As I heated up a rice sock to take to bed the other night, an idea came up that seemed interesting. I thought I’d share it and see what you thought as some of you have may have already tried it.
Instead of using an electric blanket on top of your mattress, what about putting it in between the top layers of latex and heating up the whole mattress. Yes, there are a few pitfalls, including shortening the lifespan of the latex, putting an electrical source by a flammable product, EMF’s from an electrical source, but… if they can heat floors, why not heat a bed.
Anyone have any other ideas on how to heat a mattress?
The safest way I have seen advertised would be a chilipad, which offers to both warm or cool the mattress. Don’t know how much it would interfere with the feel mind you, nor how well it works.
I personally would be pretty paranoid about putting a heating element into a mattress due to risk of fire. For me to be comfortable, it’d need to be designed or approved for that use. Or, it’d need to be approved for continuous and embedded/enclosed use in a foam material that’s going to be bent and stressed due to the weight of people.
The other way I could imagine is a foundation built similar to a floor, and use a floor system in it. The benefit being, the foundation could be rigid and therefore there would be less / no stress on the wires due to people on top. It wouldn’t be fast, as it’d slowly heat the entire mattress from bottom up, but it’s an idea!
While I don’t have personal experience with any of these … like the other comments here I would probably use a heated mattress pad that is designed to withstand pressure rather than an electric blanket if I was sleeping on it rather than under it. Good Housekeeping has a few reviews of some of them here and Apartment Therapy reviews some of them here and the so called “electricblanketinstitute” reviews some of them here (but they all lead to a commercial site that sells them). Sleep Like The Dead also has some amalgamated reviews of some here. Sunbeam also makes a version that has 6 heating zones here.
Many of the retailers I’ve talked with think highly of the ChiliPad technology that dn mentioned which uses heated water instead of electric wires and can both cool and heat. They also have a mattress here that incorporates the technology into the mattress itself and there is one manufacturer I know that is using their technology in their mattress as well here and he has told me that you can feel the tubes even less when they are inside the mattress than with the separate mattress pad.
Sleep Number also has a version which uses heated air (and this thread has a few comments as well) and the YuMe mattress also has a version here that uses air as well.
Based on the conversations I’ve had with others (since I have little direct experience) and if regular more “passive” temperature regulating methods (such as wool) weren’t enough … I would probably lean towards the Chili Technology if I was looking at an “active” heating system in spite of its relatively high cost.
Hopefully any other members that have experience with any of these or have any other ideas that relate to the original post will add their comments here as well.