Cushion/matress underlay foam

[maby]

Bed slats from Ikea - cut to shape/size

Cheap as chips

But they will suffer exactly the same problems if there is nowhere for the humidity to escape. The fundamental problem is that the mattresses on many boat berths are fully enclosed on all sides.

 

[pcatterall]

But they will suffer exactly the same problems if there is nowhere for the humidity to escape. The fundamental problem is that the mattresses on many boat berths are fully enclosed on all sides.

Base usually over a locker which can be vented or left open?

 

[J Neeves]

Our curved bed slats are on a base with 2 inch diameter holes and the underspace is vented. We bought them as singles and had to trim slightly to fit, narrower at the feet. Compared to some other options they are cheap (and you could make them yourself, as flat slats - they are just planks held into a roll).

If your underspace is not vented it is not very difficult to drill holes with a hole saw in the base (on which the slats sit) nor drill holes to ventilate the underspace - there are any number of 'grills' you can buy off the shelf, wood or plastic, to cover up the holes you make to ventilate the underspace. We increased the ventilation in the underspace and used grills from Marley.

But without the ventilation we found we were wasting out time and money. But any way you can devise to move air around anywhere in a yacht is valuable. Designs ard possibilities vary but we have an air flow coming from the anchor locker into the yacht (you might need some sort of dorade - but its possible).

Jonathan

 

[maby]

Base usually over a locker which can be vented or left open?

Exactly - and under those circumstances, anything that lifts the matress a fraction of an inch to permit airflow will work. Then it really just comes down to your degree of laziness - IKEA bed slats are fine and probably cheaper than Dri-mat, but they do require some work with a saw. We bought the appropriate size of Dri-mat, laid it in place, cut round the edge with scissors and it was done.

 

[jac]

Has given me some pause for thought.

Sounds like a combination of drymat/ ikea slats combined with a number of holes drilled in the flat surface to ventilate the underberth locker.

 

[Graham_Wright]

Look............the moisture comes from you and into the mattress, if it has nowhere to go the mattress will become wet. If you put a layer of dry-mat stuff between the mattress and the board base then the moisture still has to 'escape'. If you then cut some holes in the boards ( or replace with slats) then the moisture has somewhere to go and you have half a chance of a 'dryish' mattress our use of coir helped by allowing the moisture to get to the holes.

Apologies............just checked Woolies trim and cant see that coir stuff. It was like loose and very open rubberised horsehair, like those very open dish scourers but stiffer, it was cheap and did the trick, someone of my vintage may remember it ( and the proper name

I have bought a sample of this
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/anti-slip...tEquipment_Accessories_SM&hash=item338a72e86c

Looks like it might "auto-ventilate". Cheap as well.

 

[Daydream believer]

Look............the moisture comes from you and into the mattress,

Not entirely correct
If i am not on the boat the bottom of the mattress & seating still gets wet
it is caused by condensation on the cold bridge between the GRP bunk base & the mattress
The underside of the mattress gets wettest all around the edges for about 100 mm into the face of the mattress
ventilation & stopping the cold bridge is the solution
The suggested underlay puts a break between mattress & GRP but fails to ventilate very well so does not reallly work
Slats are probably the best option, but if you have lockers under the mattress then it can be a pain getting the lids off the lockers
If one cuts the slats to fit the lids then they can move about & get hooked up on each other so how they are fitted has to be pre planned
the same goes for those sectional supports that clip together( forget name) as one unit
If one could fit insulation on the underside of the mattress base ( bit like the loft at home but in reverse) it would work but difficult to implement