FWC mattresses are bricks...

[rubberlegs]

I had never taken the cover upholstery off our five year old Fleet mattress. Oops, mold city! The factory put vinyl on the bottom, presumably so you can slide the bed extension without ruining the fabric. Well, vinyl doesn't breathe. No wonder we never saw condensation like many people report here. It was trapped inside.

I was told by FWC that the original mattress was ILD 40, and it's 3" thick. I'm ok with it (160 lbs), but my wife (120 lbs) judged it way too firm. So we had a 1-1/4" very soft foam as a topper. That makes it a little difficult, but possible to latch the popup without unduly bending the roof.

But this situation isn't working due to the black mold, so we've replaced the "sleeping system" and hope this will work:

• Froli springs to enable air flow under the foam mattress. My side is all dark blue, her side light blue for about half of them, shoulder to hips. It's 1-3/8" thick so we were concerned about latching the top.
• My side: ILD 44, 2.5" thick. Her side: ILD 34, 2.5" thick. Both are 72" x 24". Thus, thinner than the stock mattress. Source: foamorder.com
• No topper pad
• Fitted bed sheet on bottom, another fitted sheet over a mattress cover/pad (thin cotton-y material).

The top closes similarly to what we had before (we remove the down comforter before dropping the roof).

To be honest, I can barely tell the difference between the ILD 44 and 34 on a hard surface. We both tried them multiple times since they weren't labeled. One seemed a little softer... I was surprised how subtle it was.

I slept a couple nights in the garage on my side and also tried her side, but couldn't get her to do that. Fortunately, the 2.5" thick seems fine and I can't feel the individual Froli springs, and the Froli springs has more "give" than before. But I can still sleep on an ensolite pad if tired enough.

We can probably do a 3/4" soft foam topper if absolutely necessary, but won't take it on this trip. Actually the 1-1/4" is doable but there's a bit more force needed on the middle latches than I'd prefer.

We're about to embark on a month-long trip and will report back whether this works for both of us, and if we see any condensation underneath. I'm optimistic...

 

[Vic Harder]

good experiment! I'm very curious about how this works for you. Why Froli vs just HyperVent?

 

[rubberlegs]

To be honest, I didn't look into HyperVent. Totally forgot about it. And they are local for us.

 

[PaulT]

And I assumed that choosing Froli was for the ability to custom tailor the support to the individual....

We placed old ensolite pads under the FWC mattress. The closed cell insulation reduces condensation by moving the cold transition further away from warm sleepers and adds a modicum amount of support.

Paul

 

[buckland]

On a similar thread a number of years ago I listed the foam mattress serial number of the foam I replaced the 'brick bed' one. It is now as comfortable as my house bed!

 

[SigSanDiego]

There is a custom mattress company that attends the Adventure Van Expo Series. I saw them at the Tahoe, CA event. They were top notch, professional and had a great booth etc. I did explore their product but didn’t order for some reason. Maybe $$. They were the only company I’ve found that actually does exactly what a FWC needs. I can’t find their name.

 

[buckland]

I found the foam composition that I feel is a huge improvement. As we have an Eagle and need to always pull out the whole bed, we only bought 4' x 48"x 96" to replace the large cushion. We then put one set of 2 small cushions at the head and same at the top as these are head (usually on a pillow and feet. It is the hips and back that need to be softer. It worked great.

 

[rubberlegs]

Update: we both like the 2.5” foam with Froli springs. Comfy.. I’m not sure the Froli system would work with the slide out bed portion, but we don’t use that.

 

[camsf]

I have a 2020 Fleet and replaced the stock mattress with 3 inch memory foam topped by an Exped Mega Mat and sleep very comfortably. The fit isn't completely perfect in the Fleet but I think it would be in a Hawk. The Exped is a bit longer so for travel I turn it lengthwise (uninflated) and then swap it back around for sleep.

I actually prefer the Exped to have very little air for this setup. I inflate to about 50% when my wife is along.

 

[TerrapinOverland.com]

I have a midsize truck project M. The sleeping area is 66x48 inches when the sliding mattress thing is not extended. My goal was to sleep diagonally and not have to extend the mattress shelf all the way out.

So I bought a 6 in trifold foam/memory foam mattress and found it to be a little bit too thick for closing the top. It was right at 6 in so it didn't go above the rails. So I bought a 4-in unit instead. I've been sleeping on The 4-in model for about four nights now and it seems okay. I'm about 6 ft and a little over 250 lb. I can definitely feel the bottom of this mattress, but I can sleep on my side without any major pinch points.

I should note that on this particular mattress each section has zippers and I was able to trim the mattress to fit the 66 in wide area. Which left me with a mattress that measured 66 in by 52 in. Thereby allowing me to sleep on a diagonal a little with a little bit more room and only extending the mattress board out by a few inches.

I tried to paste a link to my Amazon purchase but every time I did only the 3-in version of the mattress was coming up.

 

[GflGdog]

We went with 2" gel foam pad cut to size. Sleep is just right now for us.

 

[rubberlegs]

Update on the Froli (the ski3pins call them "frolic"!) springs:

There's plenty of condensation on the "floor" of the bed area, but the springs lift the mattress above it. So the mattress is doing great. We get condensation even on relatively warm nights.

It's a little tricky wiping it dry each morning, because some of the springs want to separate from each other. I move pillows and blanket aside, lift both springs and mattress and wipe that area, then move everything to the other side and repeat. I can only reach in 2/3 (note that we don't use the slide-back extender for our bed, and if we did I'm not sure how that would work with Froli springs). So I slide the mattress out a foot or so, crawl up there and reach under the far side to finish drying the "floor".

All in all it's way better than ruining a perfectly good foam mattress like we did before... the drying procedure takes less than a minute.

The bed is just as comfortable as at home now. Two happy campers!