Custom Comfort in Southern California
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I'm still searching for my mattress but I wanted to let everyone know about a mattress company I visited last weekend in Mission Viejo in Southern California called Custom Comfort. Here is their website: http://www.customcomfortmattress.com This is a family owned business that builds their own mattresses in their own factory. We went in to look at the OMI organic latex mattress, but quickly discarded that idea when we saw Custom Comfort's own manufactured latex mattresses. They use all Talalay latex from LI. I'd been to what mattress stores I could find in Southern California trying latex mattresses from various manufacturers (e.g. Land and Sky, OMI, Sweda, Sealy, the Healthy Back Store's latex mattress) and the Custom Comfort line of latex mattresses beat them all by a mile. The floor models are shown in three basic firmness levels, but they will custom build a mattress with whatever latex thicknesses and ILDs the customer wants. I was very impressed by their friendliness and knowledge, and they did not try to talk down to me, simplify things for me, or throw me any sales pitches - just straight talk about types of latex and mattress components with sample cross sections of their mattresses, competitor's mattresses, their foundations, the frame, everything. Their latex mattresses are built double-sided so you can turn and flip them to extend the mattress lifespan. I haven't purchased my mattress yet, but this was exactly the kind of business and mattress I was looking for. I'm taking my husband in next weekend to try them out and can hardly wait to buy one. Just another option for everyone to consider :) |
Re: Custom Comfort in Southern California
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Custom Comfort is a great little company that I personally would highly recommend, however LI's blended talalay does contain filler (LI does not deny this, but will not confirm it either due to the fact they consider that information proprietary). Not that there is any problem I am aware of in with the use of fillers, I just want to make it clear that it is not 100% latex content. LI's blended talalay is a fine product containing appoximately 70% synthetic (SBR) latex with the balance natural (derived from the hevea brasiliensis, or the rubber tree). The process of making Dunlop or Talalay latex, either all natural or blended does involve the use of many chemicals. The first step in preserving the latex, as well as the first step in the manufacturing process is to add ammonia, and small amounts of thiurams. These prevent the premature spoiling of the latex. The next step is to add enzymes to break down any remaining proteins in the liquid, and create more pure latex. Next, the latex is spun in a centrifuge to increase the purity even further. It serves to remove even more protein, as well as concentrate the rubber in the sap. Many times the sap is spun again to increase the concentration even more. After the rubber is removed from the centrifuge accelerators and antioxidants are added. The choices for accelerators are thiurams, mercaptobenzothiazole, carbamate, and thioureas. Some manufacturers are replacing the thiurams with dithiocarbamates, due to the nature of the thiurams to provoke allergic reactions to the latex. These accelerators are added to aid in the vulcanization of the latex, while the antioxidants are added as preservatives, which protect the final latex from heat, ultraviolet light, and ozone. In the case of products, which are to be manufactured to a certain shape, the next step is to dip a mold, coated with a coagulant, into the latex. The most common coagulant used is calcium nitrate, which converts the liquid latex into a wet gel (almost like a milk shake). Moving the gel through a warm oven completes the coagulation process. The next step is known as "Pre-vulcanization leaching", which involves washing excess chemicals out of the latex, mainly the coagulant from the previous step. The latex is then vulcanized, by heating it and adding sulphur, which combines with the accelerators and improves the elasticity and physical durability of the finished product. The actual polymerization occurs when the latex molecules bond together with the sulfur molecules. This process is quite time consuming, however it cures to acceptable levels within hours. The latex is then leached again, for up to twenty four hours, to fully wash out all the chemicals that still remain in the latex that are unnecessary to the finished product. Manufacturers of 100% Natural Dunlop Process latex claim that after washing, their products are 95-98% pure with most chemicals removed. So it may be true that this type of latex core in final form is very pure, however the process of producing latex in finished core form is not Manufacturers of 100% Natural Talalay latex are even further challenged to produce a purely natural result due to the fact they are required to add preservatives or stabilizers (ammonia) to the natural latex sap due to the distance and time they are from the source of their natural latex, the hevea brasiliensis plantations in Asia. Today, there are only two latex manufacturers that use the Talalay process for producing mattress cores and they are in North America and Europe. Latex International is in North America and to my knowledge is the only source of 100% natural Talalay latex. The other Talalay manufacturer is Vita/Radium in Europe and to my knowledge do not produce all natural Talalay latex. In conclusion, even though natural latex (either Dunlop or Talalay process) is very pure it is not 100% pure and the process of producing it is quite caustic. I am in no way being critical of the products use in mattress design (on the contrary I am a big fan of it), however there is a certain amount of misinformation and marketing hype involved in selling it to the uninformed public as completely natural. |
Re: Custom Comfort in Southern California
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StephenH, Wow, great post! They should give you more points for that post. Bear |
Re: Custom Comfort in Southern California
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Well, I got an email today from Custom Comfort saying that they use Talatech latex. The comfort guarantee is 30 days in which they will adjust the mattress layers at no charge. The warranty is basically 10 years, which doesn't bother me; from all I've read that's about the life of a mattress anyway. I still need to look further into the components of the quilted mattress cover. |
Re: Custom Comfort in Southern California
| Talatech is Latex International's brand name for their blended Talalay product. |