Lost power Saturday night

My first power loss since starting CPAP(4 years). Kind of what I expected, loss of air woke me up. Still able to breath, house dark as a cave. Removed mask, could not get back to sleep without my sleep buddy...lol. Electricity came back 3 hours later, back to sleep in a heart beat. This is for all you new CPAP users that may have a question about power loss, you will NOT suffocate...lol. Have a nice day.

Knothead,

Either a battery for your CPAP or a generator will get you power to your sleep buddy until the electricity comes back on.

During Hurricane Ike (It actually followed us home from Florida to Indiana, not kidding) we lost power for 8 days. I used my BIL generator to run my CPAP & keep the freezer & fridge running. We now have a 5000 volt generator now & it runs both CPAPs, freezer, fridge, TV and a household lights. These are handy, but run around $400-500. I wanted a whole house generator but they go into the thousands - yikes!

A battery for your CPAP is less than that (check prices on cpap.com) so you might want to think about that. Sleeping without CPAP after you've been on it a while is horrible. Glad you only had to wait 3 hrs for your power to come back on.

Jen

My very first power loss when beginning cpap therapy also happened to be the very first night I used the tape to seal my lips (was using nasal pillow mask) and I also woke up without any panic or air hunger or suffocation. The quiet woke me up...took just a little bit of time to realize what it was and I was breathing enough air through the vent holes (tape was still intact) just fine. Took just a little bit of extra work but I wasn't in any discomfort at all from it.
Later I actually did an experiment to see how long I would/could breathe with mouth shut and power off...woke up one morning and power was off. I immediately went to cell phone to check the time and when I checked my report I saw that I had been sleeping for 15 minutes with power off as the report ended 15 minutes prior to my wake up time.
I was fine. No headache from rebreathing or anything like that. Nasal pillows again and I don't think I was mouth breathing because when I woke up mouth was shut and I didn't have any dry mouth which I normally get when I do mouth breathe.

jencat824 wrote: We now have a 5000 volt generator now & it runs both CPAPs, freezer, fridge, TV and a household lights. These are handy, but run around $400-500. I wanted a whole house generator but they go into the thousands - yikes!

A battery for your CPAP is less than that (check prices on cpap.com) so you might want to think about that. Sleeping without CPAP after you've been on it a while is horrible. Glad you only had to wait 3 hrs for your power to come back on.

Jen,

I recommend saving up for a whole house generator if you can. They are SO worth it. We have not (thank goodness!) needed to use ours for a hurricane, but we've had two instances where idiots hit power poles and knocked out power for 5000 people for 4-6 hours, both times starting in the middle of the night. We've also had outages because of our unusually cold weather this winter.

Each time, I was awakened by the power out alarm on my Beastie: beep beep (generator starts rumbling to life) beep beep silence. Power restored by the generator, and I could turn over and go back to sleep.

Kiralynx wrote:

jencat824 wrote: We now have a 5000 volt generator now & it runs both CPAPs, freezer, fridge, TV and a household lights. These are handy, but run around $400-500. I wanted a whole house generator but they go into the thousands - yikes!

A battery for your CPAP is less than that (check prices on cpap.com) so you might want to think about that. Sleeping without CPAP after you've been on it a while is horrible. Glad you only had to wait 3 hrs for your power to come back on.

Jen,

I recommend saving up for a whole house generator if you can. They are SO worth it. We have not (thank goodness!) needed to use ours for a hurricane, but we've had two instances where idiots hit power poles and knocked out power for 5000 people for 4-6 hours, both times starting in the middle of the night. We've also had outages because of our unusually cold weather this winter.

Each time, I was awakened by the power out alarm on my Beastie: beep beep (generator starts rumbling to life) beep beep silence. Power restored by the generator, and I could turn over and go back to sleep.

Same thing happened here, someone hit a power pole & knocked it down, the power company said it would be like 5 hours, it only took 3. Those guys have it together...lol. A generator sounds like a great way to go...

Kiralynx,

That's good advice, may try that since we've had similar problems before here. I understand they pause, then kick in with little interruption. Now I have to go to back door of garage, roll it out then start it. Rather I should say my hubby has to do that & it does interrupt sleep.

Jen

jencat824 wrote:We now have a 5000 volt generator now & it runs both CPAPs, freezer, fridge, TV and a household lights. These are handy, but run around $400-500. I wanted a whole house generator but they go into the thousands - yikes!

We have a whole house backup generator, it is comforting to know it is there if needed.

knothead wrote: Same thing happened here, someone hit a power pole & knocked it down, the power company said it would be like 5 hours, it only took 3. Those guys have it together...lol. A generator sounds like a great way to go...

We got the generator after I did without my machine for most of a week after Hurricane Isaac.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=81876&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=Isaac

Here is the report on what we got.

viewtopic.php?p=849700#p849700

SO worth it, even though it was $$$$$!!

jencat824 wrote: That's good advice, may try that since we've had similar problems before here. I understand they pause, then kick in with little interruption. Now I have to go to back door of garage, roll it out then start it. Rather I should say my hubby has to do that & it does interrupt sleep.

They wait a few seconds to be sure it's an actual outage and not a brown out or a momentary blip. Then they come to life automagically.

We don't have garage, thanks to Hurricane Katrina, and by the time I calculated what it would take to have a place to store a unit like yours, I realized it would not be that much more to get a really nice whole-house generator.

Mind you, we're now saving up for a new garage, but in the meantime!