Filling the New Twist with other materials or need help with a personal DIY project using our materials?

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Can you recommend other fillings for the New Twist Mattress?  Would wool batting work? Is there any benefit to mixing buckwheat hulls and millet hulls? 

We have experimented with other materials (wool, coconut coir, horse hair, shredded foam) and found none compare to how well hulls work in the New Twist Mattress. Most natural materials compact and become hard over time, hulls do not.  Our mattress is over 10 years old and still feels like the first day we made it.  

Buckwheat hulls were found to be the most resilient mattress material, offering the most support and comfort (and the most economical too).  We have designed our kits for our buckwheat hulls only and therefore we cannot recommend any other mattress fillings.  Buckwheat hulls are also naturally flame resistant which makes using them to fill your family mattresses a sensible choice. 

We have had some reports of customers sourcing hulls from "dubious" sources to save money, and experiencing problems with their New Twist Mattress due to inferior hull quality.  Please consider your source carefully if buying your hulls locally.  All inexpensive, imported hulls will most likely be roasted which makes sharp-tailed brittle hulls that can abrade most fabrics.  We cannot guarantee our kit will work with any other hull source except for ours and our recommended, Canadian hull supplier.

 

Can you help me calculate the amount of hulls I would need for my personal DIY project?

We love hearing about your ideas for other uses of our materials and it would be wonderful to help each customer with their projects but unfortunately, there are only so many hours in a day!

Each bulk box of our millet (20 lbs) and buckwheat hulls (35lbs) fills a volume roughly 5,616 square inches (bulk box size = 26 X 18 X 12).  

To calculate the amount of buckwheat hulls or millet hulls for your project simply calculate the square inch volume of the item you wish to fill (see helpful volume calculator links below) and divide the result by 5,616.  You will most likely get a number with a decimal point.  Round that number up and that will equal the number of boxes to add to your cart!

Enter your project dimensions in inches into these calculators for the following shapes:

Volume of a rectangle
Volume of a cube
Volume of a cone
Volume of a cylinder
Volume of a sphere
Volume of a hexagonal pyramid

 

A note about bean bags:

We often get asked about filling bean bags with hulls. Keep in mind that hulls are heavier than synthetic pellets so you may end up with something that's hard to move around. 
To make a hull filled bean bag (which we have not tried yet), we could imagine filling a smaller inner case with a lighter material (a blanket? or kapok filling) anchored it to the bottom of the outer case.  The top and sides could then be filled with hulls to enjoy a surface that shifts and molds like a bean bag.  
We do have a bean bag chair on our to-do list at our sister store NaturalFillingStore.com as our choice for bean bag filling would be a combination of kapok (or hemp fiber) + super lightweight rubber infused spelt hulls!  
Something to note is that most bean/ pellet/ hull filled items are not filled to capacity and some space must be left empty to allow the filling to shift around.

 

Is there any benefit to mixing buckwheat hulls and millet hulls?

There are health claims out there saying millet hulls can boost your immunity although we have not discovered any scientific information on this.  If this was proved to be true, we could see the benefit to mixing hull types.

We have tried mixing hulls for a pillow filling, and it does not change the feeling of the pillow. Layering millet hulls and buckwheat hulls within their own separate compartments (in a double-sided pillow) is recommended for the best of both worlds!  See our Ultimate Pillow kit for our double pocket hull insert.

Try mixing lavender in with millet hulls or buckwheat hulls as it will keep your pillow and even the case, extremely fresh smelling.  

Try lavender millet hull pillows in your guest bedrooms too, your visiting friends and family members will be sure to notice this luxurious addition!