Waterbed sleeper here. I don’t what the temperature is (mid-70s?) but it doesn’ t have to be very cool to impossible to sleep on. People think that you just turn down the heater in the summer and it makes for a comfortable sleep. All that happens is one side of you is freezing the other side is roasting. I would bet hypothermia would take place in short order sleeping on a waterbed filled with 46 degree water. I don’t want to test it out, though.
With enough blankets and pads, anything is possible.
http://www.simply-sweden.com/icehotel/?gclid=CImXi9WUzKYCFRVx5QodXSsTJw
Why you’d want to do so, I’m not sure.
I’m thinking a bed that maintains at something like 80º might be comfortable in that heat. A 46º bed would be refreshing for about 20 seconds before it became too much to stand.
When we had the major power failure in the northeast we lost our heat for several days. And it ran in the hgih forties in our house for days on end. And it was cold. I am not one of those people who keeps it really hot in the night; our heat drops down to 60 degrees at night. But 47 or 48 was way too cold. We wore clothes, and socks, and covered our heads with a blanket, but our noses were freezing every morning.
However, I don’t think at any point we were in danger. But we’re young and healthy. I did worry about some of the old folks in the neighborhood, though.
This reminds me of the time I tried sleeping on an air mattress in a cold room.
I quickly discovered that, on an air mattress, you need as many covers beneath you as above you.
(In other words – you need a sleeping bag.)
Okay, you are going to put sheets on the bed, right? The area you contact will be warmed by your body, and cooled by the bed. I’m sure some type of temperate zone is created. Further, the entire flesh of one side of your body is not in contact with this temperate zone and is likely covered as well. You have the rest of your body surrounded by air temps that are probably above 60, and if any type of cover is used, you are creating more warmth.
Certainly, you could wear warm pajamas and pile on the blankets and so on, but why? Wouldn’t it be simpler, instead of buying this device, to just take some of the blankets off the bed? It makes no sense to simultaneously set this thing to a cool temperature and then also take measures to warm up the bed.
I opened this thread imagining a bed without a footboard perched at a 46 degree angle on the edge of a cliff. (Why the cliff, is anyone’s guess.)
With the cooling pad able to be set so low, I’m wondering if the reason for that is to cool the bed before you get into it, but you’re not meant to sleep on it at that temperature. Maybe it brings your body temperature down sufficiently for a comfortable 8-hour sleep with the intention of the device to be actually switched off.
My understanding is that you’re not supposed to sleep with an electric blanket on; maybe this is based on the same principle.
I hate sleeping in the heat. I like having the weight of a comforter on me when I sleep. This is fine in the winter. This is fine in the summer with air conditioning. That’s murder in the summer around here if you don’t have air conditioning.
Now, for my money, if I couldn’t sleep because of the heat, I’d just buy a window air-conditioner and be done with it. But I guess some people think that this is a viable solution. I think 46 degrees would be a bit cold for me, but I’ve never slept on a refrigerated slab. I don’t think it’d be enough to cause hypothermia in a hot room, though.
I second this.
Years ago, my waterbed heat failed. Even with several blankets under me, it was impossible to sleep in the bed, and it was at room temperature.
Sleeping bags insulate as designed on their tops and sides, where they can fluff up and a lot of air is trapped in tiny pockets. They don’t work well underneath, where they’re compressed by body weight to a fraction of their working thickness. An insulated pad (usually of some type of foam) is effective.
Hoo boy yes. A cold water bed will suck the heat right out of you, but at least you can throw down some extra blankets and sleep on top of them. A too hot waterbed is awful too.
From looking at this system though, it doesn’t look like it would be as bad.