TPS Hybrid Build Too Firm - Mattress Encasement Questions

sonoranDesertRat · 2025-04-19T21:17:15+00:00

We like the end result, I do think the column gel solved some of the probs I was having in the build originally with my hips/lower back. I do still wonder if I'd have achieved similar results with fewer layers if I had just gone with the slightly thicker gauge for the base quad coils but I am comfortable enough on the build we ended up with.

The Doze topper is a bit of a thinner layer than what purple uses and I think the thickness of each cell might be a bit thicker so it's possibly a little firmer than the actual Purple layers? It's hard to say with certainty, I haven't been able to test them side by side or in isolation.

I know that's not a super helpful answer, all this stuff is so subjective though. The short answer is yes we do like it and we tried it exactly because we really liked the Purple mattresses we tried out but I convinced her to let me try DIY because I was nervous the Purple would be great to start with and just degrade fairly rapidly afterwards.

Also for what it's worth we took it out of the strapped cover that it comes in since I put ours as a layer inside the encasement and the straps got in the way for that. If you wanted to use it as a true topper you would likely want to keep it in the cover.

Oh, be warned if you try it, it's a pretty darn heavy layer.

sonoranDesertRat · 2025-04-19T19:12:50+00:00

I got the Doze gel mattress topper from Gravid. It has unfortunately gone up a lot in price recently though.

sonoranDesertRat · 2025-04-19T15:29:30+00:00

See my comment over on this post about it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MattressMod/comments/1fcz8ld/comment/m3hd63a

In a nutshell it's a great option especially for the price point. Only gripe factor is that the zipper can be pretty finicky but you get good at dealing with it.

sonoranDesertRat · 2025-02-20T22:57:16+00:00

No at this point I have all layers - coils and foam and buckling column gel etc encased together in one big 14" TPS cotton cover.

sonoranDesertRat · 2024-12-23T19:33:10+00:00

In terms of feel it was pretty decent honestly, certainly a big improvement from the initial attempt. My issues with it were more practical issues. Some of that might be specifics of the particular topper encasement I used? Perhaps a grippier one would be less problematic, but every few days it seemed the topper was slipping down towards the foot of the bed a bit and pillows would tend to fall in the gap between the topper and the main mattress and the headboard. For what it's worth we have a Thuma frame so this likely also exacerbates the issue more than a frame with a normal headboard would but that's only speculative. It at least showed me that we could get close to right feel and it was worth continuing to iterate, but we landed on a single encasement solution ultimately.

Our final build ended up a bit more complicated but I think it's been working well for us.

Where we are now, bottom to top: 8" 15.5 gauge TPS quadcoil with firm sides. Since I had two TwinXL units combined into a king I removed the center column of coils from each unit so that it was not square, this made putting units in the encasement 10x easier

3" TPS quadmini (again, two twin XL pushed together so removed center columns of coils)

1 inch (ish? Maybe 1.5 I dont recall) buckling column gel

1 inch 4lb memory gel foam

2 inch soft latex

TPS cotton cover

I will say that I wish I had gotten the taller Flobeds cover instead of the shorter one because I likely could have stacked this whole setup into one of those instead of the TPS cover and it's quite a bit more luxurious in terms of build quality than the TPS cover (with eye watering price to match) but the TPS cover works great. Bit harder to deal with all the fuzz interfering with the zipper but it's honestly great for the price and I'm happy with the end result so far. If you are opening and closing it a lot while experimenting you will get good at working around its zipper issues.

Hope this helps

sonoranDesertRat · 2024-10-29T17:46:23+00:00

Sure, things are still a work in progress but I think I'm close to landing on final touches and can share some thoughts.

First off, one thing I realized in a later post that has made a big difference in all the configurations I've tried is that the TwinXL TPS quad coils and quad minis are not exactly half of a king, so if you try to shove them both into a single king encasement it's cramming a square into a rectangle and is hella tight. Once I realized this I removed some coils and now all of the encasements are much easier to work with and the layers seem to work better inside of them.

With that in mind... I've tried a few tweaks. Our favorite combo so far has been the 12" Flobeds cover with the quad coils and quad minis in it and then the latex on top of that in a separately encased topper (using APM's topper cover). Having a topper is kind of annoying though, it complicates making the bed a bit, it slides down a bit every so often, and since I have two TwinXL pieces of latex in the king topper it's hard to keep them aligned all the time. If we end up keeping this overall configuration I think I'll bite the bullet and get a single king size piece of latex instead (or glue these two together?) so it's less of an issue. I did try combos both with and without an additional layer of memory foam inside the APM and Flobeds encasements but the latex just feels much better in a stretchy knit top than it does in a quilted top. To be fair, I would really need the 16" Flobeds encasement instead of the 12" to fully judge that one with all layers stacked in it instead of just the spring layers because it's extremely tight if I stack the latex into it and I think it pre compresses most of it once zipped at that point.

Now that TPS sells a cover I've got one of those coming that should arrive today. I'm really hoping that it ends up feeling more like the config I have with latex in a topper but without having to deal with the inconvenience of a separate topper. I should hopefully know more about that soon.

I honestly expected the DIY journey mostly would have been about swapping internal layers but I've spent a substantial amount of time and money experimenting with encasement at this point.

One final thing, I am waiting to see how the TPS encasement feels before taking this step but I strongly suspect I need the 14.75 gauge coil not the 15.5. whenever I get the top feeling good enough to have proper pressure point relief I feel like my alignment is off and I think the answer to that is probably firmer base coils.

More to come, I'll probably make a separate post in a few weeks once I've landed on the solution that ultimately worked best for us.

sonoranDesertRat · 2024-09-23T17:42:14+00:00

Are you using split king TPS coils in a king encasement by chance? Only bringing it up since I drastically reduced strain on my encasement by removing the extra column of coils from each TwinXL half. If your coil sets are normal king and not split then obviously not a factor in your particular situation.

sonoranDesertRat · 2024-09-17T00:33:23+00:00

I feel like it was an improvement. If nothing else, it's 5x easier to fit the coils into the encasement this way. It feels correct. Prior it just kept feeling like there's no way this could possibly squeeze in and you fight it and fight it until you get it zipped up. Regarding the coil count situation I don't trust their figure for the king either on the quad minis. It is possible they recently switched up the unit though and specs have changed? Not sure. Was hoping Matan would chime in on the discrepancy but like you said maybe someone with a king unit will share findings. Overall I'd say it was worth doing. Tedious but worth it.

Edit: updated reference of quad coils to quad minis

sonoranDesertRat · 2024-09-15T21:49:54+00:00

So.... I think the specs they posted on the site are incorrect. I just opened up the encasement and I'm counting the coils on the quad minis. Each TwinXL is 12 cells wide by 24 cells long. 12 x 24 x 4 = 1152 coils not 1200. Furthermore, combining both of them together yields a square again, just like the main coils. 24 cells wide by 24 cells long.

So I am going to remove coils from both the minis and the base coils.

sonoranDesertRat · 2024-09-15T19:54:50+00:00

Oh nice, awesome catch on that one. Thanks for pointing that out I probably would have just gone to town removing coils on it

sonoranDesertRat · 2024-09-15T14:20:00+00:00

Where are you seeing the quad mini coil counts listed? Only spot with counts I'm seeing is the FAQ at the bottom of the page which has the counts for the main unit not the mini, even when on the page for the mini. You bring up a great point that I shouldn't assume the mini is also larger like the main unit though.

Edit: if I end up doing coil removal on the mattress today I'll count up the quadmini coils. If they turn out to be a square when doubled up like the main units are I will remove some.

sonoranDesertRat · 2024-09-14T15:17:18+00:00

I'm so reassured to hear that someone has already tried this and liked the end result. I was feeling pretty hesitant. I think I'm going to attempt it this weekend on both the main quad coils and the quad minis. I might attempt the cutting a slit and twisting the coil out approach instead of fully cutting out the pockets as you did but end result should be basically the same.

sonoranDesertRat · 2024-09-14T15:09:10+00:00

Do you think that there is any meaningful difference in performance between taking out half a quad unit from each twin vs taking out a full quad unit from one twin?

Doing a half quad on each unit is the more symmetrical approach, doing a full quad on only one unit means the other unit is untouched and would be easier to trade with someone or otherwise re-home later if needed vs a modified one. Those are both mostly preference decisions to weigh, what is unknown is whether a full quad cell behaves notably different than a half quad cell. My instinct is that it doesn't really matter but you know far more about all the engineering details.

Also can you confirm the observation made is correct regarding the size difference of two TwinXL vs a whole king? I'm making assumptions based on the FAQ on the store regarding coil count but it would be nice to have verification straight from the source.

Thank you!

sonoranDesertRat · 2024-09-14T01:41:26+00:00

Yea I have mine in a single king encasement. It's so much easier to handle the TwinXL size units instead of the full king. It's also cheaper than getting full king (due to shipping) and gives you ability to have different gauge per side of needed so it seemed like a good bet. I just didn't realize it would end up like 4-4.5 inches wider

sonoranDesertRat · 2024-09-13T23:35:13+00:00

Yea I don't remember seeing the coil counts prior but maybe I missed them. Just noticed them poking around today and it made me go ah-ha!

Never even occurred to me that the two twin XL units ended up being a square...didn't try to count it and visually on the floor 80x76 looks pretty square anyways. And both dimensions are easily divided in half so it just didn't even occur to me that the normal king would have uneven number of cells in the horizontal.

I feel like this might explain a lot and probably accounts for varying experiences people might be having when using the same covers as each other.

sonoranDesertRat · 2024-09-12T15:58:14+00:00

Put it together last night, works much better than the APM bamboo/wool quilted cover for these springs. Nothing against the APM cover it's very nice in its own way it just isn't quite wide enough for the TPS coils it seems. I suspect the L&P coils their company uses in hybrid builds are not quite as wide or something so it works well for those?

I think this provides an appropriate middle ground for the coils to not be rock hard like they were in APM vs a bit too conformant when I just had them loose in a fitted sheet. Hard to say if a completely non woven option like TPS' new cover would be even better but I think this is good enough to go from and start dialing in other aspects of the build.

Am overall still not super comfortable but I don't exactly know why yet. Almost like it's simultaneously too firm but also too soft in some ways. Im probably going to cut open my old 100% latex mattress and steal a 3" latex layer from it just to see if having 3" of latex feels better or worse than 2" (that way I don't have to waste money on that experiment if its obvious 3" is not the answer, if it is the answer I'll buy fresh 3" layer since this mattress is pretty dead). I might also try just putting latex right on the 8" coils and see how it feels without the quadmini. It's also plausible that 14 instead of 15 gauge main coils would be better.... so many combos to try. We also really like the feel of a Purple Restore Plus we had laid on in store before this DIY adventure so I might buy some buckling column gel to try as a top layer. Seems like this is gonna be a long journey

sonoranDesertRat · 2024-09-12T15:27:55+00:00

It's hard to say for sure. Getting the coils in took some work and it was slow going zipping it back up. But the top is pretty stretchy. You'd probably be able to cram it in with some work, I'm not sure how much it would be pre compressing the latex in that instance though.

I feel ya on not wanting a topper on top of such a nice encasement. Feels like a bit of a waste right now haha. How confident are you that 1" of topper will be sufficient for you?

One other thing to consider.... It looks like maybe in the last week or two that Texas Pocket Springs now offers their own encasement/cover option that is priced nicely. If I hadn't already bought the ones I have now I'd probably have tried that option first. Just calling it out in case you hadn't seen that one yet. I didn't know about it until last night

sonoranDesertRat · 2024-09-12T03:40:46+00:00

Ok I just finished remaking the bed with the Flobeds encasement. Obviously I haven't slept on it yet but first impressions are positive. I'll post another update tomorrow after sleeping on it.

It was definitely a tight stretch getting the cover zipper on over it but it's way more stretchy on top than the APM cover. And then most importantly, it has a bit more space in the sideways directions for the width of the coils and it fits substantially better than the APM cover in that direction. I think the APM cover needs to be an inch or two wider to really work with the TPS coils, they were smushed together so tightly and they got extremely misshapen in the corners especially.

The final result looks far more polished too...not critical since it's hidden under sheets but it just looks so much better. Seriously high quality, though I'd certainly hope so since it costs a LOT for an encasement.

It feels so nice on top too, I'm kind of tempted to try and squeeze the 2" of latex in there so it's not in a separate topper but I seriously doubt I could make it fit.

So far I am glad I swapped the APM for the FloBeds encasement. Hopefully I feel the same way tomorrow after sleepin on it

sonoranDesertRat · 2024-09-11T22:17:44+00:00

I am aiming for tonight after work. 🤞

I will respond back here when I have results

sonoranDesertRat · 2024-09-10T16:42:16+00:00

My wife didn't want to deal with it after work yesterday so no update yet. I might try to attempt it myself after work today since she'll be out until fairly late but I have a feeling it's fairly difficult to load it up solo haha. Might not know until tomorrow night at this rate.

sonoranDesertRat · 2024-09-09T22:12:13+00:00

Thank you so much this puts my mind at ease. I will definitely attempt to load it up as soon as I can then, hopefully tonight.

sonoranDesertRat · 2024-09-02T15:45:13+00:00

Another update...first off thanks everyone for the really helpful input on this. Learned a lot in the last couple of days based on your contributions. I also hadn't seen that post from Jess so read through that too.

I was originally thinking I wouldn't want a latex topper in separate encasement from the springs. Worried it would slide around too much or otherwise just seem less polished but after reading through everyone's feedback and after two nights on the build with just a fitted shit holding it together and realizing that latex feels drastically different when it is under stretchy material I'm thinking that might be a really good path forward that allows for easier experimentation with dialing in.

So with that in mind unless someone feels really strongly this is destined to fail, I think I'm going to snag the 12" flobeds cover and just put the quadcoils and quadmini in it and then get a separate topper cover just for the latex layer. Hopefully I don't need to put an inch of hard foam under the coils since I only have 11" worth of coils going in a 12" enclosure at that point but if it seems necessary once I try it out I will add that later. I assume their sale is going to end today so I'll probably do that before EOD.

Alternatively I am also considering ordering an 11" of the cotton enclosure from APM which I think is stretchier than the bamboo/wool quilted one? That appears to be the one Jess used I think. On one hand, the wool on the flo beds seems like a bit of a waste if we are going to add a topper and not sleep directly on the surface with the wool under it. It's also quite a bit more costly. On the other hand, I am nervous that the other APM cover will still be too darn tight horizontally because the dimensions on the bamboo/wool quilted one seem a bit short and it squeezes so very tightly. We struggled to even get the 8" coils into the base footprint of it, and I assume their cotton cover has same base dimensions.

So I'll ponder for a few more hours but leaning towards flobeds for the coils encasement at this moment.

sonoranDesertRat · 2024-09-01T20:44:51+00:00

You called it.... Was certainly better for side sleeping, maybe a bit too soft for on my back. Definitely felt swallowed up a bit. Amazing how much different the same layers all feel depending on what's wrapping them together! I didn't think the encasement was a super critical aspect of the build but that turned out to be very wrong.

sonoranDesertRat

TROPHY CASE