Hi joekane,
Thanks for your new post with additional questions. I totally understand the “Presidents Day” promotion as both a consumer and an industry insider, This is a really important week for the mattress industry, and for the consumers wanting to get the best value for their money. I am glad that you visited one of Gardner Mattress’ shops. As you probably are aware they are one of the Trusted Members of our site which means that They have a long-standing reputable option which means that I think very highly of and that I believe they compete well with the best in the industry in terms of their quality, value, service, knowledge, and transparency.
You make good points about the Naturepedics / Organic, a larger majority of people want to be more natural and healthier but are not in the “all organic or nothing” group.
Regarding the vetting of the EH luxury, I agree with your quilting assumption regarding the height and recommended specs.
About your latex options:
[quote]1) its the ‘all natural’ form of talalay thats speced around 97% natural 3% synth(I’ve seen this described a few places, but you may disagree if such a thing exists) and they misquoted it as 97% synth 3% natural. But while I think this EH model is from the more ‘premium’ mattress range, the 97% natural might be out of whack to be included at this price point). So this may be overall unlikely.
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they were quoting some of the other hd foam in the mattress, and not the Talalay
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there really isn’t any ‘talalay’ in it.[/quote]
As you lay these out, I really believe the answer is number 1. No HD foam is really ever quoted as 97% natural, so it’s not #2, and I really believe the layers are Talalay in the product. Eastman House brand is owned by Eclipse Bedding, in New Jersey, and they use mainly Talalay in products, they are the makers of Zenhaven mattresses, Pure Latexbliss mattresses, and many others. All of these use Talalay, and the ZH and many items of Latexbliss use 100% natural Talalay (and yes you are correct this is some times specked as 97% NR & 3%). It really depends on how you define 100% natural and whether you are talking about 100% of the ingredients in the final product or whether 100% of the latex that is used in the final product is natural (NR) vs synthetic (SBR) or a blend of both.
There are certainly latex cores (both Dunlop and Talalay) that use 100% natural rubber with no synthetic rubber in their formulation and by “convention” these are usually referred to as 100% natural latex meaning that all the rubber that is used to make the foam is natural but there are other ingredients and chemicals that are used to make the products as well that are part of the final composition.
Which is to say that … any foamed rubber core includes other chemicals or substances that are necessary to manufacture the foam (such as foaming agents, curing agents, accelerators, gelling agents, anti-degradants, sometimes fillers, and others) so the final percentage of rubber in a 100% natural rubber core (outside of any fillers it may include) are generally in the range of about 90-95% or occasionally a little higher, thus people say 97/3%. If you are interested in reading more about NR and SBR rubber in this post about latex.
Having foam in the quilted layer is actually quite common, and is used in pace of polyester fibers so the quilt lasts longer, and the fiber will usually compress faster than foam used in a quilting layer.
Hope all this helps and I’d be curious to find out how you decide to proceed, it is great for all the consumers to read shared experiences of other consumers like yourself who are doing all the needed research and weighing each part of their personal value equationwhen buying a product that so important to their general wellbeing.
Phoenix