Air Bed Leaks Leave You Flat? Find the Hole!

It must've been about 1:00 in the morning. The "better half" elbowed my ribs and asked pointedly, "Have you hit bottom yet?" My groaning bones should have been all the answer I needed to make. Our "quick and dirty" solution to a worn out RV mattress had been a pump-up "air bed" with a couple of inches of memory foam. At that moment, the memory foam was the only thing keeping us completely from the ravages of old age on a hard board.

In our "regular" rig we have a commercially build air bed, not the off-the-shelf in Walmart variety that folks keep in their closet for when company comes. Don't get us wrong, there's really nothing wrong with "toss it in the closet" air beds, they work pretty well, but they are subject to easy puncture. How do you find that rotten leak?

Next day, we lugged the offending mattress outside, pumped it up with air, and squirted it thoroughly with soap bubbles picked up at ToysRUs. Yes, we could probably have used dish soap in water, but we happened to have a couple of bottles of the bubble makers hanging around from an earlier project. Using the soap bubbles can speed up the finding process considerably over the old "try and stick your ear down and hear it" method.

Sure enough, there was a small poke hole at the corner of the mattress. And no, it wasn't in the area where the cat had tried to hide in the bed. Mission accomplished. Sleep will be easier.