Cleaning your equipment

[carolinagirl2001]

This may be a very stupid question, but do you clean your equipment with distilled water or is just tap water okay?

[cosmo]

I have a Resmed welcome guide for my machine near me. It didn't say anything about distilled water for cleaning. Only for usage. Even showed a photo of the water chamber under a faucet.

[carolinagirl2001]

Thanks, that makes me feel better. I have been using tap water to clean mine as well, but today when I was cleaning I got to wondering if I should be using distilled!

[LSAT]

IMO...Probably better to rinse the inside of your water chamber with distilled water. In my case...I hardly ever rinse the water chamber. I just keep topping it off. I clean the chamber about once every 3 weeks on average.. My mask I clean with cpap wipes. I clean the silicone about every 2 weeks. The hose I never clean.

[cosmo]

If you go and find some official videos on cleaning machine or mask, you'll see they clean the gear under a faucet also.

[MrStein]

I clean my mask every day with a mask wipe. I empty the left-over distilled water from my humidifier tray every day and let it air dry. I clean my hose, humididfier tank/lid, grey foam filter, and mask once a week with lavender scent baby shampoo and warm tap water, then soak for 10 minutes in Control III. Then rinse all in warm tap water. Let dry. Keeps all my stuff smelling hospital clean. Love the smell of the Control III, and the secure feeling that the germs are eradicated.

[archangle]

Any fresh water safe enough to drink will be fine for washing your CPAP equipment.

Remember that even though it's medical equipment, there's nothing sterile about your CPAP equipment. Room air, your hands, your bed linens, your exhaled air, your face, etc. comes into contact with your CPAP equipment. Even if you used sterile distilled water to clean the equipment, anything you cleaned with it would soon be non-sterile. Any germs living in your tap water is probably going to be all over your house and your hands anyway.

ResMed makes a point to only use distilled water to FILL their non-dishwashable tanks, but doesn't say anything on the cleanable tanks. The ResMed clinical manual shows tapwater being used to clean the water tank. I haven't seen any manual that says to use distilled water to clean CPAP equipment.

Also, realize that distilled water isn't readily available in Australia, most of Europe, or most areas outside the US.

Using distilled water for filling the humidifier tank makes sense because that water sits in the tank, gets concentrated as the water evaporates, and germs could grow in the tank over time. Non-distilled water provides more nutrients for the germs to grow on than distilled water does. I think the main reason for wanting to use distilled in the tank is that it avoids mineral buildup.

[JamesW6175]

I clean my full face mask with regular unscented baby wipes, works great. The humidifier tank get filled with distiller water on a daily basis. The humidifier tank is enclosed , filtered air flow in and out , so it is in a fairly safe environment . I monitor it on a daily schedule, but have not seen anything growing in it yet. Have a climate controlled hose that has been cleaned once by running a piece of fishing line attached to a weight on one end and a cleaning rag on the other.
Filter on the fan unit show no dirt or any debris . I live in a household with five cats. No fur or any attacks of the hose yet, just passed my first month with my CPAP machine.