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Cecilt's avatar
Cecilt
Explorer
Jun 11, 2015

Foam Topper and heat

I am considering a topper for our queen in our TT. IIRC, I had bought a foam topper several years ago for our bed in the house and remember that thing trapped a bunch of heat and made sleeping worse as I was hot the entire night.

Do foam toppers have this issue or is my memory going bad? If so, are there different types to buy that wont trap heat.
  • look for one with cooling gel. We bought a memory foam mattress with a gel layer and it's not hot.
  • I put a quilted cotton pad on my mattress in the trailer. More comfort, no heat issues like foam. I'm very dissatisfied with the last two mattresses I bought for the sticks and bricks. Both have foam and "cooling" gel, and I'm miserably warm/hot every night. I'm afraid to blow money on a new mattress for the trailer for just this reason.
  • We just bought one at Costco yesterday. It has cooling gel, and is foam. I suggest getting the good pads. Ours cost $140 and fits well, feels cool and fits. We added two mattress pads because I don't like the heat either. Seems to work fine.
  • What do you have between you and the topper? Was you last topper a cheap one?
  • Several years ago we added a foam topper to our queen mattress. I didn't notice the heat problem, but we did have a nice thick mattress pad. Additionally, when camping in very warm/muggy temps I would spread a terrycloth beach towel on top of the bottom sheet to sleep on. It's amazing how the towel reduced that sticky feeling. I still use the towel when the AC isn't available for use when boondocking. My wife finally caught on and does the same on her side of the bed.
  • I've never had the issue with memory foam being hot. But then, we always have had mattress pads between the mattress and bottom sheet. In fact on our home bed, we have an electric mattress pad. That thing is great. Much better than an electric blanket IMO. Even if you don't ever use the electric pad in your TT, it solves the issue of a hot memory foam.

    In our own fiver, I decided to skip the memory foam topper and just replace the mattress with a memory foam mattress. Had a local mattress manufacturer make one up. Cost us about $400, so while a bit more expensive than a topper, it is oh so nice to sleep on. Nice thing about having it made locally, and having it made of solid memory foam, is that they can easily make it to any size you specify. Solves the issue, and the cost, of finding special RV sized units in stock. The mattresses they put in most RV's are so bad, toppers aren't really enough to fix the problem. You just get a soft surface with the same lack of support. I think most towns of any size have custom mattress manufacturers.
  • I read enough threads about the straight foam toppers being warm that we ordered the version that is 2" of foam and 2" of poly fill.

    The comfort level went way up over the stock too-firm mattress. My only complaint is the poly is either not held in place well or compresses too easily. A year later I now have a very personalized indentation that I sleep in.
  • rhagfo's avatar
    rhagfo
    Explorer III
    Cecilt wrote:
    I am considering a topper for our queen in our TT. IIRC, I had bought a foam topper several years ago for our bed in the house and remember that thing trapped a bunch of heat and made sleeping worse as I was hot the entire night.

    Do foam toppers have this issue or is my memory going bad? If so, are there different types to buy that wont trap heat.


    So what did you do about the foam topper at the house? Did you just get rid of it or replace the mattress.

    Do the same with your RV bed, just replace the mattress, if that is what you did at home.

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