Lately I’ve been toying with the idea of making my own vacbed. the idea doesn’t seem overly complicated, it’ll be fun learning how to work with latex and it’s an awesome bit of kit. I’ve done a lot of research and the thing that I really didn’t like with a majority of the DIY vac beds out there is the requirement to leave the vacuum cleaner on. I couldn’t deal with that so I decided to start with a valve mechanism. I managed to get myself a one way valve and stripped it down
The parts on the left are the valve and the tube on the right is the PVC pipe I want to attach it too. I wanted to mount the valve on the inside of the PVC cap to try and reduce my risk of leakage so IÂ marked the centre of the PVC pipe and being cutting out a circle. To cut the circle I initially drilled lots of holes to remove the bulk of the material….
Then I used a scalpel to remove the rest and tidied the hole with some sandpaper. now I have the hole I needed to cut down the flange on the valve so it fitted inside the cap
Once everything fitted it was a simple case of assembling the valve inside the cap, with a helping hand of silicone to remove those pesky leaks.  Now it was time to do a proper test. I rigged up a sealed bag and attached the vacuum. SHE WORKED!!! she pulled a very good vacuum in the bag…but the vacuum alone would do that, time to turn her off. A few nail biting seconds later I relaxed she was still a tight vacuum 😀 I ended up leaving this sealed bag over night and coming back to it in the morning and she was still holding pressure! she worked a treat. 
Now I’m under no illusions, I know that on the full size vacbed there are bound to be leaks, but hopefully it will mean the vacuum will only be needed for the occasional top up. meaning no distractions by that annoying motor whirling away while subby is trying to slip off to happy place. Next on the list is to try and source a very very cheap airtight zipper. Failing that I have been advised that a normal zip with a latex flap underneath can work well if done correctly…we shall see!