Travel Bed Hack - $80 including mattress

Owen is 8.  He is capable of sitting up in bed, sits up and down like a yo-yo, moves around a lot and has no concept of the edge of his bed.   He would simply roll out of a bed even if the mattress was placed on the floor.  At home he is in a big cot like bed with a tent inside (there will be a post about this later).  This keeps him safe and stops him from falling out. I want to be able to travel as a family so I started to look at safe travel options. Here is what I have found some people use:

• The Safety Sleeper.  Looks awesome and very sturdy but unfortunately too expensive for us.
• The Nickel Bed.  Similar concept to the safety sleeper, doesn't look as sturdy and being much cheaper you would not expect it to be.  Probably would have been a good option for Owen but they don't post to Australia.
• The Sansbug pop up mosquito tent.  It's a pop up tent I know people use.  Looking at it I do imagine getting a mattress in and out could be an issue.  
• The Privacy pop tents.  You can get blackout ones or mosquito ones.  I am not sure one would be suitable strength wise for Owen and again getting a Mattress in and out could be an issue.

What did I come up with and use?

• An Oztrail Festival 2 person tent (fly discarded) set up on the floor in our holiday unit. I got the tent on special for $30.00 but have seen them as cheap as $20.00 in the past.
• I then lined the base with a queen size air mattress ($27.00 from Kmart).  I did not want any gaps between the mattress and the tent sides.
• Put on a fitted sheet (I already had that).
• Lastly, I blew it up with a electric pump (you can pick them up for less than $20.00 on ebay).

When we finished with it. I took off the sheet, deflated the mattress, folded up the poles and then with the mattress still in the tent, I rolled up the tent.  Finally the tent roll, pump and poles went in a folding camp chair bag, ready to unroll and inflate next time.  

Other notes..........

• Both set-up and take-down take about 10 minutes.
• It does take up a lot of floor space, so you need to be conscious of that, so probably not suitable for a hotel room. 
• The bed itself is a little noisy if the child moves a lot in their sleep.  
• Whilst I am not concerned from an Owen point of view, I did note it is not the strongest of tents, so I would not recommend it if your child tends to be destructive.
• We found we could not handle the bed in with us as Owen made too much noise in his sleep (not the bed but the noises he made in his sleep).  The second night we put him in the lounge room and it was fine.

The verdict.............HE SLEPT, he was SAFE and we will USE IT AGAIN :-)  


UPDATE 04/08/2015
I've had a few questions about the zip and how you could stop it from being accessible by the child. There are three zips that meet in the middle, so you could thread something through to lock it but whatever you use you need to make sure it is easy and quick to open in case of fire.

I have a couple of ideas:

• Thread through a reusable zip tie, you can get them for a few dollars from a hardware shop
• Use a kitchen cupboard baby lock like this the Dream Baby Ezy Check Flex-Loop Lock.

Hope this helps.  Good Luck