Hi,
A question for any of you folks who have used a Select Comfort Sleep Number air bed (or any air bed with similar construction). We have the typical lousy quality short-Queen mattress in our RV. It is in the slideout area, so we are stuck with a short length requirement when we close the slideout. My husband is 6'6" and we currently have a hack that we set up at the bottom of our short Queen that makes it long enough for him. :)

We want to get a better quality mattress and were considering the Sleep Number for a specific reason -->
It looks like we could order a "normal" length longer bed and make is fit in the slideout by unzipping it, taking out the bottom foam support and letting some air out before brining the slideout in for travel. Can any of you comment if this is realistic? We have tried the beds at the store, and they show us pictures of the construction and tell us that would be do-able. BUT, for some reason they won't unzip the mattresses at the store to show us the inside. :(

By the way, I'm not asking if anyone likes the Sleep Number bed - I know mattress comfort is completely subjective. :) I'm just wondering if this idea we had about using it in the slideout would work. We are willing to put up with additional setup/breakdown effort when we move the RV if we can get the advantage of the longer bed at night!
Thanks for your help!
c-

-- Edited by cksck at 17:38, 2007-07-04

Cynthia, We have a sleep number bed (king) in the house. I watched the delivery folks put it together in our house, and just referred to the literature too for a refresher. There are side foam support pieces that run the length of the bed on each side all the way to the end of the matress area. At the corners, these side pieces fit into a corner support piece along with the foam piece that runs across the end. I think your idea of breaking down the end of the bed to get it to fit properly into the RV when the slideout is in will work, and here is what I think you'll need to do. You will need to remove the corner supports at the end, which will leave the side and end pieces of foam loose. Remove the end piece of foam, let most of the air out of the chambers so that you can scrunch the chambers by hand back a few inches. Then, double the side pieces of foam back on themselves several inches, or as much as is needed in order to allow the somewhat disassembled bed to now fit into the available space when the slideout comes in. There is also a piece of foam in the middle of the bed that you should take a look at also and see if it needs moving as well. At any rate, with a bed that you can disassemble as much as is needed to get it to fit, you will be able to do this. I'm not sure how much longer a standard queen bed is than the shorter ones that are in the RVs. My wife thinks its 6-8 inches, but it may only be 4. In any case, no worries, you'll be able to remove/rearrange the internal pieces of the bed to make this work. I expect that you would get good at doing this, to the point where it would only take minutes to either disassemble or reassemble the bed. Ed

Cynthia,

We had a king sized Sleep Number bed in our sticks and bricks house but wanted a queen sized bed in the RV for additional space around the bed.  Our bed is also in the slideout and was a 74" length which was unsatisfactory to us.  Being that we did not have time to wait for Select Comfort to ship us a queen sized mattress, we went with a Spring Air full sized queen.  This mattress does not have the spring frame around the top and bottom which allows it to "crush" enough to allow the slide to come in.  When it comes time to replace it, we will go back to the Select Comfort mattress. 

Having assembled the Sleep Number mattress many times, I know it would "crush" upto 4" without any disassembly or problem.  There is enough flexibility in the sides to allow it to move and 3" to 4" should be all that is required to get the slide in.

Thanks for the replies! Sounds like this is very do-able.

We are looking at 2 different sizes of Sleep Numbers. They have an "expanded queen" size which is 66"w x 80" long (as opposed to the regular queen size of 60w x 80L). The 66" wide expanded queen would fit in the bed area width-wise no problem. We are also trying to figure out if we can do some creative "disassembling" :) around the bed area so that we can fit a California King which is 72"w x 80" long. It would be great to get that extra Ca King width if we can.

Our current short queen is 75" long and just fits with the slideout closed. We only need to get rid of an extra 5" of length - so sounds like either taking the bed apart like you described or maybe just letting it get a bit crushed will work. We weren't sure if simply crushing in the 5" would eventually ruin the foam side supports. So, it's nice to hear your input as an owner.

We'll also take a look at the Spring Air since that sounds like a good alternative.

Thanks for the input!
c-

-- Edited by cksck at 00:17, 2007-07-06

Not sure if you have a typo, so, I don't want you to order a California King thinking it is 80" long when in fact it is 84" long...a regular king is 76" x 80" and the cal king is 72" x 84". 

If the room is 74" wide with the slide in and the mattress is 80" long, the slide could be brought in if the mattress was raised up about 30" on one end. If it isn't heavy, couldn't one of you simply hold it up while the other brought in the slide? Maybe tuck a couple of cushions or pillows in under the raised end. (Its the old 'a' squared plus 'b' squared = 'c'squared principle from 7th grade geometry.) No crushing necessary. Vee