Waterbed Myths Part 2- The Weight Myth

"I can't have a waterbed because my bedroom is upstairs, and i'm afraid it will fall through the floor". Well, if your floor cannot support a waterbed, you've got much bigger problems than that. You had better move, and soon. Most people are ignorant of the fact that a properly filled water mattress puts less stress on it's supporting structure than does an average adult walking on it. This is a fact, not my opinion. You see, water weighs five pounds per square foot, per inch depth. A deepfill waterbed, when filled correctly, has about 7-8 inches of water. If you did the math, you would know that it equates to no more than 40 lbs per square foot. In terms of floor loading, this is well within the building code standards. A person like myself, weighing 250 lbs, puts as much weight in less than a square foot by simply walking, and I have never collapsed a floor. The following common household fixtures exert significantly more stress on a floor than does a waterbed; A filled refrigerator, a grand piano, a fish tank, a toilet, a filled bathtub or jacuzzi, or even a couch with three fat adults seated upon it. While the gross weight of a California king sized waterbed can be as much as a ton, it's weight is spread out over 42 square feet. Please bear in mind that it's not the overall weight to consider when calculating floor loads, it's the weight per square foot, or, in this case, the depth of the water. By the same token, the roof over your house weighs several tons. This weight, however is spread out over the entire house causing it to weigh just a few pounds per square foot. Think about this; a hexagonal sixty gallon fishtank has a depth of about 30 inches in about three square feet of area, which translates to 150 lbs per square foot. Additionally, in our waterbed showroom, one of our display models was set up and supported entirely by dixie cups, (about 150 of them). No tricks or gimmicks, just a display to show all our potential customers how ridiculous this assertion was, and still is; no waterbed ever has or ever will fall through anybody's floor. The media would have jumped all over a story like that So, let's put this issue to rest.