Filling and emptying a waterbed is now easy with the numerous draining kits, pumps and accessories available on the market. These beds are a cumbersome nightmare to move when filled making them difficult to relocate.
Hardside beds are particularily difficult to move as they consist of not only a water filled mattress but also a heavy wooden surround. These beds are generally examples of the earliest design of waterbed.
The more modern soft side bed is generally easier to move and deal with as they usually have foam edgings which provide support to the mattress whilst replacing the heavy wooden frame of the hardside design.
Which ever bed you own, to fill or empty/drain the mattress a filling and drain kit is usually required. Often these are supplied with the bed but if the kit is lost or misplaced there are many suppliers on the internet that offer these kits.
Before you start draining the bed turn off any accessories such as heaters that you may have attached to the mattress. Connect a garden hose to the fill and drain kit as perscribed in the kits instructions. Attach the drain/filling connector to your beds faucet. Link the hose to a tap and fill the hose. Once the hose is filled take the hose off the tap placing your thumb over the hose end. Lower the hose end to a level below the mattress and let gravity syphon off the contents of the bed into a drain or onto your garden. As the mattress empty’s out push remaining water toward the drain to remove the last contents of the bed.
How to fill the bed? Just do the opposite. Attach the hose to a tap for water supply, add conditioner and treatments to the mattress in the perscribed amount for the bladders size and volume, then attach the fill kit to the mattress faucet turn on the tap and away you go. Towards the end of filling make sure to remove bubbles and trapped air from the bed by gently guiding the air to the faucet as the mattress fills.
If you need to drain, empty or fill the bed a little quicker than gravity allows then you should consider the purchase of an electric waterbed pump. This will empty a bed quickly and effectively and also greatly aid filling the bed. The only question is whether the expense of the pump is necessary for the extra speed. If the waterbed is at a low level such as in a basement or ground floor a pump may prove to be absolutely necessary.
