Bespoke boat mattress - Cover rotted in 3 months!

Bilge Rat

Bilge Rat

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We are busy kitting out the boat to spend hopefully 6 months aboard from next spring and so made what we considered to be a major investment in a bespoke (pocket sprung) mattress from Millbrook. The old cushions were well past their best and so we bit the bullet and invested over£500 in the new mattress.

We installed the mattress onto a dry-mesh base and spent a couple of months aboard this summer in the glorious weather! The boat was well ventilated at all times. We moved back to the house at the beginning of October I and so I split and up-ended the mattress halves for the winter and was shocked and dismayed to see that not only were the covers badly water stained and had huge patches of milldew and they were actually sprouting some green algae in places and the cover had completely rotted through in large patches.

We had reason to go under the mattress several times earlier in the 3 month period and nothing nothing amiss, The boat itself is dry as a bone and the mattress was on dry mesh so I can only assume that this has been condensation damage!

Does anyone else have experience of these expensive boat mattresses? At £500 I expected it to be fit for purpose and last a good few years.................... at thi rate it will need a new cover before we can start cruising next year.

I have contacted the supplier (Millbrook) but as yet have no response from them.

Thoughts please???

Jackie
 
Not nice to hear about the problem but it sounds like you have a problem with damp under the mattress not a problem with the manufacturers. Just about any materiel will grow nasties if marinated in damp conditions at UK temperatures. The damp prevention mesh you mention does a moderately successful job under a thin foam mattress but will fail under a heavier pocket spring one as it will always be somewhat crushed. I know it's being wise after the event but bed slats would have been a better solution IMO as they don't get squashed flat.

Did you have heavy weather at any time whe you were sailing this summer? You might well have got some water down below unnoticed and this might have led to the problem rather than condensation. I know that we occasionally get water under the bed in the fore cabin after taking a lot of water over the bow. No obvious leaks but the water is there nevertheless. Doesn't happen every time but often enough for us to make a habit of checking under the bed after rough seas.

All that said, you might strike lucky with the makers. Good luck and let us know how it turns out.
 
We've had a good quality sprung mattress on board for several years and it too sits on dry-mesh . We've had no problems with damp or condensation but that may be because of the way we set our boat up when ever we leave it and we used to leave it regularly for many months at a time when we were living in the Middle East. What we do in damper climes is to slightly warm the cabin air using small greenhouse electric heaters - one per cabin. In the saloon we leave a fan running (no heat just gentle blow) on a timer so it runs maybe for five minutes or so every twenty and stirs the air around. With the hatches cracked the warm air rises and escapes taking with it its load of moisture. Basically the whole boat has been turned into a large dehumidifier. We also leave most lockers open so even the air there gets moved around and have had few problems with mildew or damp - usually have more problems when we are on board and its cold so we've shut all the hatches!
 
We bought a very expensive, proper, shaped mattress as part of our refit. Put the thin white dry mesh stuff under it but quickly found that it did not work. Probably as Duncan says because of the weight of the mattress. I managed to get some much heavier duty drymesh from Hawke House, 15mm thick dark grey stuff with very wiry mesh. It was I think the last they had but it certainly works, might be worth having a word with them. Another thing, any of these mesh barriers rely on letting air ventilate the underside when the bed is not occupied. So we always fold the duvet into the middle of the bed during the day so as not to block the ventilation around the the edges of the mattress.
 
duncan99210 said:
Not nice to hear about the problem but it sounds like you have a problem with damp under the mattress not a problem with the manufacturers. Just about any materiel will grow nasties if marinated in damp conditions at UK temperatures. The damp prevention mesh you mention does a moderately successful job under a thin foam mattress but will fail under a heavier pocket spring one as it will always be somewhat crushed. I know it's being wise after the event but bed slats would have been a better solution IMO as they don't get squashed flat.

Did you have heavy weather at any time whe you were sailing this summer? You might well have got some water down below unnoticed and this might have led to the problem rather than condensation. I know that we occasionally get water under the bed in the fore cabin after taking a lot of water over the bow. No obvious leaks but the water is there nevertheless. Doesn't happen every time but often enough for us to make a habit of checking under the bed after rough seas.

All that said, you might strike lucky with the makers. Good luck and let us know how it turns out.
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Our cabin is the aft cabin as we have a centre cockpit ketch, I am 100% sure that no water has found it's way in so it's all the more daunting that the dreaded condo' has done all of the damage. The mesh we have is thick heavyweight stuff but as you say probably still compresses flat with a 7" deep, pocket sprung mattress and our bodies.... I have read previously about the adjustable slatted sprung base (from Ikea I think) so I'll go in search of one of these. I'll also try to pull back the bedding to allow the mattress to air each day. The mattress does split into two sections but they are really heavy and bulky so it's really not practical to stand the mattresses up each day.

I was talking to a friend about the problem and it appears that she uses an electric blanket below the dry mesh...... whilst they are on shore power it stays on all day to provide some background heat to help this very issue...... sounds OK but we hope to spend plenty of time at anchor next year and so we have to find a way to prevent the condensation taking hold under the mattress.

The mattres is dry now as we installed a heater and dehumidifier for a week...... we'll keep rotating and checking them every week to ensure they don't get damp again.

I am more than a little disappointed in Millbrook, whilst they can't prevent the condensation itself they could offer coverings on their boat mattresses that can better deal with it together with providing some advice on how to keep the mattress in good condition. It is pretty soul destroying to see a £500 mattress stained (like an old person had died in the bed!!!!) and rotting in front of your eyes. I'll update the thread once I have their feedback and suggestions................. I am hoping that they can repair this with a more suitable base cover material.

Thanks for all the advice
 
Being of modest means and skinflints to boot, our foam mattresses came from Ikea as did the sprung slats they sit on. Relatively modest cost and have worked well. We do turn the mattresses and upend them when off the boat. Condensation risk not only comes from moisture 'ingress', human beings produce a great deal of it during the night.
 
Grehan said:
Being of modest means and skinflints to boot, our foam mattresses came from Ikea as did the sprung slats they sit on. Relatively modest cost and have worked well. We do turn the mattresses and upend them when off the boat. Condensation risk not only comes from moisture 'ingress', human beings produce a great deal of it during the night.
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Too right about the humans - I've never had a problem with a combination foam and memory-foam cushions, but I regularly air them by putting them on end in the bunk. Possibly a trifle more difficult with a pocketed spring mattress with its added weight.
Having long-since abandoned the retro-tech of pocketted mattresses, as being considerably less comfortable than well-designed memory foam, I must confess to a feeling of schadenfreud.

I am aboard for 6/12 of the year and remember the winter, in Marans, when it regularly went below -8C and everything below was dripping with condensation. That led me to putting in a combination sandwich of foil and polystyrene on all the deckheads which substantially reduced the problem.
At first I bought some very expensive stuff under the trade name of "Thinsulate" but soon found a far cheaper alternative in "Do-It-All", sold for putting behind radiators on outside walls.
 
............... (like an old person had died in the bed!!!!) and rotting in front of your eyes.................
Objection!! ageist comment, why is it just an old person whose death will stain the bed?? .... +1 for slats but I used holes in the base board and 1" of stiff 'coir' mesh ( from woollies trim), seemed to do the business over two damp winters.
 
Perhaps a guest who did not understand that sitting on a mattress in a wet (salt water) bathing suit will cause the mattress to forever attract damp.
 
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