Dear TanningBeds.org,

My SunQuest Pro 16 SE tanning bed is taking up too much room in my home. Can/should I use this as a stand up bed? If so how?

Alicia
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Dear Alicia,

I like these kinds of questions: Simple, direct, to the point, and the answer would seem obvious to anyone, and they would say “no”. I am not others, however, and I will instead say “yes, it can be done, but you have to be a little crazy to do it”. I made pictures, too. Seriously, this is NOT a project I recommend, and I am offering my OPINIONS here solely for an mind exercise. I have never done this before, and likely wouldn’t. That doesn’t stop me from telling you HOW I would do it if I was going to. This doesn’t mean it will work, it only means this is how I would do it. Be forewarned, not everything I try works on the first attempt. What I am trying to say is: do this at your risk, and unless you are a glutton for punishment, you shouldn’t try it at all.

First, lets look at an artists rendering of the final product. Note the wooden blocks it sits on, as this is required.

Looks easy, doesn’t it? It isn’t quite so easy however, and requires some bolts, big screws and misc. sections of lumber. First, you will need to take off any leg kit that covers the metal legs (I didn’t on the image because I don’t have a royalty free image of a SunQuest, so I used a SunMaster). You will drill holes into the two leg sections of the SunQuest bed where the red lines are in the image below. You will then bolt a 2″ x 4″ board to each leg section. Note the clever use of a letter “W” to represent the legs.

That board is what you will use to bolt to the studs in your wall. You will also have to have the entire thing setting on wood blocks, so the bed can breath through the ends of the unit. This is required. You might find some way to permanantly attach them to the blocks. This will supply the main support for the bed, allow it to breath, and allow free movement of the hinges and hydraulic cylinders. Theoretically.

As you can see, it isn’t very pretty, and frankly, I really don’t know if it would works (it may put too much strain on the hinges, will void your warranty, might actually break something important and make the bed useless, for instance). I thought about trying this on an Alpha Sun tanning bed before, but they are all steel and I knew it could handle it. So again, I don’t recommend this modification (and still think you are crazy if you try it and you do so AT YOUR OWN RISK) but I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to explain how _I_ would do it, right or wrong.

Dennis