Posted: 4/6/2025 11:26:01 PM EDT
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The last few years I've used a Nemo Tensor as my goto air mattress when I'm backpacking. I get a great night's sleep on it (when it stays inflated) but I've had to patch it mid trip and send it back to nemo twice for leaks. I am meticulous about clearing out a campsite for sticks, twigs and any other pokey things but I still end up with slow leaks where I have to re inflate the mattress once (sometimes twice) throughout the night. Once it even happened with a brand new one that nemo sent as a replacement on a swept wooden platform we were sleeping on. Is there a heavy duty comfortable 3 inch or so air mattress. I don't care if it's a bit heavier than the nemo, but this is going to be used on multi night backpacking trips so I'd like it to be somewhat reasonable weight wise. I'm a side sleeper so I'd like to avoid the fold up solid foam mattresses if possible. Any words of wisdom besides "get a hammock"? I'm planning on picking up an X mid 2p this year so I'd like to stay on the ground. Thanks for any suggestions! |
| ThermaRest self-inflating mattresses are great. They make a large variety of weights and thicknesses. |
Feb 2025 It’s 48 to 0 and we’re only 2 minutes into the first quarter
trobertson5-0 I wasn't put in jail for what I did. I was put in it for what I think.
There were FBI agents posting in my threads. I've seen the discovery showing this.
trobertson5-0 I wasn't put in jail for what I did. I was put in it for what I think.
There were FBI agents posting in my threads. I've seen the discovery showing this.
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Originally Posted By KCGunnr: Big Agnes Campmeister Deluxe Insulated I had a Big Agnes but don't remember the model, spring a leak. It was 3" and insulated. I bought it about 2011 and used it on two 10-day trips to Philmont, a 6 day trips BWCA, and many other trips. Some time after that is sprung a leak that I could not find. I sent it BA and they replaced it. No air mattress is bombproof. The great thing about them is they pack fairly small. I'm taking a spare on the trip to BWCA this year. |
Trump is the Fourth Turning.
| Doesn't matter how cheap or how spendy, I don't think I've ever slept on an air mattress that was not flat or at least noticeably less full of air when I got up the next morning. |
LARUEMINATI
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Originally Posted By Boom_Stick:
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NRA Endowment Life Member
Originally Posted By Boom_Stick:
""AKs are for villagers you have to tell not to shit in their water supply.""
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I don't think the words "bombproof" and "air mattress" go well together. Only thing I would consider bombproof is the accordion style pad and even those can tear. The more durable the pad, the heavier it will be. |
"Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you're entitled to!"
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My X-Thems have been very resistant to punctures. The reflective liner can degrade after a lot of use, and body oils can penetrate the upper fabric and eventually degrade the air-tight coating on the inside of the pad. Both of these failures manifested after years of use of these pads. Thermarest replaced one. The other ticket seemed to get dropped in the bustle, I guess they thought it a duplicate of my other warranty submission. I'll resubmit. Low weight comes at a price. I used to use my X-Therms for everything: backcountry, car camping, etc. Now, I have a dedicated car-camping / frontcountry pad. It's super comfortable, but heavy and bulky. For the comfort and taking wear and tear off of my lighter pads, it's worth it. |
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Originally Posted By L_JE: My X-Thems have been very resistant to punctures. The reflective liner can degrade after a lot of use, and body oils can penetrate the upper fabric and eventually degrade the air-tight coating on the inside of the pad. Both of these failures manifested after years of use of these pads. Thermarest replaced one. The other ticket seemed to get dropped in the bustle, I guess they thought it a duplicate of my other warranty submission. I'll resubmit. Low weight comes at a price. I used to use my X-Therms for everything: backcountry, car camping, etc. Now, I have a dedicated car-camping / frontcountry pad. It's super comfortable, but heavy and bulky. For the comfort and taking wear and tear off of my lighter pads, it's worth it. Yeah, the XTherm pads are great. I had 217 nights on one before it needed replacing. If I need extra insulation for Winter camping, OR added puncture protection, I carry a Z-Lite Sol that goes under the XTherm (makes a good seating pad, too). |
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| I use a nemo tensor in the 3.6 R value I think ? I always use it with a German military ground pad that folds into a back size rectangle . Best bet is always use a foam pad or two under your inflatable pad with some kind of elastic straps to keep them together. |
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Originally Posted By L_JE: Mylar offers no thermal benefit in that application, and is too thin to offer much abrasion resistance. Originally Posted By L_JE: Originally Posted By AR15Texan: Not a backpack camper, but are there mylar barriers that can be used between the ground and the air mattress? Mylar offers no thermal benefit in that application, and is too thin to offer much abrasion resistance. I made a 48x84 Reflectix floor liner for my Marmot Hammer and at -15F there’s a huge difference between with & without. I can sit on the floor in my baselayer and barely feel cold. Now it’s not just Mylar, it’s basically bubble wrap with Mylar on both sides. It’s light and rolls up to about 4” in diameter when folded in half. |
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Originally Posted By ME2112: I made a 48x84 Reflectix floor liner for my Marmot Hammer and at -15F there’s a huge difference between with & without. I can sit on the floor in my baselayer and barely feel cold. Now it’s not just Mylar, it’s basically bubble wrap with Mylar on both sides. It’s light and rolls up to about 4” in diameter when folded in half. Originally Posted By ME2112: Originally Posted By L_JE: Originally Posted By AR15Texan: Not a backpack camper, but are there mylar barriers that can be used between the ground and the air mattress? Mylar offers no thermal benefit in that application, and is too thin to offer much abrasion resistance. I made a 48x84 Reflectix floor liner for my Marmot Hammer and at -15F there’s a huge difference between with & without. I can sit on the floor in my baselayer and barely feel cold. Now it’s not just Mylar, it’s basically bubble wrap with Mylar on both sides. It’s light and rolls up to about 4” in diameter when folded in half. Because, well, it's not just Mylar. And it's in a usage case that's not necessarily contact conductance (one person in a two-man tent), and a temperature and geometry where radiation becomes more significant. If metalizing made a difference, other mfgs aside from Ferrino would be doing it. But, it doesn't. Even with reflectively coated foam pads, there's no practical difference in thermal performance. In standardized testing, they'll sometimes note about a 10% improvement when the metalized stuff is used, but this is flat plate testing, and not representative of how things go when a human is on the mat while on a tent floor and in a sleeping bag. |
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Originally Posted By L_JE: Because, well, it's not just Mylar. And it's in a usage case that's not necessarily contact conductance (one person in a two-man tent), and a temperature and geometry where radiation becomes more significant. If metalizing made a difference, other mfgs aside from Ferrino would be doing it. But, it doesn't. Even with reflectively coated foam pads, there's no practical difference in thermal performance. In standardized testing, they'll sometimes note about a 10% improvement when the metalized stuff is used, but this is flat plate testing, and not representative of how things go when a human is on the mat while on a tent floor and in a sleeping bag. Reflectix with no air space only has an R-value of 1.1, and the bubble wrap is so thin I figured the Mylar was doing most of the work. It works great as a pouch for keeping dehydrated meals warm while they rehydrate, but there is an air space in at least parts of the full pouch. |
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| +1 for robust ground cover, preferably two. I used a thin/light one from REI outlet. Then took a GI woobie and put snaps around the edges; made a kind of taco out of that and slipped the sleeping pad inside that. AMAZING difference in temperature and comfort, plus extra protection. Couple times in rough COLD terrain I would use USGI wool blanket under me also. |
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Originally Posted By ME2112: Reflectix with no air space only has an R-value of 1.1, and the bubble wrap is so thin I figured the Mylar was doing most of the work. It works great as a pouch for keeping dehydrated meals warm while they rehydrate, but there is an air space in at least parts of the full pouch. Originally Posted By ME2112: Originally Posted By L_JE: Because, well, it's not just Mylar. And it's in a usage case that's not necessarily contact conductance (one person in a two-man tent), and a temperature and geometry where radiation becomes more significant. If metalizing made a difference, other mfgs aside from Ferrino would be doing it. But, it doesn't. Even with reflectively coated foam pads, there's no practical difference in thermal performance. In standardized testing, they'll sometimes note about a 10% improvement when the metalized stuff is used, but this is flat plate testing, and not representative of how things go when a human is on the mat while on a tent floor and in a sleeping bag. Reflectix with no air space only has an R-value of 1.1, and the bubble wrap is so thin I figured the Mylar was doing most of the work. It works great as a pouch for keeping dehydrated meals warm while they rehydrate, but there is an air space in at least parts of the full pouch. Air is an insulator. Right? No. Still air is an insulator. The little bubble chambers in reflectix are sized so that viscous drag at the wall is sufficient, under most circumstances, to keep the air within that chamber relatively "still". If the chambers are bigger, larger, that's more distance, thickness, and more thickness is awesome, because insulation is all about thickness ... except at a certain thickness, the boundary viscous forces no longer dominate, and the air begins to circulate, and the insulation values begin to decrease. This was the real coup in Thermarest's Neo Lite and X-Therm series. The honeycomb baffling provides enough surface area to create sufficient drag, while keeping weight down. Enough so, that the realized that they then had to worry about thermal radiation - something that's a lost cause in lesser mats - but, the honeycombing isolates air movement enough that they could go one step further and sharpen the pencil with radiation mitigation. But, the pragmatic limit of the Neos is that ... the work best in the lab. A restless, live subject is going to upend those clever viscosity traps. A closed-cell foam pat of equivalent laboratory R-value as an X-Therm is going to perform better in the real world with a restless subject. Same R-Value on the package ... different real-world performance. I'm very happy with my Neos. The Lites and X-Therms. The Uber, I really wanted to like this pad, but it just won't hold air reliably enough for me to use it, no matter how I try to resolve the issue. Cascade Designs warrantied it, sending me a Lite to replace it. The Neos are my go-to backcountry pads. But, but I no longer use them in the frontcountry, if I can avoid it. My experience is that they degrade too rapidly with use - reflective coatins degrade, body oils penetrate the outer fabrics causing them to lose air, etc. So, I now have dedicated frontcountry pads that, while they are an additional cost, save me money over time because I can spread out a lot of the wear and tear with these less expensive, heavier, bulkier, and more comfortable pads. |
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Originally Posted By bluemax_1: Yeah, the XTherm pads are great. I had 217 nights on one before it needed replacing. If I need extra insulation for Winter camping, OR added puncture protection, I carry a Z-Lite Sol that goes under the XTherm (makes a good seating pad, too). Originally Posted By bluemax_1: Originally Posted By L_JE: My X-Thems have been very resistant to punctures. The reflective liner can degrade after a lot of use, and body oils can penetrate the upper fabric and eventually degrade the air-tight coating on the inside of the pad. Both of these failures manifested after years of use of these pads. Thermarest replaced one. The other ticket seemed to get dropped in the bustle, I guess they thought it a duplicate of my other warranty submission. I'll resubmit. Low weight comes at a price. I used to use my X-Therms for everything: backcountry, car camping, etc. Now, I have a dedicated car-camping / frontcountry pad. It's super comfortable, but heavy and bulky. For the comfort and taking wear and tear off of my lighter pads, it's worth it. Yeah, the XTherm pads are great. I had 217 nights on one before it needed replacing. If I need extra insulation for Winter camping, OR added puncture protection, I carry a Z-Lite Sol that goes under the XTherm (makes a good seating pad, too). This 217 number is about where I was when my X-Therms gave out. I never really had a problem with the bottom sides of NeoAir pads, even the lighter ones. |
