Any Tips?

Great site and been gathering a lot of useful information for my NEXT California King mattress (I’m 6’ 4") when we can save up enough for something to replace our unpleasant purchasing experiences this Fall!

Long story short, in replacing an older Costco memory foam mattress that was becoming too soft and thus aggrivating my sciatica, we’ve had 2 ‘lemons’ in a row. For $$ reasons and remote rural location, we can’t afford top-of-the line stuff that seems more commonly recommended here, so have to resort to the best of the big box stuff … that ends up being shipped compressed. We’re nearly 2 hours from a traffic light and retail stores far away just plain won’t deliver here, unless we pay them a couple hundred bucks.

My first memory foam compressed mattress went off without a hitch a few years ago. Following suit with the same brand but a newer gel-type model led to a mattress shipped by Costco that didn’t fully restore to size even after waiting and waiting. We followed directions closely and even kept the house slightly warmer than the usual 69 degree (i.e. low to mid-70s) to help promote the expansion of the memory foam. Instead of 12" it got to 11" in a few spots but with ‘ruts’ on each side only about 8" high making it look like a well-worn road with huge ruts, so returned it to Costco.

Trying a different option, we went with an AshleySleep model likewise compressed (but picked up at the store) that only got to 85% of its size … subsequently leading to a spat with the retailer / Ashley rep who wouldn’t take it back. So rather than and emotionally draining battle, we’ll let karma take care of it.

So … until we can save up for another mattress, we’ll make do with a Spa Sensations memory foam topper being shipped from Walmart that should arrive mid next week. Considering we’ve had two memory foam mattresses in a row that failed to fully restore to decent % of size, does anyone have suggestions to maximize our mattress topper filling out properly?

Basically, we’ve opened a package same-day. We don’t push/pull to get the foam to restore quickly. We keep the house, as I mentioned above, slightly warmer than we’d normally keep it. And since we heat primarily with wood stove during the winter months, we keep a pan of water on the wood stove to maintain a decent humidity level. Personally, I’m baffled that two mattresses in a row bombed out on us.

Unless I hear any better ideas, my plan when receiving the mattress topper next week is to allow it 12-24 hours to adjust to room temperature before cutting the compression wrapping. Our low temperatures dip down into the 20s and I doubt the FedEx trucks are heated in back so the memory foam could be very cold in the center. Anything else I might change to hopefully avoid returning the mattress topper back to Walmart?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Jim
Christmas Valley, Oregon

Hi cvhovey,

In the end there’s not much you can do about whether a mattress (or a topper) comes back to its full size which really has nothing to do with how you unpacked it (except of course the possibility of damaging the foam by tearing it).

Sometimes compression will damage the foam (especially if it’s compressed for too long) and in this case no matter what you do the compression set is permanent.

About all you can do is affect how long it takes to come back (depending on the temperature) but your experiences have nothing to do with anything you did.

Phoenix

Thanks, Phoenix! That somewhat is what I expected, possibly compounded by the reality that CA king size inventory doesn’t move as quickly as some of the other sizes, such as full, queen and king.