The Ultimate UL Pillow?

Hey kids,

I’ve spent a small fortune hunting the perfect pillow for camping lite.

Guess what? It was right under my nose. I had cut down a PFD with my canoeing ventures and had this small block of closed cell foam just lying there.

I liked the firmness of the PFD foam so I electrical taped it to my AquaStar UV H2O purifier bottle.

BAM, it’s the best pillow, firmness and height I’ve tried being a side sleeper.

BAM, my “pillow foam” added one once to my BaseGear!

BAM! Love it!

Bam! Great “victory” finally after about 3-4 years of hunting and experimenting.

BAM! again!

Hi, Bryan –
If you end up with extras of the large pillows, I’d be interested in taking a few off your hands.

I just roll up my Patagonia jacket, one of the fleece models that I wear for light weight and warmth over layering, slip it in the bag that holds my sleeping bag and rest my head on that. It works great and adds nothing else to weight I am already carrying.

Ray

P.S.

I love these Boards!!!!!

Ray,
That’s what I do, too. But, I figured it would be interesting to experiment so that’s why I sprung for the Flexair pillows. We’ll see. They are supposed to arrive tomorrow.

-Mark

Hello Bryan,

I’ll take 5-20 of the large pillows if you’re interested in splitting the cost of them.

For those of you awaiting pillows, I found out this afternoon that there will be a delay of one day in delivery. UPS says they will arrive tomorrow (Friday). If so, I’ll likely mail out on Sat. morning. More to come…

-Mark

My order arrived this afternoon. The Large size is 12.5 x 19 and I’ve got (30)remaining to sell. If you’re interested, we’ll use first class postage stamps (.37) as currency; four (4) stamps per pillow should cover it. Shoot me an e-mail to reserve the quantity you want and I’ll send to my contact information.
ccdrcdirector@yahoo.com

Likewise, my order arrived this afternoon. The Small size is 10.5 x 14.5 and they look pretty reasonable. I’ll be getting these in the mail tomorrow to those of you who requested them. I’ll post more info tomorrow, but I did weigh them, of course, and the pillow alone (without the inflation straw) comes in at about 15 gms on my scale.
-Mark

Item: Flexair 150 Disposable Pillow
Manufacturer: Graham Professional Medical Products
Size: Nominal: 10.5 x 14.5 in. Measured: 10.25 x 14.25 in.
Inflation height: Full inflation is about 5+ inches of loft.
Material: “Durable poly interior with comfortable nonwoven exterior”
Weight: 20 gm with the included inflation straw, 15 gm without the straw
Seams: Appear to be heat sealed
Max Wt. Limit: 50 lb (i.e.-Don’t sit on it.)

This inflatable pillow is designed as a disposable item for travel and medical use. It is only available in boxes of 50 pillows.
The exterior is a textured fabric like material that feels ok against the skin and they can be used without a cover, however I think some kind of cover (T-shirt, etc) would improve the “feel.” These appear to be much more durable than the “packing pillows” some have referred to. The material looks substantial enough that it should hold up fairly well if handled with moderate care. A regular looking clear plastic soda straw is taped to each pillow and can be removed. Inflation is accomplished by inserting the straw into the valve in one corner and blowing it up. It is very easy to inflate taking only a few seconds. The air can be let out by inserting the straw and releasing air to the desired firmness. The valve is a clever tapered sleeve of thin plastic within the pillow that seems to use the pressure inside to hold it closed. The straw makes inflation and deflation easy, but is not needed. You can inflate by blowing directly into the valve and deflate by carefully slipping a pencil or a stick into the valve to deflate. I was dubious about this valve, but I inflated a pillow yesterday and left it overnight with a weight on it and there seems to be no air loss today. Comfort is a subjective thing, but I tried a short nap with the pillow inflated slightly over half way. It gave reasonable support to my head and no neck problems. I found it reasonable for this short test. It will be interesting to test it on the trail.

-Mark

P.S. Mailed out the pillows this morning to everyone, but Jacob- ‘need your address.

I certainly appreciate everyone’s interest in the pillows. The (30) surplus I had to sell are spoken for. I may have 2 or 3 left after it’s all said and done, as a few folks inquired about buying “3-5” or “5-7” and I won’t know for sure until I receive their order/payment. I’ll post again if there ends up being any left.

Here’s what has really worked for me quite well recently:

1) A Wal-Mart inflatable pillow as per Kevin’s suggestion.

2) Over this I wrap my Dri-Ducks rain shirt and then rain pants (I don’t like using insulating clothing, because then what do you use when it get’s cold? My rain gear is the only item of clothing I know I will NOT be wearing to bed.

3) This fits perfectly into a 500 ci. BPL stuffsack.

The pillow gives the basic un-crushable loft, the rain gear adds substantial bulk, so it feels like you’re on a cushy pillow rather than a small bar of tubing, and the stuff sack hold it all nicely together (and keeps any water on my rain gear from wetting my head or bag.

I’ve also gotten in the habit of bringing the other wing pillow to place between my legs while sleeping on my side, or under my knees when on my back. It’s the perfect size for either, and makes a huge comfort difference for me.

Well heck. Wish I’d checked the forum sooner to get in on the newest pillow offer! Looks like a great UL solution for my aging neck. I do have the Luxury Lite pillow, and it does indeed use the inflatable packing air sack. However, my head rolls around on it like a it’s a water bed – wish it was chambered – despite trying numerous inflation levels.

Does the Flexi pillow stay firm, or does one’s head roll around on it like a mellon? Maybe the water wings are the answer I’m looking for.

James,
The Flexair is a single chamber, basically a rectangular bag with a simple valve. I’ve been trying it out at home and I’ve found that at a little over half inflated with a 1/4 or 3/8 inch thick piece of open cell foam on top works well for me. There is still a little “water bed” feel to it due to the under inflation, but the foam seems to stablize it some. Fully inflated it is to hard for my tastes and it bulges so your head tends to slide off the side. The pillow and piece of foam still weigh only about 1.2 oz.

Kevin’s Wal-Mart water wings look pretty interesting and you can’t go too wrong for the price. May be worth a try.

-Mark

I just got my pillows from Mark today. After seeing them… I have what I think will prove to be a great idea :) However… read on!

So here is the idea :) Hopefully this idea works.

Another idea would be heat sealing them together… maybe with one of those kitchen vacume bag sealer things (melted area is probably too thin / narrow)… or even trying to form a partial seam thru the middle of a single pillow to convert it to a dual chamber… just leaving an inch unsealed for the air to pass thru… but I doubt that would work.

Ideally, you could find a smaller air pillow and sew two of them together for a solution that would be twice the size of a water wing at half the weight (under 1 oz)!!!

p.s. I LOVE that they have a soft finish and are not loud and crinkly like the Luxury Lite.

Unfortunatly I need a good pillow to get a good night sleep. I had a luxurylite pillow but did not like it because my head would roll around on it, plus it was noisy. What I’ve been using is one of the new thermarest pillows, size small. It’s great, but it weighs 7 oz. What I did was open it up to see how it is constructed. It just has these foam extrusions inside.

What I did was take my luxurylite pillow, gut the inside, then sew it up to make it a little smaller than the thermarest. I then put about 3/4 of the foam “peanuts” that where in the thermarest and placed them inside the smaller luxurylite pillow, sewed it shut, and the resulting pillow weighs 4.5 oz and feels great, just like a home pillow. It also compresses to the size of a coke can (the original luxurylite compressed size).

4.5 oz might be a luxury, but the extra clothes in a stuff sack has never worked for me, especially when you have to wear all your clothes to bed :).

Daniel. You could lose a LOT of weight by sewing your own case for the pillow. 80+% of the weight of the luxury lite pillow is that heavy pillow case.

I agree about the single chamber air thing… your head can’t sink into it… no matter how deflated it is. That’s the point of my idea above… making a 2 chamber air pillow. It still won’t be as nice as a stuffed pillow of course… but I believe is will be a hundred times better than a single chamber like the luxury lite.It will weight 1.2 oz. and compress down to nothing! For another half an ounce or so, you could also use an open cell foam cover like the luxury lite. This would add an inch or so of true resilience… so you really WOULD sink into that portion. I think it would be darn close to a real pillow and still under 2 oz.

I’ll post back once I’m done experiementing :)

Here are the results of my experimentation.

First thing I tried (to save weight) was to modify a single pillow. My idea was to “quilt” the single pillow by heat sealing part of the center of the pillow. It worked… sort of. I played with various setting with my iron and eventually got a pretty good seal but in the end I came to the conclusion that you could never get it perfect… not like a factory seal… you will always get a leak. If anyone wants to try it themselves, this was the proceedure…

1. Use medium high heat
2. More pressure is better than more heat… too much heat and it just melts a hole… press hard!
3. Use the top of a bottled sauce or juice bottle under the pillow as your surface to press against and a thin sheet of aluminum on the top of the pillow (between pillow and iron) to prevent making a gunky mess of your iron.

As I say, I did get this to work… almost… it has a slow leak where I did my handiwork. Also, I found it wasn’t even very effective in increasing comfort. It helps some because there is a depression for your head… but since it’s still a single chamber, the air can still flow from one side of the “button” to the other.

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Next I tried simply sewing two pillows together using the excess material beyond the factory sealed seams. What you end up with is essentially a monster sized water wing pillow. This worked beautifully. It’s not as good as a stuffed pillow of course… but it is MUCH better than a single chamber air pillow! And adding a layer of foam on top like the Luxury Lite pillow would really make it great I think… for around 2.5 oz (guess).

This pillow is 1.2 oz and it’s full sized. It’s probably 6 times bigger than a typical water wing pillow at the same or less weight! My water wing pillow is 1.6 oz. and it’s TINY.

p.s. I’ve copied this post over in “Make your own gear”. That’s probably a more appropriate place for replies.