The 10 in. Tuft & Needle Diary

[phoenix]

Hi sheep123,

What a different a night can make

I have a couple of questions in to Tuft and Needle. I am curious if this is a temperature sensitive foam. It have a very fast recovery rate, no “sinkage”, which makes me think no, but the very close smell and cold feeling on top seemed a little like familiar memory foam.

It’s not temperature sensitive no. Both polyfoam and memory foam are made with the same basic chemicals (an isocyanate and a polyol) and they can both have some of the “new” smell before they are aired out but the smell of polyfoam usually isn’t as strong as memory foam (although this can vary with both depending on their chemical formulation and on how they are manufactured, cured, and aired out before they are used in a mattress).

The second question I have to them is about the silica fire barrier. The cover feels quite slick, and my hands feel a little like they are coated when I touch the cover that came with the mattress. I wanted to know if the silica is bonded to the yarns, or just coated. I have allergies and am borderline asthmatic and need to worry about inhaled particulates that might give me a reaction. I plan on encasing the mattress in an alelrgy protector with a pore size of around 3 microns, so I wonder about the size of the silica. I still think this is probably one of the better ways to make a fire barrier (the one I like the best is wool), so I’m not worried about “safety” as much as getting an irritation in my lungs. (Perhaps I’m over reacting here?).

While they would be the best source of information about the more specific details of their fire barrier … inherent fire barriers that contain silica don’t have silica “particles” which come from crystalline silica. You can read a little more about them in post #2 here and in post #2 here. The fire barrier would normally be bonded to the bottom of the mattress cover (not incorporated into the actual cover fabric itself).

There is also more about allergy encasements in post #2 here but an allergy encasement that has a pore size of 5 - 6 microns or less will block the large majority of allergens in a mattress such as dust mite particles and most household dust particles.

I wonder how much adding a wool “puddle pad” on the mattress would change the feel? We need some liquid protection and I wonder if that would make the mattress a little warmer, the cold feeling I really don’t like. But I won’t get one until after more nights on the mattress, and after getting the kd foundation.

Wool is a great temperature regulator in both directions (see post #30 here) and does a good job of evening out temperature fluctuations but a thicker puddle pad will have a bigger effect on the feel of a mattress than a thinner type of mattress protector. There is more about the pros and cons of different types of mattress protectors in post #89 here.

Phoenix