Latex Mattress Questions

[phoenix]

Hi ssum,

I switched your post to a new topic of your own so it wouldn’t get mixed in with another member’s topic.

For the past 2 nights, my friend allowed me to try his new mattress (bought a week before mine) while he is out of town for the weekend. He bought a 9" tatalay, 6" talalay core and 3" tatalay on the top. He said the mattress was labled “soft”. He was not able to tell me what firmness the core layer is. This mattress is made by Parklane, in Portland. This mattress felt good for a couple of hours but by morning, my back ached from arching. I think the tatalay is too soft for me. The second night I slept with my friends’s foam topper (don’t know what kind, it has dimples on the top) and I felt much better. Sleeping on this topper is comparable to sleeping on my new 3-layered dunlop mattress with only the very bottom of the lumbar area being in pain.

It’s certainly possible that your friend’s mattress is too soft for you but if it was then an additional soft topper (which sounds like an egg crate polyfoam topper which would typically be very soft) would be more likely to make it even softer and could make your “symptoms” worse so your experience with the topper improving your “symptoms” seems to contradict your suggestion that the mattress was too soft.

I am thinking I need to add another layer, a softer layer, on top of what I have now. What are my options? I am thinking of adding 2" of extra soft dunlop. The foam place where I got the other layers, do not carry tatalay. I can buy the tatalay elsewhere but which firmness? I understand a soft tatalay is softer than a soft dunlop.

If you have only been sleeping on your mattress for a few days then it would generally be much too early to really assess whether your mattress needs any changes at all since your mattress will need some time to break in and you will also go through an initial adjustment period with any new mattress or sleeping surface and it’s usually best hold off on making any changes to a mattress for at least the first few weeks. Some of the suggestions in post #2 here may be helpful while you are going through the initial break in and adjustment period.

While I can’t feel what you feel or see you sleeping on the mattress … if it does turn out that your mattress needs some fine tuning then post #2 here and the posts it links to has more information about the more common “symptoms” that people can experience on a mattress and some of the most likely reasons for them that can help with the detective work and trial and error that may be involved in deciding on the types of changes that would be the most helpful.

Post #2 here and post #4 here also has more information about primary or “deep” support and secondary or “surface” support and their relationship to each other and to firmness and pressure relief and the “roles” of different layers in a mattress that may also be helpful in clarifying the reasons for your symptoms as well.

Also, at Bed in a Box, they describe another latex manufacturing process they call Coolrest. I couldn’t find any information about Coolrest in the Mattress Underground forum. It is supposed to be all latex, not a blend, using a conveyor belt method. What do you think of it? They have “soft” at 11 ILD. How does 11 ILD compare with the extra soft dunlop that my foam store carries.

The BIAB Coolrest is 100% natural continuous pour Dunlop made by Mountaintop foam. It would be very comparable in firmness to 100% natural molded Dunlop that is in the same density range but Mountaintop Foam uses two different methods of rating the ILD of their latex and their ILD numbers don’t compare well to the ILD numbers for other types of latex (either 100% natural molded Dunlop or Talalay). There is more about the different types and blends of latex in post #6 here.

Spindle Mattress is a member of this site and they use the same type and blend of latex in their mattresses and Neal there would probably be the best source of information and guidance I know about comparing the different firmness levels of Mountaintop continuous pour latex to other types of latex.

Phoenix