Hi Bruteye,
Your questions about warranties is a good one and very “discerning”. Serta, Tempurpedic, Sealy and many other have a .75" warranty exclusion on their better memory foam mattresses instead of the more “standard” 1.5".
Part of the problem with warranties though is that they only tell part of the story. The biggest issue with foam, and particularly memory foam and polyfoam, is that they soften long before they develop impressions. They will typically go through three phases of softeniing. The first is a more rapid softening over the first few weeks (about 90 days) and this is followed by a more gradual softening over a much longer period of time and finally the foam breakdown leads to actual impressions.
Most mattresses become “unsleepable” because of foam softening and loss of either pressure relief or support but because the impression is measured with no weight on the mattress … it will usually have enough resiliency left to fall inside of the exclusion.
Having said that … the warranty exclusion will often but not always say more than the warranty itself. While Original Mattress Factory does have a 1.5" exclusion, their foam is high quality and impressions are not likely to be an issue. Its quite probable that since the Serenity is their first venture into memory foam mattresses and that many manufacturers don’t “trust” memory foam completely because of the softening issues, that they chose a higher exclusion to play it safe and give them time to gather more experience in the real world to see how their mattresses performed and the type of customer feedback they received.
While I much prefer a lower exclusion … I would still put more emphasis on the quality of the foam itself because there are many more exclusions that restrict a warranty claim when a mattress has been slept on for years (such as the tiniest spot or stain of any kind). The length of a warranty is mostly meaningless because actual factory defects tend to happen in the very early stages of a mattress’ life and wear and tear of a mattress or the useable lifespan of a mattress is not covered by a warranty. In other words they have little to do with how long a mattress will last and more to do with marketing and creating a perception that justifies a higher price.
I know of a few Amish manufacturers and they tend to make high quality products that are superior to major brands. They also have a wide range of prices and some have better value than others.
I didn’t know about Country Bedding MFG and while I found a few references to them online (and have added them to my list thank you :)) … I didn’t see a website (not unusual for an Amish business) and I don’t know anything about their mattresses. If I was in your shoes though … I would definitely give them a call though and if they carried some good possibilities I would likely also pay them a visit. ADDED: See this thread for more about them.
6/0 is a reference to size and means the mattress is 6"0" wide which is a California King size (72 x 84). 5/0 is queen (60 x 80) and 6/6 is Eastern King size (78 x 80). Of course this means that the density is unknown and I would ask them this on the phone.
Two sided memory foam mattresses are not that common and you rarely see them. They would increase the life of the mattress however because they can be flipped and are a “value bonus”. They would be more common as a memory foam/innerspring hybrid although any mattress can be made two sided and would have a higher cost because of the extra layers and the more expensive process of finishing the mattress on both sides. With a two sided mattress it’s important to make sure the comfort layers are not too thick because if they are they can affect the support of the mattress (the mattress may “bend into” the soft layers on the bottom) but it’s likely they would know this of course and the 10" total thickness seems to indicate that the memory foam layers are probably thin enough.
Phoenix