Extension cord. Does it have to be the orange kind?

Going to visit a friend and don't know where there outlets are in the guest room. Do you have to use a heavy duty extension cord or will the brown household ones be safe to use with the cpap? Don't want a fire hazard. Thanks!
Love the help on this forum!

if you look at the power supply you will see the wattage on it .... it is probably less that 100 watts .... so a standard extension cord will work. The plug on my wifes pr560 is a two prong plug ..so it does not have to be a grounded cord.

Sleepysuz wrote:Going to visit a friend and don't know where there outlets are in the guest room. Do you have to use a heavy duty extension cord or will the brown household ones be safe to use with the cpap? Don't want a fire hazard. Thanks!
Love the help on this forum!

Any two wire cord will do. However, because most folks have something in ALL of their outlets, I would also bring
1. a power strip
2. a 1 to 3 adapter
3. a 2 to 6 adapter

The diff adapters are for diff situations.

After all you prob have more things to plug in?

Guest wrote:

Sleepysuz wrote:Going to visit a friend and don't know where there outlets are in the guest room. Do you have to use a heavy duty extension cord or will the brown household ones be safe to use with the cpap? Don't want a fire hazard. Thanks!
Love the help on this forum!

Any two wire cord will do. However, because most folks have something in ALL of their outlets, I would also bring
1. a power strip
2. a 1 to 3 adapter
3. a 2 to 6 adapter

The diff adapters are for diff situations.

After all you prob have more things to plug in?

Add to your CPAP bag these items plus a small flashlight, the little ones work fine. If you are in a strange room, sometimes wall outlets are located behind the bed or other furniture & that little flashlight has saved me lots of hassle when traveling.

jencat824 wrote:

Guest wrote:

Sleepysuz wrote:Going to visit a friend and don't know where there outlets are in the guest room. Do you have to use a heavy duty extension cord or will the brown household ones be safe to use with the cpap? Don't want a fire hazard. Thanks!
Love the help on this forum!

Any two wire cord will do. However, because most folks have something in ALL of their outlets, I would also bring
1. a power strip
2. a 1 to 3 adapter
3. a 2 to 6 adapter

The diff adapters are for diff situations.

After all you prob have more things to plug in?

Add to your CPAP bag these items plus a small flashlight, the little ones work fine. If you are in a strange room, sometimes wall outlets are located behind the bed or other furniture & that little flashlight has saved me lots of hassle when traveling.

I carry one of those hand crank flashlites so it never needs batteries but must admit I also carry an LED nite light.

When you sleep in a different place and have to get up in the middle of the nite you don't want to fall.

Just check the extension cord, unless they are some cheap chinese garbage you shouldn't be using in the first place, they will have their max voltage and amperage listed on them, as long as that meets (or better, exceeds) what your machine needs to run, you're all set. However, a well shielded extension cord is not a bad idea since that will limit the amount of distortion that occurs in the waveform of the power that is going down the cord to your machine, and that can have an adverse effect on sensitive electronics (not saying it will in this instance, just that its possible. I always suggest using very high quality extension cords with medical equipment).

Paralel wrote:However, a well shielded extension cord is not a bad idea since that will limit the amount of distortion that occurs in the waveform of the power that is going down the cord to your machine, and that can have an adverse effect on sensitive electronics (not saying it will in this instance, just that its possible. I always suggest using very high quality extension cords with medical equipment).

I've seen a lot of things, but I've never seen a "shielded power cord" for mains power.

given that the cord running up to the plain old switching power supply is a plain old twinlead, the class of extension cord really means nothing, and even if one did create a "shielded power cord" ... you'd be plugging it right into a great huge antenna with the wires running through the walls. though typically, it's radiating interference, and not picking it up.

I too have never heard of shielded power cords... unless it is a different terminology for the 3 prong with ground plug

but then again, maybe I have led a shielded life?



My only suggestion is that if you use an extension cord, please don't plug anything other than your CPAP equipment into it. Don't add in the alarm clock, table lamp,smartphone charger, etc..

Denial Dave wrote:I too have never heard of shielded power cords... unless it is a different terminology for the 3 prong with ground plug

but then again, maybe I have led a shielded life?



My only suggestion is that if you use an extension cord, please don't plug anything other than your CPAP equipment into it. Don't add in the alarm clock, table lamp,smartphone charger, etc..

that really shouldn't be a problem, clocks, chargers, etc pull very little juice. (single digits of watts usually) now, an old fashioned incandescent table lamp, that could pull more than all the rest of the stuff combined

For sensitive medical electronics there are certain special types of extension cords, not what we typically think of with respect to extension cords, that have overall shields, chokes, harmonics suppression, etc...

Paralel wrote:For sensitive medical electronics there are certain special types of extension cords, not what we typically think of with respect to extension cords, that have overall shields, chokes, harmonics suppression, etc...

perhaps so, but that's not needed for consumer grade cpaps with (noisy) inverter power supplies, any more than it is for your phone charger, or computer.

You'd be amazed at how many computer systems I've seem over the years that either had weird errors or died young due to dirty power.

Paralel wrote:You'd be amazed at how many computer systems I've seem over the years that either had weird errors or died young due to dirty power.

ok, well, I bow to your experience, I've only been working in the computer field for about 25 years now, though a lot of it has been in datcenters.

please provide some sources for people to buy these shielded power cables you recommend, I might pick one up myself.

Paralel wrote:You'd be amazed at how many computer systems I've seem over the years that either had weird errors or died young due to dirty power.

A shielded extension cord is absolutely, unequivocally, not needed or useful for any of the modern ResMed or PRS1 machines, or probably not needed for other brands.

A shielded power cord is only helpful for RF signals being picked up for the power cord itself acting as an antenna. If the RF noise environment is bad enough where you're sleeping, the electrical noise will get in through the building wiring unless that's shielded, too. More normal power surges and power line noise won't be affected much by a shielded power cord.

Unless someone's arc welding next to your extension cord, a shielded cord isn't going to matter.

The power bricks for ResMed and PRS1 machines are also likely to pretty resistant to power surges and RF noise.

Note I'm not saying bad power doesn't happen. I'm saying a shielded cord isn't going to help the problems you're likely to have with a CPAP machine and extension cord.

The power supply on the machine takes AC, transforms it down to lower voltage, typically 24 VAC and then rectifies it to 24 VDC. Lots of filtering inherent to the conversion, plus they build surge suppression and filtering in for pennies. Do you think they would risk a fire/lawsuit /warranty problems just to save a few pennies on a medical device? Also I believe UL tests these devices, and one of the tests is conducted noise.