!7: Waterbed Fill Kits Quickly: December 2011

!±8± Waterbed Drain - How to Drain a Waterbed

Waterbed drains and pumps are now available to make the job of filling and draining your bed much easier. Water beds offer much better body support than regular mattresses, but are usually much less convenient to deal with, especially regarding setting it up or transferring it to a new location.

This is especially true for hard side beds, which are water mattresses placed inside a strong wooden surround for support. This type of bed requires special bed frames if you wish to use one, although they can also stand on their own. The wooden support also usually makes the whole setup quite unwieldy to transport and move around. This hard side design is the original one, used originally for medical purposes, with patients who require good body support as well as those who are bedridden.

Easier to deal with is the soft side water bed type. Soft side mattresses have foam edgings instead of using a wooden surround for support. These foam sidings provide just as much support, and can still allow the soft side bed to stand on its own. A newer version of the soft side mattress is even easier to fit into existing bed frames: the foam edging has been divided into two, a lower fixed part and a top hinged foam rail.

To fill or drain a new waterbed, a fill and drain kit is usually required. This kit is often provided with the bed itself, and if not, they are readily available at furniture and home furnishing stores. One thing to remember is to turn off and unplug the heater before filling (or draining) the mattress. Then connect your bed's valve with the faucet using a garden hose (flush it out if it's been stored outside) and the faucet connector usually provided with the bed. A waterbed hose connector is attached to the end of the garden hose that goes into the valve.

Use towels to wrap around possible leakage areas and prevent any spills. When filling your bed, pour the waterbed conditioner in first before filling it with mildly warm water, about a quarter or half inch from the top of the bed supports. After shutting the water off and removing the hose, remove any air bubbles from inside the mattress by pressing on it with a broom or yardstick, toward the valve.

Draining follows a similar procedure: attach the hose to the faucet and the bed, then run the water until the hose is filled. Remove the hose from the faucet and place that end on the ground or a sink, tub, etc. Make sure that the output end of the hose is lower than the bed, and gravity will do all the work. You can go and do other things while waiting, to come back to an empty water bed.

It is only in cases where this is not possible, or if a faster drain is desired, that waterbed drains are used. Beds in basements, for instance, might be difficult to drain without using a pump. And pumps will be able to drain the mattress much faster than just siphoning the water away naturally using gravity.