should my heated hose feel warm?

[bill-e]

I cant tell if it's still working. I seem to remember that it felt warm to the touch, it doesn't now. Can I use a meter to test it?

[grayghost4]

Mine is warm to the touch ..... by meter you mean temp meter or electrical meter ?

[bill-e]

Electrical

[grayghost4]

With out wireing diagram or specks ... it will be hard to test .... there are 3 terminals on the hose ... don't know what they are ... you could guess ????

Make sure the pins in the connection between the blower and humidifier are not pushed out of the plastic holder ... also chech the connection under the cover of the humidifier is connected correctly.

[guest1]

Buy a small indoor weather station from Amazon. I bought one for $9.98 (brand was Acurite).

1) Switch the weather station on. Wait for 10 minutes for the reading to stabilize in the room. Note the temp and RH.
2) Run your machine with heated tube on and humidifier on. Set the outlet port of your heated tube to blow on the sensor of this weather station. Give it 5-10 minutes. You will know if it is working.

Cheaper than doing some electrical wiring magic.

[cnaumann]

Run the hose under a pillow for a while then see if it the section under the pillow feels warm.

[Greg Riddle]

The house isn't always warm. Turn humidity and house temp all the east up and see what happens

[ericob]

For me, the "temperature control" feature has been very frustrating. I've had my machine for six months and recently got a new hose. It made no difference. The system may be working "as designed." Regardless, I'm not happy.

At the same heat setting, when grasping the outside of the hose the felt temperatures varies from "very warm" to "just barely warm." Without changing the hose temperature setting, the felt air temperature at my face varies from too warm to much too cool. I don't heat my house at night, and like having a window open in my bedroom. It's Winter in North America and even in the Pacific Northwest, my room air temperature can get down to 50 degrees F or so. Of course that means that the intake air temperature for the machine is much lower than it is in Summer. I expect the machine to deal with it.

The heated hose is very good at preventing condensation in the hose. I had hoped that the hose temperature control would be an additional comfort adjustment. Seeing as how the system can, sometimes, manage to get the air too hot, I don't understand why it can't manage to get it at least comfortable consistently. I just haven't been able to make out any pattern to how the air temperature varies.

I can start the night out needing the hose temperature set to maximum (and that being still too cool), but by morning I (sometimes) need to set it all the way to the minimum or the air is too hot. Air temperature in the room hasn't changed very much though.

All this is confused by the fact that the humidifier generates moisture by heating the water in the reservoir. Which of course heats the air that blows through that compartment. Also, higher air pressure results in a higher airflow, which I think will make the air blowing across my face feel cooler (wind chill factor in action). Plus, a higher humidity setting would seem to allow my face to get more moist, which could also make the air feel cooler because of evaporative cooling.

It is confusing and frustrating!

(As for the three electrical contacts on the hose, remember there is a temperature (or humidity, or both) sensor near the mask end of the hose. So besides power for the heating element, they have to get data from that sensor back to the machine somehow.)

[chunkyfrog]

The heated hose does not really make my nose "warm", but without it, My nose is noticeably cold.

[Sleeprider]

I have used heated hoses since 2008, starting with the "Aussie" Sleepzone heated hose. I wouldn't do without it. I changed to the PR S1 60 series heated tube in December, and really don't notice a lot of difference. The Aussie hose was hotter to the touch and if you left it buried under a pillow, it was really noticeable. Not so much with the heated tube. OTOH, I have never had condensation with the heated tube. It was very noticeable when I did not have the heated tube set properly

If you're using the Philips product, be sure to use classic humidity rather than System One. Much warmer, and more moisture.

[BlackSpinner]

The hose is heated to prevent condensation on the hose. You get the same effect by wrapping a regular hose in polar fleece. It doesn't warm the air, it just prevents it from getting cold enough that the water condenses on the hose and gives you a face full of water.

[Pugsy]

I don't heat my house at night, and like having a window open in my bedroom. It's Winter in North America and even in the Pacific Northwest, my room air temperature can get down to 50 degrees F or so. Of course that means that the intake air temperature for the machine is much lower than it is in Summer. I expect the machine to deal with it.

Well...it can only deal with it up to a point.
Have you seen the product literature?
https://www.cpap.com/productpage/pr-sys ... ifier.html

the heated tube has five levels of temperature available, ranging from 4 to 16 degrees above the room temperature.

It can only do so much with lower starting room temperatures...16 degrees above 50 degrees isn't all that warm but it's a heck of lot warmer than it would be without the heated hose.

You might have been happier with the S9 and the Climateline as I haven't ever seen the temps tied to ambient room temp in their literature. It shows an actual hose air temp setting up to 86 degrees...now if it actually gets there in a 50 degree room....I don't know.

[ericob]

I don't heat my house at night, and like having a window open in my bedroom. It's Winter in North America and even in the Pacific Northwest, my room air temperature can get down to 50 degrees F or so. Of course that means that the intake air temperature for the machine is much lower than it is in Summer. I expect the machine to deal with it.

Well...it can only deal with it up to a point.
Have you seen the product literature?
https://www.cpap.com/productpage/pr-sys ... ifier.html

the heated tube has five levels of temperature available, ranging from 4 to 16 degrees above the room temperature.

It can only do so much with lower starting room temperatures...16 degrees above 50 degrees isn't all that warm but it's a heck of lot warmer than it would be without the heated hose.

You might have been happier with the S9 and the Climateline as I haven't ever seen the temps tied to ambient room temp in their literature. It shows an actual hose air temp setting up to 86 degrees...now if it actually gets there in a 50 degree room....I don't know.

I have looked for product literature on the hose, with specs. The closest I've got is this PDF file: http://www.healthcare.philips.com/asset ... e-intl.pdf which I found at the (apparantly European) site http://www.healthcare.philips.com/main/ ... dering.wpd

This document makes no mention of output air temperature value or "4 to 14 degrees above room temperature." I wonder where the various CPAP supply web sites got that? The PDF includes a pretty graphic illustrating how the air you breath is kept at a steady temperature despite the room temperature dropping during the night. That graphic and accompanying text would seem to be at odds with the idea that breathing air temperature is adjusted to track room temperature. The text next to this graphic includes "...System One Heated Tube. It allows patients to select their preferred humidity and temperature levels throughout the night, regardless of changing room conditions." That certainly is not what I'm experiencing. Mysterious.

As for design: if "X degrees above room temperature" actually is how the machine is designed, all I can say is that I think that is a bizarre choice.

If the machine is doing this, one could "trick" it into supplying 85 degree air in a 50 degree room temperature by applying some heat at the machine's ambient air sensor. This may have been happening when some days I get plenty of heat and other days, not. Because...

I bought a tiny (200w) personal heater. At the face, it's about 4 inches wide and 6 inches tall. There is no thermostat, only a power switch. It puts out a very gentle breeze of warm air. It might be enough to keep your feet warm under the desk in a cold office. My thought was not to game the machine, but to preheat the intake air a bit and maybe give the hose heating system a little boost.

I have this heater aimed at the air intake on my CPAP machine, and positioned about 18 inches away. At that 18 inch distance, the back of machine gets gently warm. (It irritates me to be burning 200 watts for this... 25 watts would probably be plenty, if the heat source were closer to the machine. Maybe I should check out terrarium or reptile heaters!)

The odd thing about this is that the increased heat behavior from the machine is not consistent. One night, after moving the heater to 12 inches distant from the CPAP machine, and turning the hose heat to 5, the temperature remained much too cool all night. Last night though, I had the heater back to 18 inches away and eventually ended up moving the hose heat setting to 1 (!) and finally turning my external heater off. The breathing air temperature stayed comfortable for the next 5 hours. Ambient temperature wasn't much different between the two days. Also that night, at "3" the humidity was much too high. It was even very wet at a setting of 2.

I love to corner a technical rep for this machine.

[Guest1]

Also for the Heated Humidifier and tube's brochure at PR site, they show a graphic that the heated tube temp stays constant when the room temp is shown as falling. That means that the tube is following a constant temp and not some (room temp + x degrees) metric.

CPAP dot com in its spec tab for the PR heated humdifier say this :
Heated Tubing Temperature Range: 16º to 32º C (60º to 89º).
Heated Tubing Temperature Cut-out: ? 41º C (? 106º F)

This matches real nicely with the 5 settings of temp for heated tube (16 degree at 1, 20 at 2, 24 at 3, 28 at 4 and 32 at 5).

I have read on this board multiple times that the PR 60 series heated tube follows a room temp + x degrees.

So which one is correct? I don't know. Maybe someone has tested the actual temperature of air being delivered out of the heated tube.