Camping?

[JaVelin]

Fitting out a new camper now for winter camping in a national park. we won't have hook ups where we are going so I'll need at least 3 days on batteries only. my delema is that the unit with heater draws too much current and to use an inverter is a huge waste of battery so I'm wondering if I can use my current equipemt off 12v. is there an adaptor already made to supply 12v and has qnyone tried this?

[harry33]

not sure I understand, do you mean a heated hose?
anyhow all heat to hose or humidifier will have to be turned off
see if your CPAP has a "12V DC in "plughole, if not you will need a special tranformer or inverter thats recommended by your CPAP maker and these are expensive, I dont know whether an ordinary inverter would work well enough, has anyone tried this
you could get some 12 V DC power from the vans cigarette lighter and run the engine on a fast idle to recharge battery if other campers dont object

theres talk of a 'pure sine wave' being needed, not sure what this means

[SleepfulInSanJose]

I recently went camping for 2 nights with a ResMed S9 and a modified sine wave inverter - my battery was a 100+ AH deep-cycle marine battery, and according to ResMed, that should be enough to support me for 5 days or so if the humidifier's off - I kept EPR and Autoset on.

[msla]

Go to the host of this forum. Click on power supply. There is a cable that will connect the CPAP to a cigarette lighter power source. There is also a pair of alligator clips that will attach to a 12 volt marine deep cycle battery. You will be able to run the CPAP(probably with out power to the humidifier). You can use the humidifier in pass over mode by putting water in with no heat, it is better than nothing. Try the setup at home for a couple of nights to ensure that it will work when you get to the campground. You may want to have an additional battery and/or a solar powered battery recharger to extend the usable power in the battery each day. I have done this and found that my old Remstar would not work with a gel-mat deep cycle battery but did work with a regular deep cycle marine battery. I also had a cigarette lighter plug put into the trailer and could then run directly from the house battery. Again you might want to install one extra battery on the trailer.

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Have fun out in the wilds.

Rolf

[rested gal]

For a bunch of ideas:

LINKS to Battery operation, camping, power outage
viewtopic.php?t=9682

[physicsbob]

I have a series M machine with humidifier, I went camping with it this summer, I used a Deep Cycle marine 85 Amphr. battery. I used the 12 Volt cable from Respronics. This cable while a little pricey but it is very well made with two good noise filters built in. With a pressure of 9.0 cm and my with my humidifier set at 2, I got 4 eight hour nights with out recharging. Because I didn't want to stress the battery, I recharged it after this, I think I could have gotten at least another night or two, if I pressed it If you need to get more time than this I would recommend turning off the humidifier. I would also get a good float charger to keep the battery charged and not damage it.

[JaVelin]

Thanks for all your sugestions folks. the battery life esimates are very helpfull. I will equip the camper with 2 batteries 100AH heach and should be good to go (this has to run the furnace too). I'll be able to recharge from the vehicle if needed but I think It should be fine anyway. I'll have an external Automatic charger when we are on shore power.