Lost Power - The Plan Worked

A word of caution in use of a car battery to power your cpap. Car batteries are not designed to be discharged in this way. They are meant to be used as starting batteries, not deep cycle batteries. If you discharge a car battery too far you will ruin the battery. It could be a costly and inconvenient lesson. Even deep discharge batteries do not like to be discharged below about 50% of charge.

For one night's use of the car battery in this fashion, you'll likely get away with it. I would not rely on it for more than one night unless I was prepared to have to replace the battery and maybe pay for other repairs to the car (as noted by others).

The solution if you want back up power for more than one night is either to get a proper deep cycle battery (size depending on how many night's you need it to run the cpap), a travel battery (li-ion), or a generator. Personally, I've used a small deep cycle battery for the last four years with no issues. Two months ago, I installed a proper backup generator.

VikingGnome wrote:I recently bought a new battery for my 5-year-old Honda CR-V (with just 20k miles).

Honda likes to put undersized batteries in their 4 cyl cars. Also, you are probably doing a lot of short trips with such low miles. I used to live 2 miles from work. The short trips killed my Honda battery in under 2 years.

I lost power the other night for about 4 minutes. I am curious why the sears jump start that AVI listed would not work on its own. Its has a 110v AC inverter built into it already. Can't you just plug your machine directly into the AC output of that and not waist the money on the DC adapter or am I missing something?

If the power stoppage is less than a couple of nights then this 22Ah DieHard AGM JumpStarter should be able to run the S9 Autoset plus the humidifier set at 3.5 (no climate line):

http://www.sears.com/diehard-platinum-p ... ockType=G1

plus this DC converter:

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https://www.cpap.com/productpage/DC-Conv ... hines.html

Hi All. Best wishes to everyone for this holiday.

Journeyman wrote:I like it when a plan comes together. Do you remember "The A Team"

Yes. Although Hannibal's scheme's rarely worked and explosions were part of the plan.

For the details: On my cpap there is NO requirement for a pure sine wave inverter. Darn things are expensive.

On the battery. I have three (in winter) in the garage. Two cars and a small diesel tractor (with a full size car battery). My car has the oldest battery and I would normally expect it to have died a couple years ago. Since the batteries are used almost every day there is a very high probability that it will work for the cpap in an emergency. I normally would choose the tractor first but did not that night.

One night on a CPAP (without humidity) should not kill a battery; not enough drain. Folks, batteries are NOT durable items. And car batteries are not so exotic that they can not survive powering your cpap for a night. Expect three years from a standard car battery and if you kill it from a cpap during the night it must be close to failure anyway. I don't trust consumer backup batteries and don't want to buy a specialty deep discharge battery. Darn things are expensive. Car batteries are cheap, in proven working condition and just sitting down there, in the garage.

I made the Alligator clip leads with a in-line fuse holder about 6" from the clip. Both leads.

Everyone should have a plan. Seems like occasional extended power outages are part of modern life. This plan required the construction of semi heavy gauge clamp leads with an in-line fuse. Everything else was 'free'.

DaveMunson wrote: On the battery. I have three (in winter) in the garage. Two cars and a small diesel tractor (with a full size car battery). My car has the oldest battery and I would normally expect it to have died a couple years ago. Since the batteries are used almost every day there is a very high probability that it will work for the cpap in an emergency. I normally would choose the tractor first but did not that night.

One night on a CPAP (without humidity) should not kill a battery; not enough drain. Folks, batteries are NOT durable items. And car batteries are not so exotic that they can not survive powering your cpap for a night. Expect three years from a standard car battery and if you kill it from a cpap during the night it must be close to failure anyway. I don't trust consumer backup batteries and don't want to buy a specialty deep discharge battery. Darn things are expensive. Car batteries are cheap, in proven working condition and just sitting down there, in the garage.

I made the Alligator clip leads with a in-line fuse holder about 6" from the clip. Both leads.

Everyone should have a plan. Seems like occasional extended power outages are part of modern life. This plan required the construction of semi heavy gauge clamp leads with an in-line fuse. Everything else was 'free'.

I'm not disagreeing with you on any of this, except maybe your comment that car batteries are cheap. In my opinion, car batteries are not cheap.

My earlier post was intended to caution those who might try your backup plan for an extended period. Few have the resources (i.e. spare batteries, chargers, second vehicles, etc) that you have in case things go foul (in other words, you have several backup plans to your backup plan ). And whenever there is a power outage, there's no telling whether it will be for a few hours, a night, or maybe several nights. If you want to copy Dave Munson's backup plan, make sure that you understand the risks and have a backup to your backup plan, as does Dave.

To quote myself from my earlier post: "For one night's use of the car battery in this fashion, you'll likely get away with it. I would not rely on it for more than one night unless I was prepared to have to replace the battery and maybe pay for other repairs to the car (as noted by others)." I stand by that statement. And it's consistent with Dave's plan and experience.

signal20gsxr wrote:I lost power the other night for about 4 minutes. I am curious why the sears jump start that AVI listed would not work on its own. Its has a 110v AC inverter built into it already. Can't you just plug your machine directly into the AC output of that and not waist the money on the DC adapter or am I missing something?

An inverter may damage the humidifier on older CPAP machines. ResMed S9 or PRS1 machines should be fine.

Using the DC adapter or converter will allow you to run your machine for longer off the battery than using an inverter. However, either the PRS1 or S9 machines should work fine off the 120VAC output of the DieHard battery, just not as long.

Your PRS1 machine only needs a cable, not the overly expensive DC-DC converter that S9 machines require.

Journeyman wrote:I like it when a plan comes together. Do you remember "The A Team" ? Our power went out the other day, it flickered a couple of times then after about five or ten seconds it came back on. I'm ready if and when we loose power with a small generator. The news reported twenty seven thousand plus were with out power because of the snow and wind here in mid Michigan. We saw people filling containers with gasoline the next day. Some had gas cans some just had containers. Any port in a storm I guess. I lot of people were having a bad day or two with the cold temperatures. Its good to have a plan that will work.

Just an update. It was reported this morning that about 9000 customers are still without power as yet. Crews are working on the power lines around the clock to get everyone back up. Small clusters all over northern Michigan. Downed trees and hard to get at locations would be my best guess for how long this issue is taking. I hope this is not trending from down sizing. I know that some service employees were sent to the east coast for support as well. Its been below freezing here for the past week. A plan, any plan for comfort and or protection for your home is an important thing to have before its needed. We are creatures of comfort and must haves for sure. Fifty to one hundred years ago it would just be another day in the life.