Hi Phoenix
Thank you for the response and I don’t dispute your research however I’m still curious why and how bad latex is produced given the formulas I assume are calculated and tested prior to manufacturing? What causes the issues that Lew and myself and many others have encountered recently with LI talalay caving in?
Hi jege41,
This could have many causes and to be perfectly honest in most cases reports of latex that has abnormal softening is more about subjective perceptions or what is under the latex than it is about actual premature softening of the latex itself (beyond what is normal). In your case for example … your “symptoms” and the pictures you sent me and I posted show more of the “symptoms and appearance” of something under the latex being the cause than the latex itself although of course they could also be misleading. The only way to really tell whether this was the case would have been to put the latex topper on a flat floor to eliminate the possibility that something under the latex wasn’t the cause. This is what Lew called “virtual impressions” which involve something under the mattress that isn’t visible when it has no weight on it.
Having said that … there are certainly cases where latex does soften too quickly or is defective and this is true of all foams. While I don’t know all the possible reasons for this … they would usually boil down to quality control of some sort ranging from how the latex is compounded or how it is manufactured or cured. Good quality latex foam is not easy to manufacture consistently. In some cases it could be because of long term compression in storage or shipping (more often with Dunlop) or exposure to conditions or substances that degrade latex more quickly. Besides ultraviolet light and ozone … you can see a list here of most of the chemicals or compounds that can affect natural rubber that is exposed to them.
Phoenix
Actually I meant this term to refer to a softening of the foam to the point that it would feel like a body impression when lying in the softened area. The mattress might look perfectly flat, but didn’t act like it when slept on. Lew
Hi Lew,
Yes … I think we are talking about the same thing and I just liked your terminology 
Like you I was referring to the fact that a mattress may look perfectly flat but still have soft spots in it that “act” like impressions even though they’re not. The same could be true of a topper or any foam of course.
The pictures to me don’t have the appearance of a topper that is softening and look more like something under the mattress that is causing the issue which is why it would have been nice to put the topper on the floor to see if it still had the same impressions and visual appearance when there was nothing underneath it (virtual or otherwise) for the latex to “follow”.
Phoenix
Gotcha, as for the pictures, I thought it looked like a sagging mattress too, but realized that a badly sagging topper could give that impression also (pun intended). jege41’s method of measuring the height of the topper with a pencil ruler sounded good, as not everyone has a larger enough area to lay out a king or queen size topper. Also, he says the underlying mattress is completely flat and that he hasn’t had the same problem with the Latexco topper.
It would be nice to see these things in person. It would have been easy to persuade you that I has a problem with the second mattress is you had been able to lie on it.
Lew
Hi Lew,
I completely agree with this and it’s one of the challenges of dealing on a forum “at a distance”
One of the biggest challenges with reports of “latex softening” is that in the large majority of cases they are more about the initial choice itself and a change in subjective perception over the course of the first month’s adjustment period than they are even about the latex itself breaking in. In most cases … after sleeping on latex for a month or more it actually feels softer than it does at the beginning as the body adjusts and people become used to a different feel. In some cases this leads to complaints of foam softening when in fact it’s more about changes in perception and changes in the body from sleeping an a new and “different” material that redistributes pressure and aligns the body in different ways than they are used to.
The difficulty with this is that these types of reports are such a large part of the total that they sometimes don’t do justice to the small minority of legitimate reports of latex that has actually softened or is impressing prematurely. My first assumption with latex softening reports with higher quality latex is that it’s perception or “normal” softening (less than other materials) but that perceptions have changed over time and that the original choice was softer than their ideal but it took a month or so to realize this so it appears that the latex has softened when it hasn’t.
The pictures appear to me to indicate sagging of the whole layer (top to bottom) and not foam softening and the “shape” of the middle ridge is “sharper” than it would normally be if the topper itself had softened so appearances indicate that the topper is sagging into something and not itself impressed (which is also different from the actual softening of the material) but again … appearances can be misleading sometimes and they can also lead to making assumptions that aren’t correct no matter what the pictures seem to indicate.
The bottom line is that the experience itself is very real … even if it is subjective or has causes that haven’t been correctly identified … and no matter what the cause … if it’s leading to poor sleep then it needs to be corrected because that is very real as well.
Phoenix