Power Outage

Magnum · Post by **Magnum** » Mon Jul 07, 2008 9:40 am

Thought I would mention this and see if anyone else had experienced this. The 4th of July I was using my new machine and setup everything like I had my old machine. Taped my mouth shut and tried to sleep. With Thunderstorms in the area, I kept waking up and around 1:00 was woke up by a big clap of thunder. Since I am a weather chaser I let evertyhing get quite trying to see if the warning sirens were going off. Then I realized it was too quite. And I could not breath. The power had went off and I could not draw enough air through the mask to breath.

I didn't panick as I just took the mask off, but just curious if anyone else has experienced this, perhaps while asleep.

ww · Post by ww » Mon Jul 07, 2008 10:10 am

That is why Full Face masks have anti-asphyxiate valves build in all of them. Unfortunately, tape does not provide this safe guard.

Pineapple · Post by **Pineapple** » Mon Jul 07, 2008 11:22 am

That's why my CPAP is plugged into a UPS (small one cost me under $100)

If the power goes off the unit supplies my CPAP with power long enough for the "power out" alarm to wake me up (Since I usually hit the ceilling when it goes off I've never really teated how long I would keep the CPAP functioning.)

TerryB · Post by **TerryB** » Mon Jul 07, 2008 11:50 am

Yeah, it's kind of complicated.
You need to deal with the mouth leaks somehow and you also need to take into account the possibility of power outage. I too have added a UPS to my bag of tricks.

TerryB

feeling_better · Post by **feeling_better** » Mon Jul 07, 2008 1:20 pm

Pineapple wrote:That's why my CPAP is plugged into a UPS (small one cost me under $100)

If the power goes off the unit supplies my CPAP with power long enough for the "power out" alarm to wake me up (Since I usually hit the ceilling when it goes off I've never really teated how long I would keep the CPAP functioning.)

Just a thought. If you are using the UPS just as a wakeup alarm only, you probably can as well use a small battery powered power outage alarm, plugged into the wall outlet. My guess is that should come in under $20.

ww · Post by ww » Mon Jul 07, 2008 2:30 pm

UPS systems are not much good for this purpose as they don't last but a few minutes and can cause harm to some Humidifiers made by ResMed. If you just want an alarm, plug a UPS into an outlet in your room and it will alarm on loss of power. I used an emergency light ($10) that had alarm and light come on for power outage. One surge was so bad it blew the light out.

Cheapest decent backup system is a Marine Battery with the 12V adapter for the CPAP. That gets large and messy, but is good for power outages that are 3 or 4 days in length. Let the UPS alarm wake you up, then plug the CPAP into the battery and you are set.

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Magnum · Post by **Magnum** » Mon Jul 07, 2008 5:07 pm

[quote="ww"]UPS systems are not much good for this purpose as they don't last but a few minutes and can cause harm to some Humidifiers made by ResMed. If you just want an alarm, plug a UPS into an outlet in your room and it will alarm on loss of power. I used an emergency light ($10) that had alarm and light come on for power outage. One surge was so bad it blew the light out.

Cheapest decent backup system is a Marine Battery with the 12V adapter for the CPAP. That gets large and messy, but is good for power outages that are 3 or 4 days in length. Let the UPS alarm wake you up, then plug the CPAP into the battery and you are set.

Magnum · Post by **Magnum** » Mon Jul 07, 2008 5:09 pm

[quote="TerryB"]Yeah, it's kind of complicated.
You need to deal with the mouth leaks somehow and you also need to take into account the possibility of power outage. I too have added a UPS to my bag of tricks.

TerryB

wlo2008 · Post by **wlo2008** » Mon Jul 07, 2008 5:13 pm

It would be nice if they built an alarm in all the machines for this reason. Mine has one. But then I have that new Bipap Auto SV unit for my Disordered breathing and centrals.

But I just feel that they all should have an alarm to say hey your power is out.