cannot find hole air mattress

I take my sleeping pads with leaks into the hot tub or bath tub. Fully inflated, folded into thirds, submerged, and then I put a knee on it to pressurize it more. Flip it over, check the other side, refold, repeat.

I find submerging in water to be effective in finding the smallers leaks than applying soap and water. Soap and water works great on low spots, but sometimes, a leak at a high spot just doesn't make bubbles.

Sometimes, it is a multi-step process – find where it is, hold my finger there, get it dry, lose my spot a little, make a little dot with a sharpie pen, re-submerge it, see that the leak is 2 cm to the upper right of the dot, dry it off, make a little X right on the leak, repeat for other leaks, get it really dry, patch each little leak.

Glad your bike patch worked.

A soap and glycerin mix can help make better bubbles. Make sure you rinse it well after.

The sneaky leaks are not simple holes, but a patch of delamination. After some time you will see a little forest of tiny bubbles forming across an area. That is time to test the warranty policy.

Good point, Dale, about the glycerin. That's the other ingredient in commercial soap-bubble-blowing solutions.

Increasing the internal pressure (via folding squeezing etc etc) makes the air in the pad want to escape with greater urgency therefore a sometimes unnoticeable tiny hole will only reveal itself when pressurized more!

Bear in mind that any air mattress you inflate with your mouth will go down a bit as the air cools overnight. Well-known problem.

Cheers

You could always suck it up and send it back to the manufacturer. I've done it a few times and had great results. Slow, but it works great.

thanks guys! It's really a daunting task I feel, especially if this cat made a bunch of little holes.

How much is to send back to the manufacturer?