longer.

but Jim is right, there needs to be something done about the mattress industry.  I've never seen such little information about products I've tried to research.  The entire industry can go to hell as far as I'm concerned, or at least have a huge makeover.  They are messing with our minds.  They know it's such a huge item physically that there is stres involved in returning/exchanging it.  They also know that foams and springs break down slowly enough where several weeks of comfort can pass before any discomfort occurs.  Their 10-year warranties mean nothing, because it has to do with only materials and defects...but since nobody knows what the materials are, all the power is in the hands of the manufacturers, so warranties don't mean a thing.  And the warranty is void if you open the mattress up.  They put all that nice stitching around the mattrress to make it look good, and that's all just for looks.  I hate this mattress industry so much.

-Join the club! Eventually the mattress industry will have to listen to us, and reform. They have - at this point - a reputation worse than used car salesmen. At least with a car, you know what the important components are.

So that's why my plan is this, based on Jim's information and my experiences:
--Buy a Cal-King mattress with 12.5 gauge springs for as cheap as possible (do I care about spring count?).  NO PILLOWTOP OR PLUSH (although this is very hard to find).

-They can order it. Most places can get special orders in a week, that's been my experience.

--I'll sleep on it for a while.
--Once it starts causing discomfort, it's mattress surgery time.

-For me, that was about 3 nights!

--Experiment with my foam layers, use a cuddle-topper from Costco to cover up the damage.

Total shouldn't cost me more than $1000.  And I bet the mattress will be better than any expenisve store mattress.

-Well, as a hard core believer in DIY mattress surgery, I agree. I hope it works out for you. The more people that do this, the more common it will become, and the more common it becomes, the less the mattress companies can get away with selling junky foam hidden inside expensive mattresses. That's the ultimate consumer's revenge against them. And if the springs are well made you should be able to keep your mattress going for 10-20 years by just replacing the foam. Also, the Firms are cheaper than the pillowtops, so that's less of an expense for you and less profit to the company!

Good luck! And please post your experience here in a new thread.

Jim;
Glad the springs are helping.  There is just a different feel of support with them than with plain foam.  I was also thinking that people who pay big bucks for a product typically don't complain about it much, because in so many people's minds, you get more if you pay more.  But what you pay for something often has no relevance to how it will perform or last!!!  I believe in getting the most for the least possible, BUT won't accept crap. 
In this economy it is so important to get value for your hard earned money, waste needs to be a thing of the past.   Spending thousands of dollars, multiple times, on beds that don't perform and actually cause chronic back pain is just unacceptable.  I met a nice woman who lived across from my parent' s old house when we were moving my mom out.  She had crippling, chronic back pain.  Slept on a Tempurpedic mattress.  I cringed.  But, because those things cost so much money, and there is so much hype surrounding them, she didn't think that the mattress could POSSIBLY be part of her problem.  I did try to tell her, but to no avail.
Actually,  my topper is not actually a Cuddlebed...it is a mattress topper that is a down-like poly-fill mat, several inches thick.  No foam in it.  It is washable and fluffs pretty nicely but it does tend to flatten out in my problem area.  So I have to fluff it up every couple of weeks or so.  I don't have a Costco membership...there isn't enough that I'd save money on to justify the purchase of the card(toldja I was cheap!).
The offset coils are just a bit different than the Bonnell.  The tops of the coils stick up a bit, and give a bit of a different feel.  I think it depends on how the wires are attached.  I have had long discussions with Bill about this, but still as clear as mud.
Kait