Hybrid Latex Advice Sought -- Green Sleep Niu vs. Other Options

[phoenix]

Hi AnalogJ,

The owner of The Organic Mattress, John Muccino, insists, however, that I shouldn’t buy a mattress if it only feels perfectly right if I need a topper, that a mattress should feel great by itself with no topper needed. Even though he sells them, he thinks toppers ought not be needed, and that they only fix over problems. If I’m being told I need a topper, he says, I’m being sold a line. I felt up at the Kittery Clean Bedroom store that the combination of the Niu and wool topper seemed just right. From I have been reading, since we’re talking about the comfort layer, the topper, versus the support layer, I don’t see the validity of his point. What do you think?

I don’t agree with this. If you have a chance to test a mattress/topper combination in person and the “sleeping system” is a better match for you than another “sleeping system” then that’s what I would choose regardless of whether all the layers were inside a cover or one of the layers was added as a topper. In some cases … having one layer outside the cover can make a meaningful difference for some people compared to having the same layers inside a cover (see posts #3 and #4 here and this topic). To me how well the “sleeping system” works for someone as a whole is much more important than whether it includes all the layers inside the mattress cover or not. I would avoid buying a mattress however with the intention of adding a topper that you haven’t tested in person although even here a topper can be a useful backup for those who end up choosing a mattress that is too firm and there are no other better solutions or options available.

2) Fire retardancy. Kirk at Gardner Mattress told me he uses a layer of rayon/poly batting underneath the covering of all his mattresses, regardless of type, because he was told by a FR government official that it is the only way, given US law, that a mattress can meet the US code. When I mentioned mattresses such as Green Sleep, he says that they HAVE to be using a poly or rayon batting, that they couldn’t use wool exclusively because it wouldn’t meet code. Kirk said that he has asked the official if there was any way that wool could be used for FR and the official said no, not for mattresses sold in the US. Kirk told me that if a store or company tells me they use wool for FR purposes, they’re lying. They all have to use a rayon or poly to meet US fire retardancy codes. Green Sleep says that they’re making natural and organic mattresses (while rayon IS made from plant material), but I’m being told at retailers that they don’t use anything but cotton and wool between the covering and the latex. Do you know anything about this and the US rules for fire retardancy?

Wool can certainly be used by itself without any other type of fire barrier to pass the fire regulations … see post #2 here.

3) Floor models. What do you think about the prospect of buying a floor model mattres? The Organic Mattress has a floor model of the Niu for 20% off retail. That’s almost $600 off, quite a bit for us. A woman salesperson said that they don’t get huge traffic flow anyway, and the Niu is not one of their popular ones, so it hasn’t seen a lot of use.

This would really be a personal preference issue and would depend on how you feel about buying a mattress that other people have used to some degree (some people wouldn’t be comfortable with it and others would) and on how you feel about any lack of warranty (many warranties specifically exclude floor models). For example I know my DH would say “absolutely not” and would probably shudder at the thought of buying a mattress that other people have used or tested while for me it really wouldn’t be a significant issue by itself if the pros outweighed the cons. The limited use that a floor model would have had wouldn’t likely make much or even any difference at all in terms of durability with a high quality material like latex.

John at The Organic Mattress told me that Latex International Tallalay is crap and that even their all-natural 100% Tallalay isn’t 100% latex. He says that he knows they use filler such as crushed clamshells. He says he knows someone who used to work for LI and got the lowdown. Know anything about this?

I certainly don’t agree with his rather extreme assessment although it’s correct that they use a filler in their latex (see here) to increase the firmness and/or reduce the cost but this certainly doesn’t make it a “crap” material by any means and in some cases a filler can improve some of the properties of latex. They have also had some sporadic quality control issues over the last few years that have been frustrating to manufacturers but they appear to have improved over the course of the last few months or year or so and more recently I am hearing much less about this from manufacturers. It’s also true that no latex core is 100% rubber because they all need various chemicals to be added to make the latex so the actual rubber content of a 100% natural Dunlop latex core would be less than 100% (see post #18 here).

Phoenix