Removing a wool cover from my Natura (creating a FrankenBed?) or getting a new mattress

Discussions General Mattresses Questions
1

Hello! This is my first post but I’ve been reading the forum for weeks now attempting to decide my next move. I live in rural eastern Canada, which complicates the shipping/returning issue immensely. Hope to get it right the first time!

When we got married, my husband and I spent a small fortune (for young newlyweds) on a memory foam mattress, which lasted most of the trial period before it went back because it slept too hot. He’s 6’1", a lean 190-ish pounds, predominantly side sleeper. I’m 5’9", 145 pounds and a mostly-back-but-sometime-side sleeper. In a pinch after returning our mattress, our in-laws gave us their guest bed queen sized coil, which lasted us seven years until I began noticing a dip in the middle. I was tired of migrating to the middle of the mattress at night and he was sick of worrying about waking me up from tossing on the coil, so I started to look up alternatives.

Sorta miraculously, I found a nearly-new Natura Tranquil king sized mattress advertised in a local classified ad. Apparently Sears delivers these latex core mattresses even in my unpopulated neck of the woods, and the sellers had used it under a water bed for a few months before they needed to move west for work. Bolstered by this review: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/review-naturalatex-tranquil-by-138729 I bought the Tranquil for $200. I got a slated bed base off amazon for $100 (Amazon.com).

Almost immediately the wool topper started shifting so badly we were both sleeping in channels in the bed. I was also waking up with a sore lower back, and he was waking up with a sore clavicle. It was an inexpensive experiment that failed. I know from reading these forums these issues are not ours alone, and that the ownership of the Natura company has since changed.

I travel over the border for work, and the last time I drove to Boston I stopped into The Clean Bedroom in Kittery. Great service but low value (as has been mentioned here before). My preferences were for the GreenSleep Dolchezza (wool + SMF), the Naturally Organic Dream (SSM) and the SavvyRest (SMM) - all Dunlop, as the service rep suggested Talalay would be too soft given my sore back issue. My husband would probably go firmer because of his size. I’m weary of wool toppers now, even though the GreenSleep had by far the best PPP. I also can’t afford $4400 USD (and I know the bed base really affects the performance of this one), and while SavvyRest in the showroom had the side-by-side variation & lower price tag ($2500 USD), their poor return policy means I’d likely go for the SleepEZ version anyway. These are for queen sizes because we decided the King was too much bed for us.

Buying online and having something shipped to a border location is possible, but it involves at least a 7 hour return trip. I would be willing to do that once or maybe twice (for SleepEZ likely) but it’s not a fun thought to contemplate.

Finally the other option is to tear that wool topper right off the quality Dunlop core of the Natura Tranquil I already own & got for very little money. Then purchase a softer comfort layer given my preferences from The Clean Bedroom visit. I searched for “removing topper” on the forum but found nothing.

This is the real question: shall I try to create a FrankenBed by tearing apart the Tranquil?!? Or abandon my $300 experiment & go with a new SleepEZ latex queen shipped to the border 7 hours away? Thanks Phoenix and others for your input!

2

Hi Nat,

I can see you’ve been doing some reading :slight_smile:

From the top down … the Natura Tranquil has the wool quilted cover, 1" of polyfoam, 2" of blended Talalay latex and 5" of polyfoam so there’s not a lot of latex to “save” with mattress surgery.

Having said that, the polyfoam base and the 2" of latex may still be in good condition I would personally would be tempted for curiosity’s sake alone to cut the mattress open and see which of the layers inside would be worth saving or adding to. It would depend a lot on how adventurous you are and your willingness to do some trial and error mattress layering and design.

If you do decide to cut the top off I would look for the seam and then cut the stitches that hold the top to the mattress with a seam ripper which will allow you to remove the layers inside the rest of the cover.

I don’t know if the foam layers are bonded or not but you will quickly find out. If they’re not then it would be a bonus. If they are then I would use a sharp edge (knife or exacto knife) and very gently pull back each foam layer you want to separate from the one below it starting in a corner and use the sharp edge to cut through the areas where the glue bonds them. You will also need to be very careful with the latex because it tears very easily. You may wish to keep the top 3" together (1" polyfoam and 2" talalay) if it appears to still be in good condition just to save trying to separate fairly thin layers but this would depend on how well they are glued or whether they are just tacked together and on the condition of the layers.

Once the layers are separated then you can test each one to determine if any of them have any soft spots or impressions and are worth re-using. You can do this by putting the layer on the floor and checking for impressions (using a string or straight edge across the layer) and for soft spots. You can test for soft spots by hand testing in all the areas of each layer or by putting a heavier object in the different areas of each layer on the floor (such as a bowling ball) and checking to make sure it sinks in the same amount in each area of the layer.

You can then use the layers that are still in good condition and begin the process of deciding what layers you want to add and in which order.

When you’re all done then you can buy a cover to enclose all the new layers in your new mattress. If you still want to sleep directly on wool then you can also add a wool topper to go on top of your new mattress.

Phoenix

3

Thank you Phoenix, as always a purveyor of incredible knowledge!

Including the fact my current Natura has Talalay not Dunlop. Additionally, I may have blamed the wool topper for shifting when it could have been the 1" polyfoam breaking down. Removing them may remove the problem… very tempted to pull it apart. I can’t (in good conscience) sell it off to someone knowing what I know about it’s current quality. Plus the King is too big for us, so I would have the opportunity to slice-n-dice it to a Queen size, flipping and reorienting until my hearts content. Since I’m terribly allergic to dust mites, I have an expensive zippered cover I could use to hold the components of my FrankenBed together. Curiosity is strong - I will post pictures of my Natura Tranquil insides if I go ahead with the experiment!

I’ve also been watching the Nature’s Sleep thread closely. If George the owner hops on tomorrow to answer all the questions suitably, I may haul out a purchase-protected credit card. But not before.

4

Hi Nat,

Considering that your mattress was used under a waterbed (if I understood correctly) then the wool could easily have shifted. In most cases even if a 1" polyfoam layer softens or breaks down it’s not thick enough to have a significant effect on the feel or performance of the mattres which is why I usually suggest “no more than about an inch or so of lower quality materials” in the upper layers of a mattress or in the quilting.

An electric knife is the best way to cut foam layers easily. The biggest “challenge” will probably be separating the layers if they are glued together which will involve a few rips or tears and lots of latex foam pieces being scattered around :slight_smile:

There is little to lose since the mattress would otherwise be discarded so I for one would 'vote" that you give it a try … if for no other reason than curiosity and of course the “self serving” desire to have a few pictures of the process on the forum :slight_smile:

Phoenix

5

Here are pictures from my Natura Tranquil cover removal surgery. More surgery is planned, but only after we’ve decided which orientation works best for us.

Seeing the construction of the mattress helps explain some of the issues we were having, like the “channels” on each side of the bed, which I think may have formed due to a lamination in the latex down the middle of the mattress (making that section much harder than the surrounding Talalay). Naturally, we weren’t sleeping on this section at all due to it’s initial hardness, which has just worsened due to loosening of the surrounding latex we were actually sleeping on. I think I would prefer this lamination to be under the small of my back, but unfortunately the mattress might be too short if I flip it 90 degrees. I could also cut out the laminated piece and set the two sides together in my zippered mattress cover to rid myself of the hard ridge running between us. Might have shifting of the pieces like that though.

The cover came off easily and in one piece, and didn’t seem to have shifted much, as far as I could tell from laying on it directly on the floor. You can also see where Natura has laminated an extra piece onto a queen size to make a king size. We never really felt this either under our heads or our feet. The Talalay was laminated to the understory polyfoam layer, so I just kept them together.

Next step is to see how it sleeps directly on the floor, on the traditional queen boxspring, and on the flexible slated bed base. And to try different orientations of the laminated section to see if we can make it less noticeable.

6

Hi Nat,

Thanks for the pictures of the internals of the mattress :slight_smile:

The channels on each side are usually because that’s the part of the mattress that is used the most and the part in the middle isn’t usually slept on as much so in larger sizes (such as king and queen but king size more than others) each side will often develop some degree of impressions. This is especially true if there are any thicker layers of fiber in the mattress which will pack down under use or any lower quality materials which will soften and impress more. The glue that is used to join pieces of latex is normally latex based and very flexible and doesn’t usually cause these types of issues (unless it was done poorly or a less flexible glue is used which isn’t normally the case with latex fabrication).

The latex in your mattress is also zoned and is firmer in the middle section of the mattress (including the small of your back) than it is in the top and bottom sections but this is only a small part of the mattress’s construction so the zoning wouldn’t have as big an effect in terms of alignment as it would if the support layers were zoned.

Which part or layer of the mattress is image #5114 showing … I can’t tell from the picture?

Phoenix

7

The last picture (#5114 - I wish I could name them and give captions but couldn’t find the option when I uploaded) is a close-up of the initial corner I cut aka a side view of the 2" Talalay over the 5" polyfoam with some of the light batting material hanging on either side. You can see the smeared, dark yellow glue on the corner where it was once holding the fabric taut.

The glue is inelastic and hard to the touch where I can see it, and it seems to be the same as between the latex layers on the comfort layer, although I’ll check again this evening. (definitely hard and non-flexible glue between the layers)

8

Hi Nat,

OK … that makes sense and now when I look I can see the pincores on top of the latex.

The glue used in the latex would be different from the glue used in putting the mattress together. One is done when the latex is fabricated and one is done when the mattress is manufactured.

based on the look of the latex … it also looks like the mattress has been subjected to a great deal of weight. Did they really have a waterbed on top of the mattress?

Phoenix

9

Entirely possible they could have lied.

Last night sleeping at 90 degrees was still much too soft. It was still sitting on the slat frame, so tonight it will go on the floor.

10

Hi Nat,

It looks to me like they were telling the truth and that the latex was subjected to continuous compression and temperature and has degraded to some degree. This is similar to a test they use to simulate long term wear where a material is subjected to heat and continuous compression for longer periods of time which simulates the effects of aging over a period of years in a much shorter period of time.

Phoenix

11

How Much Does a Waterbed Weigh? A Cal King (the only king they show) would be almost a ton!

12

Hi sdmark,

That kind of weight … and the heat from the water (if it was warm) would probably be enough to do some damage to any foam material … including latex.

Phoenix

13

I’ve never owned a waterbed, and really underestimated the wear and tear on the Natura’s components. Hopefully my error will keep someone from the same mistake!

I’ve tried some other configurations since my last post: I removed the latex topper component and put it on my coil. I replaced the foam & wool topper onto the polyfoam base and tried that too. Nothing is perfect yet but I’m not quite done experimenting.

14

Hi Nat,

It will be interesting to see which configuration turns out to be the best for you after your experimentation and whether it’s close enough to consider tweaking it with any additional layers.

Phoenix

15

An update: we were sleeping with Natura’s super-soft latex and nice wool topper on our coil, but I was waking up with sore shoulders (my husband seemed fine). I switched the latex layer out for some cheap polyfoam from a cot, and I like that much better… but since it’s just small cot mattress, our queen sized bed is lop-sided.

A local shop was advertising Pure Latex Bliss mattress at 50% off on the radio. It’s the only all-latex mattress available to try in a 2 hour radius (I didn’t even know about it!). We spend roughly an hour in “daylight pyjamas” trying their Pamper, Beautiful and Nature mattress, with various combinations of hard box spring or proprietary latexBASE split box springs, then either a 2 or 3 topper (fast or soft).

The consensus was: the 12" latex Beautiful mattress (Queen on special at 1799 Cdn) with a 2" “fast response” topper (499 Cdn) on their regular box spring was the best for us both. The specs on the Beautiful can be found here.

The alignment wasn’t as great as the Green Sleep Dolchezza for me, although I may be idealizing that visit. It’s a 7 hour drive to the Dolchezza, and about twice the price/outside my budget.

I had plans to order online from SleepEZ or Mattresses.net despite the long return drive to the border because we could customize our sides and return layers for adaptable comfort. But without trying them first, I have to use specs to guesstimate my best fit (somewhere between the Talalay of the PLB Beautiful and the Dunlop SMF Green Sleep Dolchezza). Also, the Canadian dollar has tanked since I first wrote this thread, and the price difference isn’t that much now. Locally I would have to pay tax and deal with a pretty crummy exchange policy (“anything else in the store!” …except most of what they have is overpriced coil, memory foam and Natura…), but I could TRY it first. Dilemma.

Is the 1799 price tag worth the crummy exchange policy of my local brick & mortar store?
(or would I be better off buying slabs from Arizona and picking up at the border?)
Should I try to re-create the Dolchezza? Are the specs somewhere?

16

First of all, I applaud your DIY efforts!

I know most of this discussion has been about the latex of your mattress and not the wool, but if you want to renew your wool topper, you can. The woolen mill that cards my wool will reloft your wool batting and even take it apart from that quilted case it is in. They will clean the wool, add more wool in to replace what was lost in the cleaning process and recard it. Then they will sew it up in a new case.

St. Peter Woolen Mill does all my custom work and I would highly recommend them if this is a project you want to tackle. They can even work with fabric of your choosing or their standard unbleached muslin. Their website is difficult, but you always get the owner on the phone. http://www.woolenmill.com/sections/Wool_Processing.php

17

Hi Nat,

Thanks for the update … I appreciate it.

[quote]Is the 1799 price tag worth the crummy exchange policy of my local brick & mortar store?
(or would I be better off buying slabs from Arizona and picking up at the border?)
Should I try to re-create the Dolchezza? Are the specs somewhere? [/quote]

This would really be a matter of “best judgement”, your confidence in your testing on the Beautiful (and the likelihood that you will need an exchange) and the importance to you of having good exchange options. In terms of whether you would be better off ordering the layers separately along with a stretch knit cover similar to the Beautiful it would depend on whether you were able to buy the same layers in the same ILD and a very similar cover and how the final cost of doing so compared to the Beautiful.

The exchange process with the Dolcezza would be more flexible and have more options after a purchase. The price of the Beautiful is certainly good (assuming that it’s new and not a comfort exchange or a warranty return and still has the original manufacturers warranty). You can see the design specs of the Dolcezza here but they are not specific about the density and of course they provide options for the layers so their “comfort specs” will vary with the specific choice that their customers make. Density or ILD numbers may also not be accurate or specific so it may be difficult to “approximate” another mattress unless you know for sure that the layers you are trying to approximate are the same as the ones you are considering purchasing. You can read about one retailer’s ILD “guesses” about the Greensleep layers in post #15 here and Greensleep’s comments about them. Even if you are provided with density specs (which is normally a more reliable way to compare Dunlop) they may not be correct in some cases (see post #2 here). Trying to match one mattress to another would require good confidence that you know all the specs of the mattress you are trying to approximate that the type of latex, the thickness of each layer, and the ILD or density of each layer along with the specifics of the cover are very close (see post #9 here about matching one mattress to another).

At the end of the day the most important part of the “value” of a purchase and what you will remember the most is the quality of your sleep over the years and the length of time you were able to sleep on it and although the initial price of a mattress will always be an important factor … it may not be as important a part of each person’s personal value equation as their confidence that a mattress is a good match in terms of PPP or the options they have after a purchase if it isn’t. All of this would be part of each person’s final choice once they have eliminated the worst options and are choosing between good and good.

I also agree with diynaturalbedding’s comments about St Peter’s Woolen mill and I also found them very helpful and informative (see post #3 here).

Phoenix

18

For what it’s worth, I own a Green Sleep (similar to the dolcezza but not identical). A few notes

  • I’m trying to match the green sleep latex to be even semi close to a new purchase I’m making, and even with owning one it’s a challenge. I’ve calculated the density of the green sleep latex I own (which is 100% NR Dunlop latex) and my calculated amounts do not well coorelate with other vendors and are measurably outside what I’d have expected. Once I get another vendors latex (probably coco latex) I can comment on this better. I’m reluctant to say more since the variance is significant and really does need to be independently verified. Also, it’s semi academic, since density/ild is largely a comfort spec.

  • the green sleep latex is lightly zoned (basically bigger /more pincore holes to soften) with slightly firmer middle/hip region latex.

  • the green sleep mattress case is very high quality and significantly impacts the feel of the mattress, even more so with the dolcezza. It has about half an inch of quilted compressed wool inside it, and with the dolcezza a semi integrated soft latex later / topper.

  • the green sleep mattresses are often/ usually showcased on a green sleep foundarion. The s-200 in particular has a bit of give as a slat based foundarion, and if you don’t use it will firm up the mattress a bit. The s-300 is more rigid I found, but also has a suspension effect.

19

Ah, thanks everyone.

diynaturalbedding: I’m in Canada so sending things to MN to re-card would be tricky, plus my “topper” ripped from the Natura is both wool and polyfoam.

dn: The zoning in the Green Sleep you mentioned would explain why my hip alignment was superior on the Dolchezza compared to all other mattresses so far. Not a good sign for my ability to DIY a version though. Pity.

phoenix: thanks for reminding me I’m picking between good and good.

I’ll go back to the store and re-try the PLB, making sure to ask whether they are selling off brand new mattresses or warranty returns.

20

You can get zoned dunlop latex pretty easily. There’s 3, 5, even 7 zone that I’ve seen. I don’t know about zoned talalay although I’m inclined to say it’s harder to find or isn’t made that way. You can, if you are creative, do your own zoning similar to how FloBeds does it. Finding a cover, on the other hand, seems much harder (and don’t underestimate the price for a quality cover).

Oh yes… The s-200 and s-300 bases are zoned too, firmer in hip area. So that also contributes!