Want to fix your messed up waterbed baffles? Today’s blog can help if your waterbed baffling is balled up, bunched up, or has shifted out of place. This blog will show you how to straighten out a baffled waterbed mattress.

First off what is a baffle? It is a term used to explain waterbed mattresses inside wave control and support systems. Some are better than others so be sure to speak with a sales associate or continue to follow our blogs.

Most water bed mattresses use layers of fiber which are inserted to not only reduce motion but when strategically placed will add extra support for the body. To eliminate stress on the vinyl bladder many systems are not tethered or tied to hold them in position. Even models that are tethered in place can shift so do not be fooled. A simple pickup of one end of the mattress to assist and speed up the draining process can cause the baffled insert to slide out of position.

Fiber baffling shifts typically in 2 ways
•It gets accordioned to one end
•Bunches up in a big ball, wad, hump, or pile somewhere inside the water mattress.

You can drain the mattress with an electric pump, drain and fill kit, or gravity siphon. The mattress must be flat and light. You can even finish draining with a wet dry shop vac. To straighten a bunched up fiber or baffling system the mattress must first be drained thoroughly and completely to the comparable weight when purchased new approx. 50-60 pounds or less. Ideally two people will make the job easier due to the size and weight of these mattresses.

Once the mattress has been completely drained, remove the cap and plug or remove your draining device. This allows the air to reenter the mattress. You may need to add additional air by way of a shop vacuum or blow dryer. You will then need to locate the ends of the fiber layers either at the head or foot end of the mattress. Grab the vinyl and grasp the end of the fiber and lift as high as possible. This will allow gravity to do its work and the fiber should stretch back into its original position.

If the fiber is balled or wadded up in a big pile the job is one that may never bear the results you are looking for. This means the layer of fibers have not only shifted out of place but most likely have come apart and folded over and knotted amongst themselves. This can sometimes be straightened by using the valve as a periscope to look inside the mattress. Pieces, layers, and corners must be located and pulled back into their original positions. The more layers the more complicated this can be. To do this grasp the vinyl and the locate corners and edges of the inserted baffling. The insert should feel and look totally flat before filling the mattress up back up. This method of repositioning is slower and more tedious and usually bears results that are much less than acceptable to sleep on. If baffle delimitation has occurred and the layers have separated from one another inside the mattress, honestly you are looking at the need to purchase a new mattress.

If you live in the St. Louis Mo area and have had this happen, we can provide the service of fixing a messed up baffling system or giving you an honest evaluation of the damage. Call us at 636-296-8540 to schedule an appointment and get rates or visit STLBeds.

Need to know how to use a drain and fill kit?

Do you have a hump in your baffled waterbed mattress or the baffling has shifted out of place?

If you recently drained your waterbed mattress and you were left with a large wad of baffling bunched up in the middle or it has shifted to the end of the bed, you may very well ruined you waterbed mattress. The shifting of the fiber or baffles is caused when a waterbed mattress is drained incorrectly. The material can accordion to one end or if handled improperly can bunch up and ball up in a big mass or hump.

In order to fix the baffling you must first know how these mattresses are put together. Most of us realize that a free flow mattress is nothing more than a big rectangular vinyl balloon filled with water. When we add fiber, baffling, or pod baffles, and coils we are creating wave breakers. Whichever baffling system is being used, the principal idea is the same, stop the motion and increase mattress support while giving you a more relaxing night of rest on your waterbed.

We will not go into each baffling system specifically because we are talking about all wave control systems that are free floating, meaning they are not attached to the vinyl mattress. This may not mean much to you at the moment but if you would picture 10 sheets of notebook paper lying in your hand with your palm up. You will notice the pieces of paper are stationary and stay in place, however if you were to slightly tilt your hand more and more the pieces of paper would shift out of place. A fiber filled mattress uses sheets of fiber that act much like the notebook paper and will shift out of position also. The problem is that the fiber acts like a giant sponge and most people do not get the bed drained enough before handling it and this is where the shifting problem evolves.

The draining process is key to being able to move you baffled mattress properly. Overlook this step and you may very well be purchasing a new mattress. The most important thing to know about these waterbed bladders is that they must be vacuum packed. The vacuum not only squeezes the excess water from the baffled insert collapsing the top and bottom of the mattress around the inserted baffling. When drained it looks exactly like a package of beef jerky that has been vacuum-sealed. When the top and bottom of the mattress collapse around the baffling it locks the inserted materials into place keeping everything in its original and correct position. When lifting one end of the mattress and it is not possible to vacuum seal it, you must grasp the baffling through the vinyl to help hold it in position.

Follow our up coming blog, How to fix a baffled mattress or How to Straighten Out a Baffled Mattress. Coming Soon
Not sure how to drain a waterbed correctly, click on the link and STLBeds can walk you through it.

All about Water bed Chemicals, Treatment, & Conditioner For Waterbeds and Where to Find It

There are several brands of Water bed Chemicals, Treatment, & Conditioner For Waterbedson the market today, after a quick Google search we found a few familiar brand names water bed treatment is sold under:

Click Photo for Pricing and to Buy Water bed Chemicals, Treatment, & Conditioner For Waterbeds

·Blue Magic
·Aqua Fusion
·Aquacide
·Aqua Blue
·Sapphire

This liquid for waterbeds goes under a variety of names including waterbed conditioner, waterbed treatment, chemicals for a waterbed, or simply the blue stuff. The truth is they are all pretty much the same. Blue Magic was once sold in department stores like K Mart, Venture, and Wal Mart and of course could be found in every waterbed store from California to Florida  carried it as well. With the disappearance of waterbed stores and Walmart no longer carrying it this solution to waterbed smell has become hard to find these days. Blue Magic is based out of St. Louis Missouri and still makes most of the conditioner sold today.

So why add waterbed conditioner, how often do I need to add this treatment, and does it really stop a waterbed from smelling? Those are the questions we are answering in today’s blog.

Waterbed conditioning treatment is added to the bed for several reasons and yes smell is the biggest one. Without conditioner waterbeds can smell badly and normally do when not added regularly. We often compare it to the oldest mustiest smell you can imagine or an old used wet washcloth left balled up in the sink overnight. The smell is the result of algae growth and the bacteria that grow in the stagnant warm water found inside our waterbeds. The conditioner is essentially a biocide that helps keep the bacteria and fungi from growing inside of a waterbed mattress.

Blue Magic Waterbed Conditioner and others like it also help to reintroduce additional plasticizers back to your vinyl water mattress and helps slow down the reduction or the loss of plasticizers, which results from heat and age. Think of it like an old set of vinyl seats in a car or a milk jug that has been in the sun too long, when a watermattress vinyl loses plasicizers, the mattress can become brittle and over time could develop cracks and leaks which is the proverbial nail in the coffin for a water mattress. These vinyl plasicizers help to keep your water mattress supple and pliable.

Adding such a treatment to your bed can reduce minimize deterioration. There are basically two different waterbed conditioners available in stores today. One is a conditioner designed for free flow waterbed mattresses the other is for fiber filled baffled mattresses which requires a stronger conditioner. Be sure to read the bottle of treatment for proper dosage amount.

Just before press time we Shopped the Net and found most of waterbed conditioner offered like Blue Magic, Aquacide, Aqua Fusion, Aqua Blue, and Sapphire costs anywhere between $3.00 and $18.00 and will condition a mattresses anywhere from 4-6 months to 8-12 months. By adding conditioner to your mattress when recommended you will not only have a better smelling water bed mattress, but one that will last longer as well. If you sell a brand of water bed conditioner not on this list or currently buy a brand not on this list let us know and we will add it for our readers.

Hope you found this STLBeds article helpful. Leave us your experiences and opinions below.

To set up a water bed yourself or have it put together professionally is a dilemma for many potential waterbed consumers because it takes time and many are inexperienced.

Since many of you have never assembled a waterbed yourself, we thought that you might want to weigh waterbed assembly options for your self to decide if it is worth the time, money savings, and risk to do it yourself.

Professional waterbed set up
We recommend having a professional install your waterbed especially if you have a hardside waterbed. It typically takes a professional waterbed installer only 30 minutes to install a softside and while 60 minutes is the norm for putting  together a wood framed waterbed. Set up includes the unboxing, the carry in, and the complete assembly less the fill time. Having a professional set up and install your waterbed cannot only save you time, but they can also eliminate problems and failures often associated with improper installation by do it yourselfers. Problems associated with putting a waterbed together wrong could lead to a voided manufacturers’ warranty, or even worse failure, maybe even an all out collapse of the waterbed.

Installing a waterbed yourself
Many people, who like to do things for themselves and save money, opt to put their new water bed together. Minimum time for the do it yourself waterbed set up is 60 minutes for a softside and 1.5 hours to 2.5 hours to set up a wooden framed waterbed. This time is from the carry in, to the start of the filling process.  The new modern softside waterbeds are not so time consuming or difficult to install for the first timer. The 1970’s styled hardside waterbeds are often more frustrating for the not so mechanically inclined.

If you have doubts about your construction abilities, have a professional do the initial setup, for no other reason to secure warranty and waterbed integrity. Watching someone who installs these daily may give the untrained waterbed setter upper some clues or the entire picture for a better understanding of what really needed to be done for a proper waterbed setup.
Need help getting your waterbed together? Contact a professional or call 636-296-8540 for answers.

How can you make a waterbed mattress firmer? Many people believe that best way to firm up a water mattress is to add more water to it. Others say filling it to its recommended fill level will achieve the firmest feel, which way is right? We will cover both methods in todays blog.

Adding more water to a waterbed to make it firmer:
This method will make a firmer surface feel in your waterbed, however it can cause other problems that may not make worth your while. Vinyl stretching, fatigue cracks, and out right failure of the seams or corners are just some of the problems that result from an overfilled waterbed. Many people often complain that they feel as though they are rolling off of the water mattress when they are overfilled, along with complaints of increased motion. This extra motion in the waterbed mattress is due to the increase of water to baffling ratio.

Firmer mattress from proper fill level:
The firmest and best support comes from a correctly filled baffled mattress. This is how the mattress was designed to work. It’s really just this simple, X amount of baffling is designed to work with Y amount of water. This this combination equals the best all around support, best wave control, and firmest support. Correct fill level also extends mattress life expectancy and protects the waterbed heater. Contrary to many thoughts out there the baffling or fiber system inside a water mattress controls the bed’s overall firmness much more than simply adding more water to the bed. The more fiber or baffling the mattress has the greater the firmness and more supportive the waterbed will be.

So what do I do to get a firmer waterbed?

We think it is more important to purchase a firm quality waterbed bladder in the beginning. as apposed to trying to make a mattress into something it cannot be, by adding more water. Adding additional water to a waterbed we believe is a risk that should not be taken.Knowing  How to properly install a waterbed mattress is the the key to acheiving the perfect waterbed firmness.

If you have questions about how much water to put in a waterbed give us a call at 636-296-8540 or Contact Us by email.