Painful hip when camping

[khain]

I had two punctures on an exped synmat. They were an absolute nightmare to find, as naturally I looked on the bottom of the mat.

Both were at the edges of the ridges in the top of the mat. It appears they were caused by sand or grit that got trapped in the ridges and made tiny holes. The design of the mat makes it pretty much inevitable that sand and grit will get trapped there. It also makes it very difficult to find and repair the holes adequately.

In fact I've never been able to repair the mat fully. Exped never responded to emails so the mat got binned.

Nothing to do with the mat being self-inflating (which others here seemed to be concentrating on), just the design of the mat. Other blow-up mats may be different.

[willem jongman]

The stories of delaminating self inflating mats often (though not always) concern mats that have been left inflated in hot tents. Delaminating insulated air mattresses have often been used with chair kits. I think that is a real no no.

[foxyrider]

The real problem is delamination (self inflating), or failed baffle seams (downmat/neoair etc). These render the mat more or less useless, and there's nothing you can do about it.

I'm either lucky or I take more care of my kit than others, never had either of those either!