Camping, cold weather & CPAP

[MikeSharp]

Hi,

I'm curious to know if anyone has experience camping with a CPAP in, say, 40-50F weather. That is just within the operating temperature range of my intellipap.

I've got all the usual power supply stuff sorted out, but there isn't enough juice in my regular battery pack to run the humidifier/heater. Since its essentially car camping I could lug along a 100+lbs of batteries to run the full setup overnight for two nights, but that is a lot of gear to bring.

[jmcanzo]

The heated humidifier on the intellipap will NOT run on 12v only the machine. The humidifier will work in passover mode(no heat)

[jmelby]

You'd get rainout with the humidifier on with that outside temperature... skip the humidifier and it should be fine.

[billbolton]

I'm curious to know if anyone has experience camping with a CPAP in, say, 40-50F weather.

Keep in mind that the capacity of a lead-acid technology battery falls by about 1% per degree below about 20°C (68° F).

Cheers,

Bill

[physicsbob]

We went camping on the high desert last year and to use my cpap, I got a small styrofoam cooler to fit my cpap machine and several chemical hand warmers into, I cut holes for intake, wires and hose, used a hose cover, and I snaked the hose into my sleeping bag to keep it warm. While I could use the heater on my M series cpap I used it in passover mode to help prevent rainout. Using nasal pillows my nose is sensitive to cold air and this made it at least tolerable to sleep in a tent. In the morning the temperature outside was in the 30s-and 40s, dew saturated every thing in the tent, but I slept and good seven hours

[a1albert]

I never thought about operating temps when I went camping guess I lucked out with the machine I took. We camped for nine days in the wilderness and a couple of nights it got down to 17 degrees and the other nights it was down to 32. I used a M series with no humidifier on 12 volts. I have a used machine I bought just for camping.

Albert

[Mountain Camper]

I do a lot of car camping and backpacking in the high country of Colorado. In the spring and fall I'm usually in temperature ranges colder than you've asked about. I put my Philips Resperonics REMstar (w/o the humidifier) into my sleeping bag. Where my body heat keeps it warm. When car camping I power the unit with a deep cycle marine battery. When backpacking I carry a CPAP.com Battery Kit made for my unit. In either case I simply run the power cable through the bottom end my sleeping bag zipper. The unit goes near my feet and the tube runs up the side. If you try this method you will quickly learn to wash your feet before crawling into your bag