Camping battery

[thellraak]

I have a PRS1 with a heated humidifier and heated insulated tube.

My wife wants to go camping and it's my understanding that a battery won't last a few days if I am running the heated elements but with just Passover humidification I always end up taking my mask off.

Is there anything I can do over the next few weeks to prepare myself for a lack of a heated humidifier?

[CapnLoki]

I have a PRS1 with a heated humidifier and heated insulated tube.

My wife wants to go camping and it's my understanding that a battery won't last a few days if I am running the heated elements but with just Passover humidification I always end up taking my mask off.

Is there anything I can do over the next few weeks to prepare myself for a lack of a heated humidifier?

If you're camping in much of the country during the summer, the outside humidity may be high enough that you don't need any extra humidity. I never bring my humidifier on my boat, and often leave it behind when travelling to humid places like Florida. As long as the Dew Point stays above 50 I don't have a problem. Remember, if the dew point is above 60 and the night time temp drops to 70, that's going to feel pretty moist. If the dew point is higher you might have fog! The PRS1 samples the ambient air to it might not even turn on in these situations. Of course, in the Fall, or in high mountains or deserts, this doesn't work as well.

The next possibility is to minimize the humidity. At the lowest setting, the humidifier only uses about 4 Amp-Hours a night, about equal to the pump, so this means doubling the battery usage of the pump alone. Assuming it not too cold the heated hose should be turned off since its purpose is to prevent cold air from condensing the water out of the air. This shouldn't be an issue unless you're camping in the winter.

The final option is to just have a bigger battery. If you give us a bit more info (pump settings, desired length of stay, location) we can give a better estimate, but it goes like this: the pump is about 4-5 Amp-hours a night, double that for a minimal setting of humidity. That comes to about 10 AH per night. So U1 AGM battery with 35 AH would last 2-3 nights. This weighs 25 pounds. If you want more time and/or security you could take two batteries, or a bigger, say 100 AH battery.

Much info is in the link in my signature. About 10-14 posts down are entries on putting together this type of system, and a series of tests measuring the use of your pump with different humidity settings.

[wm_hess]

I have a PRS1 with a heated humidifier and heated insulated tube.

My wife wants to go camping and it's my understanding that a battery won't last a few days if I am running the heated elements but with just Passover humidification I always end up taking my mask off.

Is there anything I can do over the next few weeks to prepare myself for a lack of a heated humidifier?

Hi

You may want to search the forum for "heat moisture exchange" http://cpaptalk.com/search.php?keywords ... e+exchange and consider trying this instead of your humidifier. CPAP.com sells them for around $5.00 https://www.cpap.com/productpage/heat-m ... -unit.html

If you need significant humidity, I wonder if passover humidity plus one of these would be beneficial. I have no experience with these, I just remember them being mentioned before.

Hope this helps!

-Bill

[Rob K]

Here's something for you to experiment with before you leave. I have the same machine. On my last camping trip I left the tank home and wished I hadn't. The sound coming from the mask was much louder and I slept about 1.5 hours the first night. The second night was a little better. Then I was so tired I had to sleep no matter what. You can turn off the heat and humidity, but it if were me I'd leave the empty tank attached.

Another thing I do when camping to save battery is to use my Airfit P10 nasal pillow mask. I can turn the pressure down to 8 and achieve the same results as my regular mask at home which is an Airfit N10 nasal cushion mask run at 10.5-14 for pressure. The P10 has a smaller surface area to seal and for me I can reduce the pressure with this mask.

I also turn off the ramp mode and set the machine to cpap mode instead of auto mode. I figure an adequate constant lower pressure is going to save battery as opposed to having the machine varying the pressure all night in the auto mode.

For example: With my pressure set to 8 in the cpap mode. I have a 79ah agm battery and I can run it for about 8 hours and for 9 nights which takes it down to about 50% charge.

[Goofproof]

Here's something for you to experiment with before you leave. I have the same machine. On my last camping trip I left the tank home and wished I hadn't. The sound coming from the mask was much louder and I slept about 1.5 hours the first night. The second night was a little better. Then I was so tired I had to sleep no matter what. You can turn off the heat and humidity, but it if were me I'd leave the empty tank attached.

Another thing I do when camping to save battery is to use my Airfit P10 nasal pillow mask. I can turn the pressure down to 8 and achieve the same results as my regular mask at home which is an Airfit N10 nasal cushion mask run at 10.5 for pressure. The P10 has a smaller surface area to seal and for me I can reduce the pressure with this mask.

You can leave the HH off, with water in the tank and still get some moisture gain. Jim

[Rob K]

Here's something for you to experiment with before you leave. I have the same machine. On my last camping trip I left the tank home and wished I hadn't. The sound coming from the mask was much louder and I slept about 1.5 hours the first night. The second night was a little better. Then I was so tired I had to sleep no matter what. You can turn off the heat and humidity, but it if were me I'd leave the empty tank attached.

Another thing I do when camping to save battery is to use my Airfit P10 nasal pillow mask. I can turn the pressure down to 8 and achieve the same results as my regular mask at home which is an Airfit N10 nasal cushion mask run at 10.5 for pressure. The P10 has a smaller surface area to seal and for me I can reduce the pressure with this mask.

You can leave the HH off, with water in the tank and still get some moisture gain. Jim

Yes, I guess that would be his choice. No water or pass over. Both will use the same amount of juice.

[CapnLoki]

Here's something for you to experiment with before you leave. I have the same machine. On my last camping trip I left the tank home and wished I hadn't. The sound coming from the mask was much louder and I slept about 1.5 hours the first night. The second night was a little better. Then I was so tired I had to sleep no matter what. You can turn off the heat and humidity, but it if were me I'd leave the empty tank attached.

Yes, I forgot to mention that when I don't use the humidifier tank I use a muffler. However, the OP did say he was planning on using the humidifier in passover mode, which acts as a muffler.

I also turn off the ramp mode and set the machine to cpap mode instead of auto mode. I figure an adequate constant lower pressure is going to save battery as opposed to having the machine varying the pressure all night in the auto mode.

I'm not sure why ramp would cost power - I'd think it would save. And the point of APAP mode is to use lower pressure when high pressure is not needed, so it also should save power. It true that a constant lower pressure would save, but it also provides worse therapy, so its rather counter-productive.

For example: With my pressure set to 8 in the cpap mode. I have a 79ah agm battery and I can run it for about 8 hours and for 9 nights which takes it down to about 50% charge.

My measurements in APAP mode with an average pressure of 10 showed 4 amp-hours per 8 hours, so this would be 36 AH for 9 nights, about the same as your results.

[Rob K]

Well this is going in the wrong direction. Sorry to the OP. I'll let everyone else take it from here. We don't need to get side tracked on what I know and don't know. I didn't say that ramp would cost power, just that I turn it off. I guess my post didn't make sense. Personally I turn off everything I can and reduce therapy and it works for me with now problems. I won't go into anymore details.

I am curious to know what a muffler is for cpap.

[CapnLoki]

Well this is going in the wrong direction. Sorry to the OP. I'll let everyone else take it from here. We don't need to get side tracked on what I know and don't know. I didn't say that ramp would cost power, just that I turn it off. I guess my post didn't make sense. Personally I turn off everything I can and reduce therapy and it works for me with now problems. I won't go into anymore details.

I am curious to know what a muffler is for cpap.

Sorry to be a bit harsh - I know your advice was well meaning, but if you want to change from APAP to CPAP you'd probably want to use the higher 95% pressure to provide proper therapy, not a lower setting. Of course, its quite possible you might need different settings when in a different environment.

The muffler goes inline with the hose - you can't use a heated hose with it. It works quite well to reduce the "Darth Vader" noise when you remove the humidifier.
https://www.cpap.com/productpage/human- ... ffler.html
A cheaper, lighter, but less effective alternative is an inline filter:
https://www.cpap.com/productpage/generi ... -pack.html

[Rob K]

Never knew those mufflers existed. Good to know. Do you think the inline heat/moisture exchangers would reduce the noise also? Thinking I should get some to try on my next order.

[CapnLoki]

Never knew those mufflers existed. Good to know. Do you think the inline heat/moisture exchangers would reduce the noise also? Thinking I should get some to try on my next order.

I really don't know. Given that the cheap filter reduces about half the noise (to my subjective sense) it wouldn't surprise me if the HME has a similar effect. I think its possible to use both.

[Scarlet834]

I’m curious how the camping trip went. I camped by battery and no humidifier successfully 5 years or so back, but this year my nose wouldn’t tolerate it and I had to remove after 2 hours. Since my apnea is mostly early morning I ended up going to sleep without the cPAP and popping it on when I awakened mid-night. That let me use the humidifier and heated hose on low without using up the battery. If anyone knows a battery that would last 8 hours, awesome. I got 5-6 using a Pilot 12 Plus.

[CapnLoki]

I’m curious how the camping trip went. I camped by battery and no humidifier successfully 5 years or so back, but this year my nose wouldn’t tolerate it and I had to remove after 2 hours. Since my apnea is mostly early morning I ended up going to sleep without the cPAP and popping it on when I awakened mid-night. That let me use the humidifier and heated hose on low without using up the battery. If anyone knows a battery that would last 8 hours, awesome. I got 5-6 using a Pilot 12 Plus.

There just happens to be a few posts on this topic right now - in this case the poster wants to run four nights with humidity so the battery needed is pretty large. However, for one night my standard 35 AH battery setup should work:
viewtopic/t114012/Choosing-a-Battery.ht ... 0#p1261355 and following posts.

This is the description of the basic setup:
viewtopic/t114012/Choosing-a-Battery.html#p1129137

[fidelito55]

What do i need to run my resmed s9 while camping unserviced site? I have a deep cycle battery but what connections do i need? and where do i get them?

[CapnLoki]

What do i need to run my resmed s9 while camping unserviced site? I have a deep cycle battery but what connections do i need? and where do i get them?

ResMed requires a 24 volt converter. For the S9:
https://www.cpap.com/productpage/DC-Con ... hines.html

I like the BatteryTender chargers. They come with this for the battery - it matches to output of the charger:
https://www.amazon.com/Battery-Tender-0 ... B000NCOKZQ
When you disconnect the charger you can plug this in and use it with the converter - much better than the alligator clips:
https://www.amazon.com/Battery-Tender-0 ... B0041CDPQO

Edited to fix bad links - thanks to all those who noticed