Mattress Forum

And when I lie on this thing -- both with and without the latex on it -- my hips still sink in too far; I can feel a kink in my spine, and see it in the mirror setup. I put my yoga mat across the hip area (a couple inches down in the latex layers) to try to stop the sinking. We'll see if that does enough, but I suspect that it will not.

If it doesn't, I think the only conclusion is that the coils just do not provide enough support for me. That might not mean the coils are worn out -- might just mean they're not the right kind for me (which confuses me, because the first year on the mattress was good) -- but if I can't get even close to proper spinal alignment with these coils, then fiddling with toppers is not going to help.

I thought the whole point of the innerspring coils was to provide support, so I'm not a happy camper right now.

I know the coils are going to compress some, 'cause that's how they work, but shouldn't they also be... you know... springing? (By which I mean: Shouldn't they be pushing back up, to provide the elusive support and keep me aloft, rather than continuing to compress and letting me sink in so far?) Or am I misunderstanding something fundamental here?

Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised in the morning and won't wake up in a sinkhole.... That would be lovely.

On a side note: I had to go to an Urgent Care center this afternoon to get a gash in my hand looked at, cleaned out, and bandaged and get a tetanus shot.* The nurse who took care of me is getting ready to open up her mattress, too, and it's only 3 years old. She couldn't remember the model name just then, but said it was an expensive mattress -- and it's been killing her back. Seemed like a (sort of) funny coincidence.

* Guess who cut herself with the razor-blade tool while cutting foam off the mattress? I was taking a very short break from work, cutting some foam, and the tool slipped, so I wound up spending the next hour or so trying to stop the bleeding, and finally called my doctor's office and got sent to an Urgent Care center, where I was very well taken care of. Wonderful people there, and soooo much better than sitting around in an emergency room. (The nurse and I also both had horror stories about overcrowded ER's, so Yay for these Urgent Care centers, and Yay for Eastside Medical in particular.) 

Wow foam is serious business.  I hope you're okay.

"Well, they do sort of mash down, but they're springs -- they're supposed to compress -- so I don't know how to tell whether they're compressing more than they should."

They are if your hips sink too far without any foam on them, in which case no amount of foam on top can really fix that without compromising their action.  When I lay directly on my springs, I stay flat, at the top. They just barely compress enough under my hips & shoulders for the coils in between those two points to hit the arch of my back.  If your hips are still sinking with that little latex on top, I don't know where to go from there.  I don't know that this is the case with yours, but I have tried mattresses, new, that were already sinking in too much like that for me. I could feel them compress too far even through the comfort layers.  They were 5xx coils, but serta.

"I did notice much less pressure on my shoulders, so I think removing the dacron & Novabond from the top of the springs did free up the coils to do their thing better. (Which, again, makes me wonder why those pads were put there in the first place. If you wanted to sell a firm mattress, wouldn't you be better off using different springs and a lower-gauge wire, instead of using open offset coils and a higher-gauge wire and then dampening them with fiber mats?)"

Seems that way to me.  I wish that's how they were made, I just know they don't work for me as is. 
 

It sounds like your springs don't give enough support. Could be the quantity and gauge or it could be the quality of the steel.  I think it is unusual to go bad in 2.5 years, so that is a bit puzzling.  All I can say is that when I lay directly on mine, they feel plenty firm.  I definitely don't have a feeling of sinking in too much.  Of course you have to sink in some, that is the point. 

It is hard for someone outside to evaluate your situation, so you have to use your best judgement.  Not sure what to recommend at this point, but if the coils don't give enough support, you pretty much have to get a new mattress.  Give a try though, before jumping to a conclusion. 

I'm OK; thanks. Some throbbing, but it'll subside, and I've got a pressure bandage on that will stay on until Friday morning. And the doc said the scar would just be a thin line, so that's good.
 

So you've done mattress surgery twice, right? What springs have you found that work for you? And do you sleep on your back or side? (Thanks for all the help. I appreciate it.)

Yeah, both were mid tier posturepedics.  One a full, 600 coils, whose perimeter I built out with stacks of vertical rails made of that polyethylene foam to accommodate queen size toppers.  The other was already a queen, with a similar coil density (six sixty, or six seventy something).

I try to sleep on my back exclusively, but do occasionally find myself on my side.  If I wake up on my side on the spare, I'll have a tingling shoulder- too thin & firm a topper for my side.  great for back & stomach though.  No problems either way on mine, which has much thicker & softer latex.  That one's good for side & back, probably not so much for stomach.  Definitely overkill, but I'm not going to mess with it until it quits working for me.  And not that it will have any bearing on your situation, but I'll try to get a more accurate description/measurement of how far I sink into just the springs today.

So, not to rag on the manufacturer of my mattress, but I just looked at the specs on another one of their mattresses, and all I can think is: "Why?"

It's a similar deal to what I mentioned above, but this one I just looked at is called "Ultra Firm: Deluxe Firm Pocket Coil." Um... isn't that a contradiction in terms? Aren't pocket coils designed and marketed specifically for their ability to conform to the sleeper's body? If so... why would you put that same Novabond mat and dacron pad over those springs? This makes no sense to me. Want an ultra-firm mattress? Use a Bonnel coil or something like that, and a dense Novabond mat & the dacron pad. Want a more conforming mattress? Use pocket coils, and put something thin & flexible over the coils.  Am I missing something here? (The specs also say "720 Luraflex, 14 gauge pocketed coil unit." As far as I know, Luraflex is the open-offset coil design from L+P, not a pocket coil. Hmph.)

(Yeah, someone got up on the wrong side of the [uncomfortable] bed this morning.... )

The LuraFlex offset coils are marketed as being both conforming and supportive, I believe -- but they seem to be neither of those things for me.   (Maybe they would be in a lower-gauge steel? Maybe pocket coils can be more supportive in a lower-gauge steel? I'd like to understand this stuff but I don't have time to get an engineering degree....)

sandman wrote:

Yikes. Lots of that going around...

Yes, I'm puzzled. I can't quite see how the springs could go bad so quickly, so maybe I'm just not familiar enough with the mechanics of this stuff to know what is reasonable support & compression and what is not. The springs definitely do not seem to be supportive enough for me, though, for whatever reason.

I'm going to try stretching that Novabond mat back over the springs again, but just over the hip region to try to dampen the spring action in that area.

No matter what I do, I cannot make this mattress work -- with or without the case, with or without toppers, with or without zoning.

I don't understand why the mattress worked fine with a couple of toppers for the first year or so and doesn't work now under any circumstances, but I guess it will remain a mystery. Maybe the springs are fine, maybe they're shot; I just don't know. Seems like I tore apart a $700 mattress for nothing.

I've wasted time & money, my bedroom is full of mattress parts and latex toppers, my hands have a bunch of nicks from the springs and a gouge from the razor-tool, and I still don't have a comfortable bed. What I do have is back pain *caused* by my bed.

I can be a very analytical and methodical problem-solver, so it bugs the crap out of me that I can't figure out why this thing doesn't work or how to fix it... but I can't. Time to cut my losses.

Getting a firm mattress and buying toppers seemed like a good idea, but didn't work for me (after the first year). Or maybe it would have worked if the mattress had turned out actually to be as firm as I thought it was -- but who knows? (Not me, clearly!)

Getting a double-sided mattress didn't help, either, but just complicated the mattress surgery by adding variables, so I don't plan to do that again. It's just one more thing that seemed logical at the time....

On the bright side, I'm now up-to-date on my tetanus shot.
 

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I'm open to suggestions on what to try next. Pocket coils, for something more conforming? Or low-gauge Bonnell coils for serious firmness?

I have no idea. I'd still prefer an innerspring, rather than all foam (latex or otherwise), if I can find a spring system that works for me.

I also have no idea where to buy a mattress next, because even the local manufacturer is building goofy things with illogical (to me) configurations and the same PU foam that all the big companies use. I could ask them to build me a custom mattress, but that would probably be more expensive and, more to the point, I don't even know which components to ask for, so that doesn't seem like a great idea, either.

Phooey.

I'm sleeping on the couch tonight.

Suggestions for pocketed coils?  Yeah but it's a long shot.  Those multistrand wire coils in beautyrest-black mattresses are incredible.  Though finding a demo or someone trying to get rid one of those for cheap on craigslist or something is tough (am constantly looking), & way too expensive to buy new just for the springs.  Not so much with posturepedics, they're cheap and common. 

If you start running low on budgeted time & cash to experiment with, considering so much in mattresses & components are non returnable & too expensive to justify disposable experiments, you could try no risk/hassle finished products at the big box stores that have liberal return policies with no restocking/shipping penalties.  No fear of the suddenly quit working after a few months phenomenon- I once made a return at the very end of the 1 year window with no problem at sams.  They have a 5lb memory foam over 2lb PU foam (3" + 8") mattresses there, & costco has 759 coil ultrafirm sealy posturepedics, either for <$800/queen set.  Just throwing low hassle ideas out there for future consideration, because I wouldn't do anything out of frustration before completely ruling out what you're working with now.  It sounds like you're patience is wearing thin at this point though.

Really want a set of those.  Wish you could buy coils alone, but I've tried a few (US) component manufacturers both small & large, & it's hard enough to get a rep to even return my calls.  They just don't want to sell a set of coils or two to an individual.

Kind of hard to show, & not sure this is even necessarily proper, but I think mine are barely compressing an inch under my hips & shoulders, then not much at all elsewhere.  I pretty much stay on the top.  If yours aren't mashing down too much more than this, I doubt they're the problem, & definitely wouldn't give up on them yet.  If they have been supportive for you all this time, I doubt they could have degraded too much in just a couple of years.

I can only guess that they use a fairly soft coil system.  If they lied about the coil count, maybe the gauge is not what they said either.   Possibly the matting provided some support until it started to wear down.

Hard to say where to go from here.   You may want to put your toppers directly on the foundation to see how that feels.   You probably don't have enougth depth, but if you added 3" of base support you might have a decent latex/foam mattress.    Is there a reason you want an innerspring?

I think a high quality pocketed coil system is probably best for side sleepers.  However, that would probably be pretty expensive, unless you find something used.   It is hard to find anything reasonably priced that only uses good materials.  As always, to a certain extent you get what you pay for. That is why some of us ended up doing surgery out of desperation.  Certainly it is not the ideal solution. 

In my experience, the upper end Sealy Posterpedic coils provide plenty of support.   I would not say that they conform to the body of a side sleeper the best,   I have compensated by using 5" of foam above.  So, the coils end up working like a mix between a box spring and a mattress.

It would be nice is someone made a high quality innserspring with a zipper top, so it could be customized.   Not aware of any though.