An inflatable sleeping pad pretty much has one task: to exist airtight. If something causes the mattress not to be airtight, well and then, it'due south fourth dimension to repair your sleeping pad.

Nosotros get many calls about perceived leaks, particularly with air mattresses. And one matter that is usually non a leak at all is a mattress that seems to accept lost pressure level during the night. If it's not flat, but not as full as you lot inflated it before bed, the problem can often be attributed to the loss of air force per unit area equally your mattress cools.

Images photographed and endemic by William Woodward

This is particularly true if you inflate your mattress by oral cavity. The air going in is warm and, equally it cools to the ambience temperature, you tin can lose pressure, requiring you to put a few more breaths into your pad. This is also the reason we say to partially deflate your mattress before y'all leave information technology in your tent for the day. Though it'due south very rare, a full mattress can actually burst from the extra pressure if it warms enough in a hot tent all 24-hour interval.

How to Repair Your Sleeping Pad at Home

If yous're at home, our Permanent Habitation Repair Kit can help you lot patch the puncture.

permanent sleeping pad repair kit

Depending on the model of pad, information technology may require sitting overnight, but since yous're habitation that shouldn't cause too many issues. Pro tip: Check your pad and the residual of your gear a few days before heading into the backcountry.

How to Repair Your Sleeping Pad in the Field

If yous experience a puncture while out camping, hopefully, you've brought a Field Repair Kit with you lot.

sleeping pad field repair kit

These kits are included with all of our NeoAir pads and easily slide into the included stuff sack. Though either of our repair kits volition work, the Field Repair Kit is designed to provide a speedy, no-cure fix for any mattress.

How to Find the Leak and Patch it Yourself

Whether you're at home or in the field, you'll want to inflate your mattress as firm as you tin can get it with your jiff. If you're lucky, you might hear air escaping and you'll be able to locate the puncture correct away. If information technology's not readily credible where the leak is, yous tin can either submerge the pad fully in h2o (a tub at domicile, or a bounding main nearby if you're out in the wild) or you can utilise a wet soapy fabric to wipe the mattress.

submerging sleeping pad to look for leaks

In both cases, you're looking for bubbles to form, which will indicate where the air is escaping. In the example of a pinhole puncture that takes all night to leak out, it may take a while for bubbles to grade, in some cases x or more minutes. Patience is the almost effective tool in the toolbox at this bespeak. One trick is to fold the mattress over on itself when submerging it or soaping it up. This volition increase the internal force per unit area and hopefully forcefulness air through the hole a piffling quicker. Another method to try is to mentally intermission it down into smaller areas and go through 1 section at a time, slowly and meticulously. Flip the mat over and inspect the other side.

finding leak in sleeping pad

Our repair techs follow these same procedures when we receive mattresses for repairs. At any rate, once the leak is found, follow the repair directions to patch that sucker up and you're back in business.

How to find a leak:

How to use the Instant Repair Kit:

How to use the Permanent Repair Kit:

How to utilise the Valve Repair Kit:

Transport Your Sleeping Pad to the Pros to Repair

If you lot take tried everything, or your mattress damage is significantly more than than you want to take on, y'all may send your mattress to us for repair. If the problem is covered under our Express Lifetime Warranty, we'll repair or replace your mattress at our discretion. These bug are limited to defects in material or manufacturing. If nosotros notice that there are punctures/tears in the mattress, we tin repair those, but these are typically wear-and-tear situations.

We charge a flat-charge per unit fee of $20 to repair a mattress. This repair accuse covers up to 10 punctures at any one time—if we find more than than 10 punctures in a mattress (that sounds crazy simply some folks live where cactus are nowadays, or maybe someone forgot to take their golf shoes off earlier entering their tent), and so we consider the mattress to be at the end of its service life.

older sleeping pads ready to be repaired

If y'all choose to send your sleeping pad to united states of america, please brand sure it's relatively clean. Nosotros don't need to exist able to consume off of your mattress (nor practise we want to, believe me), but some mattresses have shown upward here that appear to have been used extensively and exclusively by goats—the scary kind yous find on decease metal anthology covers, non the beautiful fluffy ones that faint when they become excited. If that'southward your mattress, clean information technology by inflating it and wiping it down with a mild detergent. Follow-up with a rinse, and allow it dry out before shipping information technology to united states.

Please note, if your mattress is excessively dirty or has a strong off-putting odor when it arrives at the repair office, it volition not exist worked on or evaluated and instead will be returned with cleaning instructions.

examining sleeping pad to repair

This brings us to another point: Keeping your mattress clean is very important to its longevity. For folks who are on long-term camping trips, body oils, problems spray, and sunscreen tin all contribute to the breakup of the laminates that bail the external fabrics to the internal components. This goes for the foam, cores of self-inflating models and the internal baffles in one of our NeoAir® models. Using a sheet on the mattress and cleaning it regularly (both the sheet and the mat) will help you get the most out of your mattress.

adding sheet to sleeping pad

If you ship a mattress to us, nosotros aren't concerned with the method of shipment, but we do recommend send it with a method that is trackable. If anything goes wrong in shipping, you can at least find out where information technology was delivered past mistake. To become started with your repair, head to our warranty page and create a Render Authority Number.

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Updated. Originally Published October. 18, 2019.