On Patching an Air Mattress

So! There have been some delays in your ability to move your furniture into your new place.  

You decide to spend a few nights on that trusty air mattress you bought a few years ago for camping or company, and which is still in reasonable condition.  

Then a few nights become a few weeks, and then more than a month.  So what, say you?  You can take the challenge, just fill the thing up before use every night.  Right?

But sooner or later, sooner if your cats get involved, you're going to start getting holes.  And although all air mattresses lose a small amount of air over time, once the holes start showing up it gets much more noticeable.

Generally the first warning sign takes a while to arrive.  After you fill the thing up to roughly the  dimensions of a beach ball to make sure it's firm enough

the morning after will demonstrate clearly whether you're losing air faster than you should be.

So you have a few holes.  Maybe they're there because your mattress is starting to give out with age or use (note: this will always happen sooner or later), maybe they're there because you happen to roll like an alligator in the night and the thing just can't take the abuse, or maybe your cats got up on it before you got the covers back on and decided to improve it with their claws.

Whatever the cause, the first step to getting a decent night's sleep back is to find the pesky thing.

I go on this journey with a few things in my adventurer's satchel: a permanent marker, some krazy glue, a roll of duck tape, and a cup.

First, re-inflate your sadly dilapidated mattress as much as you dare.

Over-inflating is never a great idea, and can lead to more damage if you're not careful.  Plus if you don't have an electric pump it can be a real pain in the neck.  But keep going until all the visible wrinkles on the top are more or less smoothed away and you should be good.

Once you've got it blown back up, the real fun can begin: looking for the holes.  Or actually feeling/listening for them is more likely.  With the mattress chambers full of more air than they can handle, any hole will be more detectable as the excess air will of course be rushing out, and as a result it will be quietly singing its little song of ruin.

Most tears or holes, in my experience, happen on the top of the mattress where it seems to be thinnest.  Again, to be fair, my cats may have more to do with this than any other factor.

Stand the thing up on its side, put your head close enough to the top surface to feel self-conscious, and start moving back and forth like a mime school drop out, waiting to hear or feel a small rush of air against your ear or cheek, like a cold little whisper of evil intent.

Note: You will look exactly as silly as you feel.

This part can be a little tedious, but it's important to do it right or you'll find yourself still on the floor tomorrow.  Go back and forth until, hopefully, you find what you're looking for.  You can also use your hands and feel, but you might not know what you're feeling for until you've found at least one, and I generally have better luck listening.

At one point doing this I became impatient enough with craning my neck around that I tried to find an application for my smart phone that would amplify the sound coming in the mouthpiece and play it louder in my earphones, so that I could use the thing as a stethoscope or directional microphone.  

Fortunately before I downloaded or used any of the free apps I was able to find, I realized that they were really just for increasing the volume of everything on the phone for those who experience general hearing loss.  Which, if I had unwittingly used them, would likely have included me.

Once you've got your hole found, circle it with the permanent marker.  Even if you can't spot the actual hole at first, you should be able to pinpoint it by blocking it with your hand and listening, and then just a finger, working by feel.  Like a musical instrument, the sound of the rushing air of doom will change quality when covered or uncovered.

If even this doesn't help narrow it down, time to break out that trusty cup I mentioned.

Put a dab of dish soap in the cup (I know, I didn't mention you'd need the soap before, go get some) and a little water, and stir to combine.  You want a lot of soap to a little water.  Then, probably laying the mattress flat first, dab some of the mixture over the general area where you suspect the hole to be.

With a little luck and perseverance, you should see the soapy mixture start bubbling merrily over the hole, and its exact location, or close enough to matter (ideally within a 1cm by 1cm square, but 1 inch by 1 inch square will do).

If this still doesn't work, try either applying pressure to the surface of the mattress to increase the speed that the air is rushing out and making it more noticeable again, or re-inflate once again.

If this still doesn't work and you can't find the hole, well I don't know. Your house may be haunted.

Now that you've got your hole located, it's time to keep searching!

Nope!  Again, it's important to find ALL the holes at the same time, and there may well be more than one, so that you're not just solving part of the problem.

Once you've got all the holes identified, it's time to patch!

I usually let my wife and partner-in-crime take over this next part, because it involves using the aforementioned krazy glue, and (as may have been mentioned before in this blog) clumsy is a word that can sometimes be used to describe me.

First, unplug the air mattress until you stop hearing it "whoosh" out: this will make patching the hole much easier, as you won't be fighting against that little fountain of air that was formerly so helpful.

Next tear or cut off a few bits of the duct tape; you want about a 1 cm x 1 cm square, a 1 in x 1 in square, and a third square that's a bit bigger, maybe a quarter of the size of your normal post-it.

Apply a little bit of the krazy glue to the circled hole, the kind of glue that comes with a little nail-polish-like applicator brush is best for this, until you have enough of a little puddle built up to block off the puncture.  

If you weren't able to nail down the hole exactly, cover as much of the specific area as you can; if you apply a little pressure to the mattress top at this point, you might be able to trick the little twerp into blowing some glue bubbles and giving himself away.

Remember to work in a ventilated area as instructed.

Put down the first smallest square, right over the krazy glue, and wait a bit for it to settle down.  Feel free to press on the top of the tape to secure its seal against the mattress top, but DO NOT use your fingers, use a pen or the cap of the glue container instead.  If you get krazy glue on your hands it's not the end of the world, but it's a hassle, more on that later.

Then apply more glue, covering the top of the first tape square and a little around it, until you've covered about the area of the next-largest tape square (see where we're going yet?).  Then apply the next tape square and wait, tapping down liberally (again not with the fingers.)

Repeat the above until the largest square is down.  Then repeat with any other holes.  Then wait.

Wait a good fifteen minutes to half an hour, or longer if you like (and if it's not already nearly time to drop dead from exhaustion of the day), and then check by inflating the mattress again.

Once it's blown up, give each patch a listen/feel to make sure there's no more leakage.  If you've done everything right there shouldn't be.  If there is any leakage at this stage... I'm not sure, that's never happened to me yet, but maybe go one more size up with the patching?  Or make sure you had the hole located right by checking around the outside of the patch for leakage.

Congratulations, you are now the proud owner of a bed that won't sag to pieces in the night... for now.

The unfortunate thing about this business is that due to the nature of the materials and their use, if you need to use the thing long-term (and if your cats are irrepressibly violent beasts), you're likely to find yourself a repeat customer.  But it gets easier with practice.

Oh, and if you accidentally glued your hand?  The instructions on the container say to soak the affected area in acetone (nail polish remover) until the glue is gone, then wash with soap and water.  They also say that just soap and water work if you don't have any acetone handy, but it takes a lot longer.

By this logic, since water is a natural solvent, it's possible that sooner or later water by itself might work, but it would probably take a long long long time.

EDIT: I seem to have done my poor cat a disservice painting him only as a bringing of destruction.  As I go to publish, the little scamp jumped up and started patting at the top of the mattress again, for the second time in two days.

When it happened yesterday, we said, "Stop it! you'll scratch it more!" before we realized that he was pouncing on something we couldn't hear -- the rush of air from a tiny hole we hadn't caught.  When it happened this evening, we knew right away, and I had to take a break from putting up my post about mattress patching to, well, patch a mattress.

But it turns out we wouldn't have caught these new holes as quickly without the cat's help, so it turns out if you have cats plus air mattress it is at least break-even situation.

Well, at least they keep it from ever being boring.