Which battery?

[archangle]

First, this is free advice. Satisfaction is guaranteed or no money back.

OK, I don't really have a good number for how much current your machine really draws, but the maximum is 3 Amps at 22V. I suspect it's a lot lower for average current draw. If you want a battery solution, try this.

Get

1) The Respironics adapter. https://www.cpap.com/productpage/DC-Pow ... Bipap.html $165.
2) At AutoZone, buy a Duralast/685 CA marine deep cycle battery $87.99 It's a store item. It's about the size of a normal car battery. It weighs 45 lbs. I think it's around 75 Amp Hours.
3) A Schumacher SE-1-12S trickle charger $29.99 at AutoZone. It's not an in store item, so you need to have them order it, or go through their web site.
4) A battery box. AutoZone lists one as Part Number: 03189 Alternate Part Number: HM-318-BK $12.99
I'm not sure that the above battery fits this box. Try it on for size before you buy. Larger boxes are available, but you may have to go elsewhere.

Other chargers and batteries may work fine, too. I'm pretty sure this combination will work, and you should be able to find all these parts locally. I also know that there are a lot of combinations that won't work long or reliably.

You are not going to find a reliable solution that's much less cost, weight or size for this. Unfortunately, I don't know the real current draw for your machine, only the maximum, so I can't really tell you how long it will run on this setup. It will almost certainly work for an overnight power outage, which is a big help.

Setup:

1) Put the box somewhere near your BiPAP machine if you don't want to have to haul it around when the power goes out. Put the battery in the box.
2) Hook the trickle charger up to the battery plug it in. You can leave it hooked up all the time, except when you connect it to the Respironics adapter.
3) Put the top on the box and put the strap around it to keep the pets out of it, if necessary.
4) When needed, unplug and disconnect the charger, disconnect the AC power for the BiPAP, then connect the Respironics adapter with the battery clips it comes with.
5) After the battery has been charged for a week or so and the red light on the charger stays on, run your machine on the battery and see how many nights it lasts. Use it for one night for the next month or so. Once you're comfortable, try it every six months or so.
6) Economize your use in an actual power outage. Turn it off if you wake up and aren't likely to go to sleep. Don't turn it on and then read or listen to the radio, etc. before you go to sleep. Don't put it on and lie down if you aren't really ready to go to sleep.

Cautions:

1) Be sure you can't knock the battery over easily. Acid will spill. Non spillable batteries are available, but MUCH more expensive. Put the cover and strap on. There are slots you can run the cables out of the box with.
2) Be extra safe and set the battery box inside something that will contain acid if somehow the battery and the box leak. A cheap plastic storage box is probably OK, since you should really never get acid out of the first box.
3) With the battery box sealed up, the pets shouldn't be able to get to the battery, unless they're big enough to knock over a heavy box. They could chew the wires, you'll have to handle that if it's a likely possibility.
4) Don't overfill the battery. Water only goes up to the bottom of the filler tube, not the top. More water doesn't really hurt that much except it makes it more likely to spill or bubble out the top. Check once a month until you figure out how often you need to check. Some batteries don't need to be checked, but they should tell you this on the battery.
5) If this won't power your machine for enough nights, you'll need another battery and charger, or a bigger battery. The bigger battery is going to be bigger, heavier, and more expensive.
6) After the first test, don't run the battery all the way down unnecessarily. If it will run for 3 nights, only test it for one night when you run your monthly test. You might do a multi night test every year or so to be sure the battery still holds the same charge.
7) When the battery gets old and weak after a few years, don't mess with it. Recycle it and replace it. You don't want to have all this stuff and then find it doesn't work when you need it.

Options:

1) If you get a generator, get a good automatic 50 amp battery charger to use to charge the battery during the day during a long outage. Disconnect the Respironics adapter and the trickle charger before connecting the 50 amp charger. You'll still want the trickle charger for normal usage so it's ready on a moment's notice.

2) Add a 7 day mechanical light timer to only charge the battery with the trickle charger 1 day a week, and the battery will last longer. If you actually run the machine off the battery overnight, turn the power on to the trickle charger for one full week after using the battery. I bought a 7 day Woods timer at Walmart for $15 or so. There are digital timers, but you've got to figure out how to program them, and I don't trust them.

[physicsbob]

I agree with Achangle except I leave my float battery charger on all the time and run my M series cpap and humidifier full time directly off the battery without unhooking anything. I Have used this system for a year and half with no problems. We get frequent power outages here, (3 so far this year), so i prefer to run off the battery. With my 110 amp/hr battery I can get 4 -nine hour sleep nights with the humidifier set at 2 without charging. With my new IntelliPap I have both the battery, with charger, and the power line hooked up and it will auto shift to the battery if the power goes out, Another thing you could consider is buying a set of jumper cables and charging the battery during the day from your car. I would think about twenty minutes or so would give you a full charge.

[archangle]

I agree with Achangle except I leave my float battery charger on all the time and run my M series cpap and humidifier full time directly off the battery without unhooking anything. I Have used this system for a year and half with no problems. We get frequent power outages here, (3 so far this year), so i prefer to run off the battery. With my 110 amp/hr battery I can get 4 -nine hour sleep nights with the humidifier set at 2 without charging. With my new IntelliPap I have both the battery, with charger, and the power line hooked up and it will auto shift to the battery if the power goes out, Another thing you could consider is buying a set of jumper cables and charging the battery during the day from your car. I would think about twenty minutes or so would give you a full charge.

Leaving the charger running and running the CPAP machine is less safe than running without the charger attached. However, there's nothing wrong with this unless the charger is putting out voltage spikes, or goes crazy and puts out too high a voltage. The risk is probably slight, but a CPAP machine is expensive. I actually have some electronic equipment (not a CPAP) that I run off 12 volts in exactly this way.

You also need to be sure that your charger can keep up. It's possible that the CPAP machine may draw more Amp Hours out of the battery in a day than the charger can pump in. On the Schumacher charger, you can tell it's fully charged because the red light will come on. Or you could check the voltage occasionally.

I also seem to recall a note on the Respironics cable for CPAP that you couldn't use it if the pressure setting was higher than 11.

If you get desperate, you could just sleep with the BiPAP machine in the car running off the cigarette lighter and unplug and crank the car and run it long enough to recharge the battery every day. Just be sure the battery is good enough to start the next morning after BiPAPing all night.

[Kiralynx]

Archangle,

Just wanted to say thanks for the time you and others have taken in your replies on this thread. When I started, I was tired and miserable from no refreshing sleep due to the power outage, plus the upcoming termination of my job. I've gotten some decent sleep since the power came back, but now my beloved Sunny-girl is doing very poorly. (She's 13, standard long-haired dachshund, has mitral valve disease. And I wish I could put her on CPAP.)

Do the furkids run around in the yard while you sleep, or do they stay indoors? Just turn the generator off during the day. Most of these generators aren't that dangerous. They don't have external moving parts. There may be a hot exhaust port, but it's no more dangerous than a car that's just been parked. If they decided to snuggle up and sleep in the warm exhaust stream, that would be a problem, but no worse than a running car. If you're worried, make a little fenced area.

By the way, are the furkids dogs, cats, or what? What size? Dogs are easier to keep out of things.

One of those plastic garden sheds would do fine if you leave the door open when the generator is running.

I have two standard long-haired dachshunds -- Sunny, mentioned above, and her litter-sib, Shadow, aka the Goofy Gargoyle. And the babble beagle, Babette. Keeping them out of things is... not easy. They have free access to the fully fenced back yard, via a critter door.

I would be more likely to run the generator, if I had one, during the day, when most people are awake, and use it to recharge a battery for my BiPap ASV, as well as re-chilling the fridge and re-freezing the freezer.

You can't depend on sun being available to charge the battery, especially around hurricane time. You need your batteries in a solar power system to be able to carry the load for a week or so without any charging because it can be cloudy for that long, and solar cells do a little charging when it's cloudy, but not much.

Depends. If we're talking regular cloudy weather with a standard line of thunderstorms (the original trigger for this thread), you would be right -- it was cloudy all day, the day the power went out. If we are talking about hurricane conditions, the hurricane, going inland, frequently drags all the moisture with it, and you have painfully clear and very hot days right after it.

A battery with a generator for charging during the day is probably the best idea of all. This lets you use a much cheaper generator. You would need to buy a "normal" battery charger for use with the generator that pumps out a lot of amps, not a trickle charger.

Almost ANY adequately sized generator would do well in this use. Unplug the battery from your CPAP machine, hook it up to the charger. Get an automatic charger that will do 50 amps (with lower current settings, too) to charge the battery. That way, you can charge the battery while running the generator for only an hour or two. I can make recommendations for a specific charger if you want to do that. Figure about $50 to $100 for a good charger to use on the generator. Get a trickle charger to keep the battery charged all the time when power is available.

If I can manage it, I'm strongly of the opinion that a multi-phase back-up plan is best. Does me no good now, but what I want to have is a wind-generator and solar, with a back-up generator, because it's darned rare we have no sun without having plenty of wind, and vice versa. Recommendations appreciated.

We may have some $$ coming in (I have a birthday coming up, and my Dad might be willing to spring for the Battery Geek battery (see http://www.batterygeek.net/v/vspfiles/S ... _222Wh.asp) which, since I already have the connector for the ASV from here https://www.cpap.com/productpage/DC-Pow ... Bipap.html might be my easiest choice. Sorry for repeating some of these links, but I just hate getting into a multi-page thread and knowing I saw a link to something SOMEWHERE in the thread, and then being unable to find it.

I am assuming, but would have to verify before purchase, that this battery comes with a re-charger suitable for charging it in a reasonable amount of time from a generator.

It's not that arcane. Honda generators are usually sold only by authorized dealers. You can probably get one of them to crank one up and let you hear it run. The sales literature will tell you how long they will run, but they seem to say they'll run around 8 hours with a light load.

Some of the "super quiet" Honda generators are about as quiet as a loud box window fan, and about the size and weight of a suitcase. Actually, you'd need to be careful someone doesn't steal it.

There are probably other good quiet generators, but I do know that Honda's "super quiet" generators are really good and really quiet.

Trust me: it's arcane. <wry grin> Prying my husband out to go look at a generator, when we don't (yet) have a safe place to store it (the aforementioned garden shed) could also be difficult.

If you do go with a generator, there are some problems there, too. Unfortunately, with modern "ecologically friendly" gasoline, you can't store gasoline for long. After a few weeks, it starts forming "varnish" that will mess up an engine. You can use "Sta-bil" additive in the gasoline to help, but it's still a bad idea to keep gasoline for too long. They're also putting ethanol on almost all gasoline these days, and that makes the problems much worse.

One good idea is to get the gasoline from the tank in your automobile, but a lot of vehicles have little "traps" in the filler hose that keep you from being able to siphon gas from the automobile, so be sure that works before you depend on it. The other way to do it would be to fill up portable gas cans before a possible event, but be sure to pour the gas into your car tank within a month or so of buying it.

Useful to not have your gas stolen from your car; a pain if you need it. Ours are 2005 models; not sure what their status would be, but I actually have the user's manual and can look that fact up.

Still, more likely to have some appropriate gas cans. I wouldn't care for trying long-term storage of fuel. We always fill both cars before a storm, so we could fill cans then. We've evacuated twice for storms: Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Gustav in 2008. In terms of regular use, potentially, we could fill the cans, say, once a month, then, towards the end of the month, empty them into the car, and then re-fill.

By the way, there's a Batteries Plus store in Houma.

This post is long enough, I'll post a possible simple, fairly cheap, battery only solution in another post.

Yes, and it turns out one of my former co-workers obtained a job at a battery store on Severn. <wry grin> I may have to go visit his new store... I thank you again for the time you put into this.

[Kiralynx]

First, this is free advice. Satisfaction is guaranteed or no money back.

OK, I don't really have a good number for how much current your machine really draws, but the maximum is 3 Amps at 22V. I suspect it's a lot lower for average current draw. If you want a battery solution, try this.

This is a very impressive compilation, and I thank you.

I'm not sure I have ROOM for this kind of set-up, but I'm sure that SOMEONE will find the information incredibly useful. And I will print it out and hand it off to my design engineer husband (pipe design, not EE) and see if I can persuade him to go with me in search of ingredients. I mean, components.

[archangle]

The batterygeek battery you linked http://www.batterygeek.net/v/vspfiles/S ... _222Wh.asp is either 12.5 Ah (Amp hour) or 18.5 Ah vs. around 75 Ah for the car battery style marine battery. Plus $435 list price for the battery geek model.

That's a lithium battery, which is really great until they suddenly quit working without warning and will no longer take a charge. If you get it, be sure to follow the charging instructions, especially in terms of not letting it sit uncharged for a long time. It's vitally important to never charge it with anything other than the manufacturer's charger. Lithium batteries can burst into flame if you abuse them.

I'd still be really careful on depending on the solar charger. It may take a pretty big solar array to be able to recharge a nights worth of usage in one day. Remember when it says something like "65 Watt Solar Panel," that's 65 watts at noon, on a clear day, with the panel aligned precisely with the sun, no trees, etc. You'll be lucky to get an average of 30 watts for 8 hours on a "65 Watt" solar panel.

Glad to help on digging up the information. This is stuff I've done before, except for that particular battery. I've just been buying whatever marine battery I find at Sam's, Costco, or Walmart and have done OK.

I love Dachshunds. I spent Thanksgiving day sick in bed cuddled up with 5 dachshunds while my extended family was out having Thanksgiving dinner.

[wm_hess]

Wow Archangle

That was a lot of information! Thank you for taking the time and trouble to post the specific things to pick up and the instructions. Now a non mechanically minded person (like me for example) can have a multi-day backup in case of power problems!

-Bill

[Kiralynx]

The batterygeek battery you linked http://www.batterygeek.net/v/vspfiles/S ... _222Wh.asp is either 12.5 Ah (Amp hour) or 18.5 Ah vs. around 75 Ah for the car battery style marine battery. Plus $435 list price for the battery geek model.

It's expensive, I agree. One pays for the pre-assembled factor. OTOH, if you read up-thread, you'll note that BB, who also uses a BipapASV, has used this battery and can get at least the better part of a night's sleep out of it -- and her pressures are somewhat higher than mine, which would probably require more power.

That's a lithium battery, which is really great until they suddenly quit working without warning and will no longer take a charge. If you get it, be sure to follow the charging instructions, especially in terms of not letting it sit uncharged for a long time. It's vitally important to never charge it with anything other than the manufacturer's charger. Lithium batteries can burst into flame if you abuse them.

On the other hand, the lithium battery can be carried on a plane with me if I'm traveling, which a lead-acid can't be. In addition, it's what, less than five pounds? which means I can handle it by myself, and not have to drag my poor husband out of bed.

I think that this is where my plan of using the battery one night in each month throughout the year to keep it active -- and also to know if it's failed -- would be useful.

I'd still be really careful on depending on the solar charger. It may take a pretty big solar array to be able to recharge a nights worth of usage in one day. Remember when it says something like "65 Watt Solar Panel," that's 65 watts at noon, on a clear day, with the panel aligned precisely with the sun, no trees, etc. You'll be lucky to get an average of 30 watts for 8 hours on a "65 Watt" solar panel.

Well, I'm going to check with a couple of solar companies who are accustomed to doing set-ups in this area and see what their recommendations would be. We already have solar hot water. In fact, we had no gas hot water for three years after Hurricane Katrina (husband turned off the pilot when we evacuated and we couldn't get it started again when we came back) and functioned solely on solar. You sort of had to plan your showers in December and January, but otherwise, it worked well.

Glad to help on digging up the information. This is stuff I've done before, except for that particular battery. I've just been buying whatever marine battery I find at Sam's, Costco, or Walmart and have done OK.

There's one thing about using readily available components: Wal-Mart was open in Baton Rouge the day after Katrina, and did a better job of bringing in emergency supplies than FEMA did.

I love Dachshunds. I spent Thanksgiving day sick in bed cuddled up with 5 dachshunds while my extended family was out having Thanksgiving dinner.

I've had dachshunds for over 40 years. Shadow and Sunny are a special pair of a special breed... she's feeling better today, but still not herself. Keeping fingers crossed. Her line is known for lasting to 15 or 16, which is what I'm hoping for. They saw me through my cancer diagnosis and surgery: I hope they're with me when I'm finally declared cancer-free.

[archangle]

Lithium batteries on airplanes is a BAD idea.

The TSA and FFA have waffled back and forth on lithium batteries. At one time they were banned or partially banned from aircraft. I don't think they're banned right now, but I'm not sure, and that could change at any time. The TSA and FFA are rightfully twitchy about lithium batteries, especially big ones. After all, they are big lumps of metal that aren't easy to X-ray or examine and they do have a tendency to burst into flames unintentionally.

Here's some scary footage of lithium battery fires/explosions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS6KA_Si-m8 It's supposedly an FAA training film. The battery you're looking at buying is a lot bigger than the laptop batteries in that video clip, and would presumably have more fire/boom.

DO NOT!!!! charge the lithium battery with a solar charger unless it's specifically approved by the manufacturer of that EXACT battery. Lithium batteries can explode or burn if charged improperly. Much more likely is that your battery will permanently cease to function.

Most lithium battery packs are designed with circuits in them that monitor the battery charging conditions and trip a circuit when they develop a "dangerous" condition and permanently refuse to take a charge in the future. The "dangerous" conditions may be as simple as over discharging or overcharging the battery. These conditions are believed to damage the battery, making it much more likely to burn or explode in the future. This is why so many laptop batteries simply "up and die" and refuse to take a charge. If you hook to anything but the approved charger, it's likely to trigger the "permanent safety shutdown" circuit.

If you get a good enough solar power system with an inverter to generate normal 120 VAC with enough current, you can use the approved charger system for that battery running off 120 VAC to charge the lithium battery.

Don't get me wrong, lithium batteries are great when they work. You simply have to understand their limitations and risks.