BEDDING — Inside the Home

Fiber Bed

When To Replace Your Feather Bed?

Feather beds offer a soft bed experience unmatched by pillow top beds, memory foam beds and all kinds of top of bed solutions. The primary ingredient in featherbeds is a blend of feathers and down. The more down in the mixture the softer the featherbed will feel. The best featherbed on the market right now uses a 50/50 blend of filling but that is the exception with most being a 5/95 blend (5% down, 95% feathers).

Overtime featherbeds can go flat and unresponsive – so what can be done to improve your flat feather bed? We will discuss featherbed styles and constructions as well as cheap tricks to improve your featherbed to soft fluffy goodness. There are several basic styles of feather beds including these:

• Baffle Box Feather Bed
• Quilted Feather Bed (Or Pillow Top)
• Horizontal or Vertical Channel Feather Bed
• Down Top Feather Bed
• Euro Feather Beds

Please note that many fiber beds have similar constructions as feather beds except the obvious difference of now down or feather content. In terms of fillings we recommend choosing one with a White Goose Blend preference with a higher down percentage (10/90 and better).

A baffle box feather bed is a basic style that offers separate compartments for the down and feather mix to stay in place during usage. Baffle box designs do have occasional fill migration – this is because the inside of the baffle chamber has a small hole which can allow the fill to move around under compression and during fluffing. Baffle box constructions can feature a bonus quilted top filled with either down or polyester for extra comfort (this down or feather layer provides additional cushioning against the feathers below).

Down and feather filling is very durable and can withstand years of nightly comfort. Down and feathers can withstand several years of comfort and actually soften over time which means less poking. However between softening and baffle migration a feather bed can go flat in some zones.

An easy trick to rejuvenate a featherbed is to cover it with an old white comforter and tuck the excess fabric underneath. This not only adds loft but adds cushioning. You can do the same thing but to a smaller extent with a cheaper mattress pad. In all cases we advise that a featherbed should be covered with a water proof liner on top because any spillage would ruin a featherbed if excess moisture stayed trapped inside a feather quill. Just be sure to get a featherbed cover that uses a ‘whisper or quiet' water barrier to avoid noisy fabric movement in bed (the dreaded ‘crunch' sound).

So before you seek to replace a featherbed with some ‘dead zone' spots missing filling or where the filling is limp you should have a firm grasp of how to fluff your feather bed properly – whether daily, weekly or monthly. Feather beds regardless of the style need to be fluffed often to make sure filling is plump. This lofty filling is what gives feather beds their special feeling which can't be replicated with stiff polyester pillow tops or memory foam tops. Try searching on YouTube for videos by DOWNLITE on how to maintain you're featherbed.

When it comes time to fluff your featherbed you will want to try some tricks to help make it last longer. If your featherbed does not feature a down or poly quilted top then you can flip and rotate your featherbed for regular compression wear and tear. If you're featherbed does feature a special top – like down filled or poly quilted you should only rotate your feather bed and never flip it. Regardless of flipping or rotating or both be sure to give the featherbed a dozen or so punches or chops to loosen the filling. Also take your hands and go underneath the featherbed and do a high force upwards push or movement to fluff from the bottom up of the feather bed.

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If your featherbed is too old or beyond saving then you can buy a new feather bed manufacturer direct from DOWNLITE. Be sure to check out their ‘Made in the USA' feather beds which feature hypoallergenic fillings.

how much eco fiber will be good for a 10 gallon hermit crab tank?

is this it http://cgi.ebay.com/Zoo-Med-Eco-Earth-Coconut-Fiber-Reptile-Bedding-3pk_W0QQitemZ120419341795QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item1c098d55e3&_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116, and will this be enough for a 10 gallon. o and will it appear darker once a tad moist?
lol i bet u love answering my questions,

Hint, most answerers will do a search in Pets>All>All and that will pull up every search that has "hermit Crabs"in the title and body of the question, I hope this saves you a bit of time.

Here goes my confession I used hot pink aquarium gravel for two months before switching to coconut fiber or as it is also known as eco fiber, for a ten gallon tank a (approx measurements) 4 X 8 X 1 1/2 inch brick will yield 7-8 liters when reconsituted with 4 quarts of hot water, I use a little less water and break up the stubborn pieces by hand so i do not risk a substrate that is too wet.You can always add water. You will pay from 4ish to 6 dollars per brick, it says enough for a 40 gallon tank.

I recess my water dish so the hermits can just walk in, so that will give you a bit more depth by the water dishes taking up room that the substrate would otherwise fill.

The average opinion is that this is the closest to their natural enviroment also the texture and consistancy is best for digging, burrowing and tunneling to prepare for molting.

Here is the part of the section on substrates, most books as well as experienced keepers reccomend this. If you live in an area where humidty is naturally high then you can get away with other material for substrates, but that leaves the question of digging and burrowing ability.

6.Various Substrates

Which substrate to use is what will make the hermit crabs happy. Many hermit Crab owners use coconut fiber called Eco Fiber and can be found in most pet stores, after researching many websites and hermit keepers the coconut fiber seems to be their first choice and I have used it for aproximenly two years.Coconut Fiber comes in compressed blocks that expands when reconstituted with hot dechlorinated water, hermits love to dig and pick through it for possible bits of food and at molting time hermits will burrow into it to hide and for darkness when a molt is pending.

Nate Berkus 4 Fiber Bed - Twin

Tags: bed, bedding, fiber, fiber bed, fiber bed reviews, fiber bed topper, fiber bed twin xl, fiber bed vs feather bed, home, shopping

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 at 11:17 am and is filed under bedding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.