Inexpensive But Decent Mattress?
- Thread starter Overland One
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Overland One
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That is a good idea and I would be glad to do that once I get it built. My mattress is arriving Wed. and my friend should be bringing me the other foam I need in the next week or so. Meanwhile, I am working on adding bracing (angle iron) to the underside of the strut channel my panels are mounted to in order to keep them from flexing. I used the heaviest 10 foot strut channel home depot had and I can not believe how much they flex over just a 6 foot span between my cross bars. My panels are only about 26 pounds each (x 4) and half of 2 panels are not even in that span as they are on the cross bars themselves. I was not expecting to have to add more metal just to keep them from moving like that. For close to $50 each I guess I expected them to be a little stronger/stiffer.
Overland One
Well-known member
Ha ha, you first. This is a Feral cat I adopted and, while he is very friendly to me, if he gets scared he resorts back to his instincts and will attack anyone/anything he thinks is a threat. (Someone trying to put a diaper on him would fit into that category, ha ha) He has lived with me for 12 years now but, he watched his mother and brothers and sisters get beaten to death by construction workers and I managed to get him out of there before they could get him too. (The construction manager put a bounty on the feral cats) In fact, I named him Feral which fits. As far as the perspiration goes, This is just a mattress cover, I will have sheets and blankets on the bed too. I just wanted some insurance in case he sprays on this strange bed to mark his territory or hacks up a hairball/gets car sick on it.
Happy Camper
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Maybe put some support at a 45 degree angle to make it stiffer. Similar to say a trailer. Less metal, stronger support.
Overland One
Well-known member
Thanks for the suggestion but, there would be nothing to attach to If I did an "X" at 45 degrees. It is hard to describe without seeing it but, since my local stores only sell the wider angle iron I need in a 6 ft. length, I have to run it straight under each strut channel. Once bolted to the channel, the vertical 1.5" of the angle iron side "should" add plenty of stiffness. My roof rack only has 2 cross bars and I placed them 6 feet apart and toward the rear of the van in order to keep the air from coming up off the windshield and the front of the fiberglass top and hitting the front solar panel from the underside. My rear most panel hangs out past the fiberglass top about a foot, just enough to give some shelter to the rear doors if I need to open them in the rain. You can sort of see some of this in my thumbnail but it is small and probably hard to see. Maybe I can put a larger version of it here? I'll give that a try.
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. A twin size regular quilted type of mattress pad over the waterproof cover will prevent that getting sweaty at night situation. It is a very simple problem to solve and it does not cost a lot to buy such pads. That mattress pad is easy to wash along with the rest of the bedding.
I know a lot of you are likely to have had mattress pads on your beds when you lived in sticks and bricks. Not sure why there is such a disconnect between that and thinking about beds for Van living. But I am not disconnected because as a female I learned all this stuff as a child from my mother and of course was the purchasing agent of all household items such as mattresses and bedding as an adult including all the camping gear too.
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