Mattress Forum

In another thread I describe disassembling an old latex+eggcrate Englander mattress and ending up with a 6" slab of latex - no idea what type, quality, or ILD. It was definitely too hard to sleep on by itself, so I've been experimenting with toppers - starting with 1" (single and folded double) of FBM 20ILD latex.

Meanwhile, GF asks me to configure a bed for her.   So I buy 3" of FBM LUX-HQ and 3" of HD36-HQ.   Slept on it with the 1" 20ILD topper I bought for my latex core, and I liked it a LOT.   Basically, the core of the two 3" pieces of p/u foam is vastly better for me than my 6" piece of latex from the old mattress.   The latex not only feels uncomfortably harder, it is also less supportive and gives me a backache.  

The kicker for me was having a pretty bad flare-up of lower back pain while doing all this, and spending a night on an old non-foamcore futon in a spare bedroom.   Feels hard as a rock initially, but feels better after you've been on it awhile (sorta the way I've heard memory-foam described).   Spending the night on this futon made a night-and-day difference in my backpain, virtually curing the flare-up overnight; I've noticed this before with the old futon, so there's little doubt in my mind that the old latex (with either the old eggcrate topper or the 1" 20ILD latex) is problematic for my back.  

So it would appear that the $200 worth of p/u foam makes a much better core, for me, than whatever kind of latex is the 6" slab from my old mattress.   Am I nuts ?  If not, this is good news for those agonizing over whether to spend the big bucks for all all-latex mattress, versus a p/u core with latex topper.  And if you get the HQ latex, the lifetime is supposedly 12-18 years.

P.S.  If anyone is near central NC, I can make you a deal on a 6" latex core ...