Would you rather sleep on a cot or an air mattress? Both work well as temporary sleeping arrangements, but is it possible that one is better than the other?
We think so! Find out what makes cots better than air mattresses for your homeless shelter, government housing facility, scout camp, or disaster relief center.
Can't find the air pump? Don't have the time or energy to blow up a big air mattress, much less blowing up 10 of them? Cots are low maintenance. They don't require a pump and they demand minimal time and energy, making them an ideal bedding option when you're making arrangements for more than one or two guests.
The step-down lock feature is what makes cots from American Bedding even easier to set up, and it also serves as a safety feature to keep them from collapsing!
Air mattresses are typically about a foot and a half off the floor. Without any kind of box spring or bed frame, a basic air mattress is a long way down. If your guests are older, a higher bed such as a cot quickly becomes a matter of necessity rather than preference.
Additionally, sleeping on the floor, even on an air mattress, is pretty undesirable — especially for people who have just been through a crisis or disaster. Your residents deserve to be up off the ground for the night and cots provide just that.
And speaking of not wanting to sleep on the ground, that’s exactly what air mattresses cause when they deflate! Possibly one of the most annoying things about air mattresses is that they basically begin deflating from the moment you blow them up. It's hardly noticeable at first, but eventually, your guests will find themselves practically on the floor.
Sure, you can be proactive and pump up the mattress as necessary every day or two, but why would you want to bother with that kind of effort when cots are an option? Cots work just fine without air, so you can set them up and trust them to provide a durable bed for your guests, without any kind of maintenance, for a much longer time period.
When you're in the temporary housing business, you do a lot of arranging and rearranging of furniture. Imagine for a moment that you've set up 15 air mattresses. After a week or so, you need to move these bulky mattresses to another building, but they don't fit in one truckload unless they're deflated.
Easy enough, right? Maybe.
Even if it only takes 5 minutes to deflate and fold up a mattress and then another 2 minutes to unfold it and blow it back up, that's a 7-minute process. (Add another 5 minutes if you're filling up the mattress using a manual pump, not an electronically powered machine.) By the time you repeat that process 15 times, you're dedicating nearly 2 hours to simply deflating and inflating mattresses!
The foldable cots from American Bedding collapse and expand quickly and easily. We've purposely designed them that way so it shouldn't take more than a minute to fold them up for transporting or unfold them for use.
Our cots also come with individual carrying cases for easy transport and protected storage.
Now you know for sure that cots are better than air mattresses because they are easier to set up, keep your guests off the ground, don’t deflate, and transport easily. Now the only question left is where to buy them!
If you opt for the folding cot option over the air mattress, you can consider the process of shopping around complete because you already know of a vendor that delivers quality products every time. From bunk beds to folding cots, all of the beds and furniture from American Bedding are durable and reliable because they're expertly designed and carefully constructed with quality materials.
If you need pricing before you can make your final decision between air mattresses and our 350 Folding Cots, we'd love to send you a quote. Click on the banner below to request one today! You can also contact us online or give us a call at (800) 203-2507.
Editor's Note: This blog was originally published on 5/9/18 & has been updated to include new information.