Cynthia,

We have a sleep number bed (king) in the house. I watched
the delivery folks put it together in our house, and just referred
to the literature too for a refresher. There are side foam support
pieces that run the length of the bed on each side all the way to
the end of the matress area. At the corners, these side pieces
fit into a corner support piece along with the foam piece that runs
across the end. I think your idea of breaking down the end of the
bed to get it to fit properly into the RV when the slideout is in will
work, and here is what I think you'll need to do. You will need to
remove the corner supports at the end, which will leave the side
and end pieces of foam loose. Remove the end piece of foam, let
most of the air out of the chambers so that you can scrunch the
chambers by hand back a few inches. Then, double the side pieces
of foam back on themselves several inches, or as much as is needed
in order to allow the somewhat disassembled bed to now fit into
the available space when the slideout comes in. There is also a
piece of foam in the middle of the bed that you should take a look
at also and see if it needs moving as well. At any rate, with a bed
that you can disassemble as much as is needed to get it to fit, you
will be able to do this. I'm not sure how much longer a standard
queen bed is than the shorter ones that are in the RVs. My wife thinks
its 6-8 inches, but it may only be 4. In any case, no worries, you'll be
able to remove/rearrange the internal pieces of the bed to make this
work. I expect that you would get good at doing this, to the point
where it would only take minutes to either disassemble or reassemble
the bed.

Ed

Thanks for the replies! Sounds like this is very do-able.

We are looking at 2 different sizes of Sleep Numbers. They have an "expanded queen" size which is 66"w x 80" long (as opposed to the regular queen size of 60w x 80L). The 66" wide expanded queen would fit in the bed area width-wise no problem. We are also trying to figure out if we can do some creative "disassembling" :) around the bed area so that we can fit a California King which is 72"w x 80" long. It would be great to get that extra Ca King width if we can.

Our current short queen is 75" long and just fits with the slideout closed. We only need to get rid of an extra 5" of length - so sounds like either taking the bed apart like you described or maybe just letting it get a bit crushed will work. We weren't sure if simply crushing in the 5" would eventually ruin the foam side supports. So, it's nice to hear your input as an owner.

We'll also take a look at the Spring Air since that sounds like a good alternative.

Thanks for the input!
c-

-- Edited by cksck at 00:17, 2007-07-06