Hi RickyB,
That’s exactly where it came from which is why it’s a copy. There’s no secret where it came from and in the Series 4 thread where I also did an “analysis and review” I also used the specs provided by Sleepy’s (except I mentioned it in that one). I have also used many other websites to find the known specs on many major brand mattresses although the specs are almost always incomplete in terms of the quality of the foams they use.
A good place to start doing some reading would be the PFA (polyurethane manufacturers association) which has a great deal of information about polyurethane foam and it’s characteristics.
Second would be the websites of the foam manufacturers themselves some of which provide some information and some much more. The CertiPur site* has a list of most of the foam manufacturers in North America and their sites are easy to find.
ADMIN NOTE: *Removed 404 link|Archived Footprint: certipur.us/pages/for-industry/find-a-foam-supplier/ & replaced with latest CertiPUR list
Third would be foam outlets (there are hundreds of them) who list the specs of the various foams they offer. Once you’ve done a lot of research into the different specs … they will make sense to you and you can also see why there are such a wide variety of prices.
There are also some very informative sites that provide some quality information written by people who have many years in the industry and have a great deal of inside knowledge such as Mattressconsultant ADMIN NOTE:Removed 404 page link | Archived Footprint: mattressconsultant.com/holder-foam.htm.
After a while … the many different descriptions of the layers in a mattress become clear and it is fairly easy to infer the types of materials that are used within a certain range. Manufacturers will also make sure people know that certain types of higher quality foams are in their mattress (such as qualatex) by including it or certain terms in their descriptions. If you have done the research and you know which types of foam are used in which parts of a mattress … it’s fairly easy to know by inference the range of densities that are being used from a more general description that includes terms like “super soft” or “hyper soft” or “HD”. For example if a foam is called super soft and it doesn’t say it’s an HR foam or at least an HD foam … it’s a very safe assumption that the foam is 1.5 lbs density or less and more often around 1.2. Even if it was 1.8 lbs which is higher quality than you will usually see in mainstream mattress comfort layers … it’s still “cheap” foam when compared to higher quality foams like HR polyfoam or latex. It’s only when foams are in the range of 2.4 lbs density and have other specs that qualify it to be called HR that you are getting comparable quality to latex and if manufacturers are using these foams they will make sure people know about it.
In the case of the Kingsdown … the prices are in the range of mattresses that only use the highest quality foams and while they don’t give the specific density … it’s not difficult to infer that it’s relatively cheap and lower density foam. It also helps to have talked with many people who are well aware of how the industry works and the influences that have made the industry what it is today and why they use the materials they do in their mattresses.
Perhaps most important of all … why would or should anyone buy any mystery foam at all when there are manufacturers who fully disclose the density and quality of their polyfoam and other materials and yet sell mattresses that use these highest quality materials at far less than anything comparable made by major brands including Kingsdown. If you did research into the industry itself … outside of even the materials that are being used … you would quickly come to know that the larger manufacturers have little interest in disclosing the specifics of their materials and tend to do whatever they can to make mattress comparisons impossible and replace facts about the quality of their materials with stories that are heavily advertised but have little substance. Even consumer reports tried to do a meaningful report on mattresses and gave up in frustration because there were no reference points that the major manufacturers disclosed about their mattresses which made qualitative comparisons possible.
But perhaps you need to do the same research and come to the same conclusions that I and many others that are inside the industry itself have come to long ago.
I could go on at far greater length (and I have in many posts in the forum and pages on the site itself) and there is so much more to this as well. Of course if it really does interest you then there are thousands of hours of reading available to you as well (start at page one of the forum and read any posts which catch your eye) not to mention people who have been in the industry for decades who will be happy to share their knowledge with you if you take the time to track them down and talk with them. I can assure you though that in the end, if your research has no vested interest or bias, you will come to the same conclusions. You will also have no trouble identifying the lower quality nature of the materials in most polyfoam mattresses and come to recognize which ones have better value … even if you can’t nail it down to the final level of specificity.
I hope this “satisfies” you but if not there’s a lot of information available where all the dots can be connected. If the more technical information from the few links and suggestions I listed don’t seem important to you … then there are always the hundreds of review sites that say the same things over and over again and list mattresses as being either “good” or “bad” with almost no facts to support their opinions outside of their own personal experiences and in most cases … subjective evaluations.
Phoenix