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I've got a silly light Alpkit Cloudbase inflatable mattress for bivvying. Its currently very obviousy moist inside from me huffing and puffing into it. Is there a way to dry it out? Without being inflated the 2 surfaces are just sticking to each other. Puff a bit of air in and the one way flap on the valve stops any air circulation.
Thanks!
Get an air pump and fill and empty a few times, should help the air change a few times. Just keep doing it and also when not in use put dry air in and leave it partially inflated
Graham has it, I'll add "on a hot sunny day" to a few inflate and deflates with a pump.
Cold ( and hence "drier" ) air in, warm it up, air out
Repeat
Yeah warm day inflation and deflation. Probably leave it in the sun for 10 minutes inflated, then deflate.
I was a total sceptic but I now use a snozzel bag to inflate. An exped one. Completely solved the problem, it's a piece of piss to inflate a mat and the snozzel bag is also a dry bag. I'm sure you could work something out for an alpkit model as I managed to inflate by just using a regular lightweight dry bag when I mistook it for the snozzel bag. Looking at the website, the valve looks similar size to mine so might be a straight fit
Honestly one of the best things I have bought for camping is a flextail pump (has an inbuilt battery) as you can just get it pumped up without aggro and you don't have to blow into it.
The flextail pumps are tiny
I miss-read the thread title as “inflatable mistress” 😆
I miss-read the thread title as “inflatable mistress”
All the advice is revelant in both cases, just the amount of "moisture" inside might vary... 🤢
+1 for the flextail tiny, actually weighs less that the pump bag for my mattress and comes with a variety of rubber adapters to connect to different valves.
Flextail pump +1
I've got their matress as well. Pretty decent bit of kit although it uses loosely laminated foam/foil layers for insulation rathet than down/synthetic like posh mats. On the one had that probably makes it more resistant to moisture, on the other it's not quite as packable (but still fits in a bottle cage)
Thanks all. The physics of blowing cool air in, letting it warm up, roll it out, repeat until dry/bored makes sense.
Can't say I've got a desire to buy another gadget. The mat only takes maybe 12-15 huffs to blow up, so its not exactly a challenge when out on the hill. However my 18V "Bosh" blower fits well enough to get some air in that's not been through me first, so at home, that seems to be a workable solution.
The dry bag inflators are a good idea - as and when I replace the Cloudbase, I'll try and get a mat that comes with one of them to carry it in.
+1 for bag inflators. My last NeoAir came with one and it's great, makes a useful kit tidy bag for the night too.
I bought a Flextail pump - sounds excessive but barely heavier than the bag pump.
Nip to your supermarket of choice.
Buy a 10kg sack of rice.
Pour rice into mattress.
You're welcome.
Alpkit do a bag pump that doubles up as a dry bag, that's compatible with the Cloud Base:
https://alpkit.com/products/air-pump-20l