The bed we use is one that we bought when we moved to Millinocket twenty years ago. It's one in which we can raise the head, the feet, or even the middle, to some extent. It also has a vibrating/massage thing that we use only when we want to scare a cat out from under the bed. We added a Memory Foam mattress a few years ago.
I’ve had a couple of water beds and built frames and headboards for other people and I have found that the major complaints come from people who simply filled it with water and that was it. Rock and Roll! Actually, a water bed can be as hard as a regular mattress and still conform to one’s body but it takes about 2 weeks of burping the air our and filling it with water again. The more times the bag and or cells are burped, the harder the bed becomes. I did know a fellow who I took a liking to because his curiosity level was nearly equal to my own. He came up with an idea to change the base characteristic of a water bed and well.......in short.... We took the water out of his bed, mixed it with a lot of sifted dirt and put the mud back into the bag. A mud bed. The idea was that it would be consistently cooler in the summer and keep an even warm temp in the winter and be virtually waveless and still conform to the body. His liked it, his wife loved it and as far as I know, he probably still has the thing today. Alas, nowadays I’ll stick to our sleep number bed and all is well.
@Bobby Cole You reminded me of the constant task of pushing the air bubbles to the outlet. You could see them below the surface of the rubber. I never associated "fuller with water" with "firmer." I always thought that was a "number of baffles" thing. I can't imaging filling it with sand and making mud. That takes a long term "I'm never gonna empty it" comittment.
Well, if ya want the whole truth, we did it in the days before the mixing attachment for a drill was invented and also back in the days when I didn’t mind having a beer or 3 or 4 or 5. (I skipped 2 because who the heck has 2 beers except the guy who gets stopped for DUI?) I digress. I had just bought a 40 qt Hobart mixer for my restaurant that replaced a 20 qt mixer I had stored in my garage and that’s what we used to mix the dirt and water with. We had several 50# bags of dirt and as much as I would like to, I can’t tell ya’ll how much dirt we used or how many times we poured the mixture through that little hose hole in the bag. Thank goodness we thought of putting down plastic drop cloths from the back door to the bedroom because it was a mess. All that written, we obviously did finish it and since there was no record of such a feat being performed, we did it in record time. Near as I can remember, it took about as much time as it takes to finish off a case and a half of beer. I mean, is there any other way to measure how much time it takes to fill a king size water bed bag with mud?
How did he keep the dirt and water from separating? Seems like the silt would sink to the bottom and he'd still be sleeping on water.
@Bobby Cole Yeh, I quit drinking a while ago. Took me a while to figure out a different unit of measurement for estimating the amount of "x" that would be required to finish a job. I'm glad the mixture didn't set up to make a "conveys with home" extra-hard bed. Or do I assume too much?
Nope, didn’t set up and as a matter of fact, it turned out very similar to a clay bed I tried out at a waterbed store in Boise some years later.
Seriously you ask me about a post from 2019 ..that you just now read ? Now I am just guessing here Hal ,but probably because you felt the need to list your bedding and even how you sleep, not to mention the fact that you and your wife share separate bedrooms. Many people do....probably just think you giveout too much info. Just guessing.