Hi Shirley44,
I do know where Powell River yes although I’ve never been there. I also have another brother in Courtenay.
Post #1 here and the information it links to is always the best place to start. It will help you sort through all the information on the site and has the guidelines and a step by step approach that can greatly improve your odds of making the best possible choices.
In looking at the options available in Powell River itself … there doesn’t seem to be any that I would seriously consider. As you probably know from the guidelines linked in the previous post … I generally suggest to avoid major brands, chain stores or mass market outlets where the level of knowledge and experience about mattresses tends to be very low, and any mattress where you are not able to find out the detailed information about what is in it. This may well exclude every mattress available in Powell River.
The local retailers that seem to be available there and my comments about them include …
http://www.homefurniture.ca/en/index/mattresses.htm Carry Sealy, Stearns & Foster, Serta, Springwall, King Koil, and Simmons all of which are unlikely to provide all the details you would need about their mattresses to make any meaningful assessments. This may be possible on a “mattress by mattress” basis and the odds of getting this information are probably best with Springwall … and possibly some of the King Koil mattresses.
http://www1.thebrick.com/brickb2c/jsp/index.jsp Same comments.
http://www.westcoastfurniture.ca/en/mattresses.html they carry Serta, and 3 brands made by Restwell in Vancouver which are Spring Air, Ironman, and Novo. I would certainly ignore the Serta and only consider the other 3 if they are able to give you the specific details of all the layers in the matresses (and they don’t have this information handy and its not on their spec sheets so they would need to call Restwell to find this out and it’s quite likely that they will not be able to get it)
http://www.sears.ca/ Carry major brands except they have one latex hybrid on the floor made by Zedbed (also made under license in Vancouver). They told me they don’t have a spec sheet so it’s probable that you may not be able to find out the details of this mattress either (they first tried to tell me it’s all latex which it isn’t) although it may be better value than a major brand.
If you did choose to shop in Powell River the odds are very high that you would be forced to make a blind purchase where there would be no way for you to know the real quality or value of the mattresses you were looking at and would be completely dependent on the marketing information provided by sales people who didn’t know either.
The list of better options in the Vancouver area are earlier in this thread although that’s quite a drive from Powell River. Post #2 here includes a good option in Courtenay and if you do decide to travel anyway a ferry trip to the Island may be the best direction to go.
If you shop locally for either you or your mom then you would need to decide whether making a “blind” purchase where you can’t really know the quality or value of what you are buying would be worth the tradeoff vs traveling. If you do decide to go to Courtenay it may be worth buying a mattress for you and then letting your mom test it to see is something similar would be suitable for her as well (and this would also give you a reference point if another mattress at the same place was a better option.
You would probably need to talk to each retailer you deal with (and you could do this on the phone ahead of time so you can know before you go there) about whether or how they would ship to Powell River and whether they offer the ability to remove your old mattress and the costs involved in either service. If they deliver but don’t remove your old mattress then of course you would be dependent on local businesses to do this for you if you were not able to take it to a landfill on your own.
Hope this helps.
Phoenix