Heated Hose and Not Enough Humidity

I just upgraded my PR system one 260 series humidifier to the version with the heated hose and can't seem to get enough humidity. I've turned the humidifier on the max settings in the settings menu. I also have the hose on max heat. I wake up after about 2 hours being really dry and having to take the mask off. I'm thinking that removing the 260 series upgrade and then just using my humidifier on it's old settings with a climateline hose might help me get more moisture. Does anyone have any suggestions? February is just awful for using CPAP and I've gotten like 4 hours sleep each night and keep waking up every couple hours for the past month. I'm not looking forward to spending more money but I've been able to work less hours because of the lack of sleep so as long as it works I don't care what I need to spend to get a good night's sleep. Ideally I'd move to florida from January to March and that would solve the problem but that's not a possibility.

If your mouth is really dry then your mouth breathing and no amount of humidity will help. Need to figure out how to keep mouth shut. I have the same issue. It only happens when I can't keep my mouth shut

Tesseract wrote:I'm thinking that removing the 260 series upgrade and then just using my humidifier on it's old settings with a climateline hose might help me get more moisture.

I am confused....you are thinking of removing the heated hose upgrade and using a Climateline? The Climateline won't work on a Respirionics machine and there's not need to remove the upgrade kit features if you want to revert back to a different regular hose and a different form of humidity delivery.
BUT there's no other delivery form that will deliver more than 90% humidity delivery which is what you get if you have it set to maximum setting of 3.

What is dry? If it is your mouth that is dry then that's from mouth breathing and even with a full face face mask sometimes even with maximum humidity the humidifier can't keep up. It's a common complaint among full face mask users...they max out humidity and use a full face mask and wonder why they have a dry mouth. Well, some people's mouths just dry out more than others with whatever mouth breathing they do. Some people have it made worse by meds or other health conditions.

You can use a regular hose on the heated hose lid though. No need to mess with changing the lid or the heated hose upgrade stuff.
You could do that and maybe try Classic Mode at max but if your mouth is dry from mouth breathing it may not give you the results you need and greatly increases chance of rain out.

I've been known to talk in my sleep so maybe that's why I'm drying out. I discontinued the medicine Luvox over a month ago because I was super tired despite the cpap. I did sleep more through the night when I was on it but it just left me really tired during the day.

The climateline hose has it's own power supply.

https://www.cpap.com/productpage/comfor ... g-kit.html

I was thinking of using that with my humidifier on classic mode to get more humidity but am not sure if that will work or not. Once mid-march gets here things will start to get better. The hard winter is usually awful to get through as far as sleep goes.

You could try putting a portable humidifier in your bedroom.

Okay...ComfortLine and not ClimateLine.
ComfortLine is a stand alone heated hose....ClimateLine is ResMed's integrated heated hose.

I have used the PR System One in Classic Mode with a stand alone heated hose and I also have the 60 series integrated heated hose and I happen to prefer maximum humidity to keep my nasal mucosa happy.
I don't think a stand alone heated hose using Classic Mode will do what you want to do in terms of dry mouth.
Sounds like your house tends to be very dry during the winter....I don't think Classic Mode set to max of 5 is going to give you more than 90% humidity which is what you should be getting if you have the humidity in the setup menu set to 3 (that's the max for humidity) using the PR S1 heated hose.

Is there anyway you could limit your mouth opening without causing distress just so you could see if the problem was mainly mouth breathing? I just hate to see you spend another $70 for something that I don't think will help.

But should you wish to try the stand alone heated hose there is no need to change out the heated hose lid. I hate to keep messing with it just in case it breaks and a regular hose can be used on that lid without a problem. While it has the connection for the electric part of the heated hose you don't have to use a heated hose. I did it last summer with my PR S1 and I was going camping and was concerned about the power draw from the heated hose.

Tesseract wrote:really dry

Make sure there is not a heat duct blowing anywhere near your CPAP machine. Is it possible to close off the ducts to your bedroom at night?

Do you have nasal congestion?

Tesseract wrote:Ideally I'd move to florida from January to March

I live in a subtropical climate and have problems with dry mouth year round. I use this product nightly - http://www.drugstore.com/orajel-dry-mou ... tid=183812

If you have problems applying it so that it lasts all night, PM Chicagogranny. She wrote a post on how to apply it and that is what I follow.

Pugsy wrote:I just hate to see you spend another $70 for something that I don't think will help.

If Den checks in, he will tell her a humidity setting too high sometimes causes more mouthbreathing.

Sheffey wrote: If Den checks in, he will tell her a humidity setting too high sometimes causes more mouthbreathing.

Yeah, I know. And while it wouldn't be impossible for that to be the case I would want to dig a little deeper into potential congestion issues before I go telling someone to reduce the humidity setting. Been there myself and reducing humidity resulted in disastrous situation that took days to alleviate...and miserable days at that.

That's why I asked about distress if something was done to limit mouth breathing just to see if it helped or not.
Drastic I know (taping or chin strap) but just to see if keeping the mouth closed helped or not. If someone simply cannot breathe through their nose well enough to be comfortable then obviously a taping experiment is out of the question.
Plus we don't know the entire history here...maybe she has already tried less humidity in the past for some other reason and already knows that her nasal mucosa like and do better with the humidity setting and she breathes just fine through her nose and the main complaint is dry mouth. Mouth breathing doesn't automatically mean that someone is having nasal congestion and need to mouth breathe.

I appreciate the quick responses. We have a whole house humidifier that stays on 35% and I do run a humidifier in my bedroom that ups the humidity to about 39%. I had sinus surgery quite awhile back and seem to dry out pretty quick compared to how I used to be. I usually get congestion this time of year from the dry air but this year it isn't as bad. Actually I used to get sinus infections once or twice a year and since starting the CPAP in 2013, I haven't had one cold or sinus infection. Sleep doc said depression is probably the reason I keep waking up and didn't seem like there was anything more they could do to help. They did a second sleep study and a day study back in November and December and the recommendation was to go off one of my anti-depressants so I would feel less tired during the day. This was pretty positive as there really hasn't been that much difference in my depression since I went off of it. It was mostly for OCD anyways. I think I'm also a bit frustrated because I've had a pretty bad 2 day migraine.

I should be pretty happy that I've come a long ways in the past few years. A few years ago one of my docs and a therapist wanted to do electroshock therapy because I was so severely depressed. I found a therapist that does Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and that has taken me from a hopeless place to working 20 hours a week as a programmer after not working since 2003. I feel pretty ashamed that I'm not able to work more and fixing this sleep issue seems like the last thing I need to fix to finally be somewhat normal.

You need to raise the humidity on your house to 45 -50%

If you want to try a chinstrap to see if it makes a difference for you, this Ruby Red is a popular one that's available from amazon for about $15: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005HYTVEK/

The DMEs always tried to give me some stupid thing with only one skinny strap that never stayed in place - I'm sure they made a lot of money on that piece of crap.

How much water do you evaporate from the humidifier chamber every night. Mine usually has a quarter-inch to a trace left in the morning. turn off System One, and turn the heated hose up to 4 and the humidity to 3.

Tesseract wrote:I just upgraded my PR system one 260 series humidifier to the version with the heated hose and can't seem to get enough humidity. I've turned the humidifier on the max settings in the settings menu. I also have the hose on max heat. I wake up after about 2 hours being really dry and having to take the mask off. I'm thinking that removing the 260 series upgrade and then just using my humidifier on it's old settings with a climateline hose might help me get more moisture. Does anyone have any suggestions? February is just awful for using CPAP and I've gotten like 4 hours sleep each night and keep waking up every couple hours for the past month. I'm not looking forward to spending more money but I've been able to work less hours because of the lack of sleep so as long as it works I don't care what I need to spend to get a good night's sleep. Ideally I'd move to florida from January to March and that would solve the problem but that's not a possibility.

I have an issue with my mouth being dry - well, more my lips being dry when I wake up. Not so much my mouth. Can you use another humidifier (not the one in your CPAP) to make the air more moist in your bedroom? Depending on where you live it could be very dry. I live in Southern California and it is always around 30% humidity in house - or so say the little gauge. It is an old gauge so I don't know if it is accurate. I've read that anywhere from 30%- 50% humidity is ideal for inside the home. If you can go and out purchase a gauge it should tell you how much humidity is in your house. It may be that your home is very dry to begin with.

I just wanted to give an update in case someone else is having a similar problem. I've been using the Comfortline heated tube kit for about a week. It works great where the phillips tubing kit didn't let enough humidity get through. I'm now sleeping longer hours on my cpap at night. I've even had a night or two where I've slept through the night and only have woken up once then going back to sleep. Most nights I wake up every couple hours but my sleep doctor says that's more due to depression than anything else. It could also be my stomach as I have GERD but things are better overall and the comfortline hose is awesome. I've been more alert and have been able to work more hours also.