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Thanks for the helpful tips. I got a bit carried away: once I dismantled the humidifier, I turned to the blower blower assembly because I wanted to get to the acoustic foam and the silicone inlet seal -- they definitely smell.

Please let me know if any of my plan below seems ill-advised. From left to right in the photo, we have the:

a) manifold -- looks like it's all plastic? (marked PC+ABS) so maybe it's rinse-able in vinegar solution. There are a lot of intricate plastic structures inside the tube ... so not sure if there's anything else that I can't see in there that would be too fragile for liquids. Or perhaps the liquid wouldn't dry out 100% inside these tiny holes that lead to the flow and pressure sensors on the electronics board.

b) blower housing -- plastic and black silicone seals that faintly do smell of smoke... Is this cleanable somehow? I want to take some baking soda (or something) to the black silicone with a toothbrush.

c) acoustic foam -- definitely reeks of smoke. Was going to soak with mild dish detergent (Seventh Generation).

d) blower -- maybe run an ionizing air purifier or a ozone machine with the airflow directed at it? or would the latter be dangerous?
I realize now I should have run the blower first to see if there would be an improvement over time. Now if the blower innards don't improve, I will have wasted all this time cleaning all these parts for nought. And the smoky air from the blower will re-smokify the parts I cleaned.

Where is the inlet on this blower?

Thank you in advance for the input. Looking forward to getting Humpty Dumpty back together again.

If you can't get the odor out of the gaskets in the humidifier those are easily and fairly cheap to replace.
https://www.cpap.com/productpage/Dry-Bo ... ifier.html
Shipping will cost more than the gaskets unless you can get a free shipping promo...I don't know if one is going on now or not but they are offered often. I deleted my emails from cpap.com showing the sales and promos from Super Bowl so I don't know if there is one offered right now.
Also sometimes if you hang around in checkout for a while and then start to close it and leave a little box will pop up and say "wait...we will give you free shipping" just a little trick I learned over the years.

I had an APAP that had a slight smokey smell and what I did was get a bar of sandalwood soap from my wife's collection and put it near the intake port for a several weeks. It took about a month for the smell to go away but eventually it did. I've heard of other folks using bathroom deodorizers and such placed near the air intake port but they were a little to intense for me, therefore the soap trick worked fine. Hey InsomniacGuy, that's pretty courageous to take apart the blower unit... let us know how it all works out.

I'll repeat. I just did this two weeks ago with Ozium unscented spray. Smoke odor is gone...not masked, gone.

Sleeprider wrote:I'll repeat. I just did this two weeks ago with Ozium unscented spray. Smoke odor is gone...not masked, gone.

after having had to deal with severely smoke encrusted equipment, I'll just say I'm dubious that a spritz of ozium can counter something that's soaked deep into the silicone.

Silicone was replaced in the humidifier, but no disassembly of blower.

InsomniacGuy wrote:a) manifold -- looks like it's all plastic? (marked PC+ABS) so maybe it's rinse-able in vinegar solution. There are a lot of intricate plastic structures inside the tube ... so not sure if there's anything else that I can't see in there that would be too fragile for liquids. Or perhaps the liquid wouldn't dry out 100% inside these tiny holes that lead to the flow and pressure sensors on the electronics board.

I wouldn't worry, the stink doesn't sink in too badly into hard plastics, I soaped mine with hot water and dawn (to help cut the tar build up) and it cleaned right up (I was doing a s9, not a prs1, so ymmv)... just let it dry, and blow through the little holes that go to the flow and pressure sensors to make sure they're clear

InsomniacGuy wrote: b) blower housing -- plastic and black silicone seals that faintly do smell of smoke... Is this cleanable somehow? I want to take some baking soda (or something) to the black silicone with a toothbrush.

this'll be the biggest challenge... for me, what worked was soaking in oxyclean and running it through the dishwasher... but the resmed silicone was just silicone, no combo structures like yours seem to have.

InsomniacGuy wrote:c) acoustic foam -- definitely reeks of smoke. Was going to soak with mild dish detergent (Seventh Generation).

I cleaned mine with liberal dawn and hot water... soak, squeeze, soak, squeeze, repeat, couldn't smell anything after that... the resmed is open cell foam, I can't tell by the pic what yours is.

InsomniacGuy wrote:d) blower -- maybe run an ionizing air purifier or a ozone machine with the airflow directed at it? or would the latter be dangerous?
I realize now I should have run the blower first to see if there would be an improvement over time. Now if the blower innards don't improve, I will have wasted all this time cleaning all these parts for nought. And the smoky air from the blower will re-smokify the parts I cleaned.

I wouldn't worry too much about it. it's the soft bits, silicone and foam that hold onto large amounts of stink, the hard surfaces don't do that as much... clean the blower as well as you can with qtips.

I can't tell from the pic where the intake should be, the outlet is the part that connects to the 90 degree tubing bend.

Wow - you guys are amazing! Is there anything you don't know about taking these machines apart?

Thank goodness my oxygen concentrator and refiller are rented from Apria (and covered by Kaiser). It took them three times to deliver me a machine that didn't REEK of cigarette smoke!!!

Even the drivers told me that the majority of oxygen machines they delivered were to smokers. (Some were to smokers who smoked while USING oxygen.) And when they passed on, the machines went back to the warehouse, only to be delivered to someone with severe asthma, like me!

So I pitched some hissy fits, and finally got new models delivered to me that hadn't been in anyone's house. I got the same explanation: you can try to change filters, but there are internal parts of the machine where the nicotine just soaks in.

Bravo to those who can fix their own machines! I'm new to APAP, but hope to get as familiar with my machine as you are!

Humpty Dumpty is back together again. And, he runs!

Was it worth soaking silicone parts for 2-3 weeks to remove the smoke odor? Time-wise, not so much. Crash-course in CPAP machines was entertaining -- after all, football season is over.

If you ever do this, use dilute concentrations of vinegar or baking soda, etc., to soak or to clean. There is a fragile plastic film on the blower housing that didn't agree with a small chunk of damp baking soda that fell on it. As wiser folks have posted, just buy new silicone parts for the humidifier. If I had been able to curb my curiosity to see inside the machine, airing it out or using Ozium would have been a more efficient first course of action. (Can't compare techniques now unfortunately...)

This was the flow generator unit earlier this morning:

Amazing what can be accomplished when one is able to take suggestions and follow directions. I did a tear down on one of my s9 VPAPs the day I got it, due to smoke smell. I followed pics and basic info for tear down, then ran the slides in reverse to reassemble. The surprising part? No weird vibrations, noises OR spare/missing parts!

Tatooed Lady wrote:Amazing what can be accomplished when one is able to take suggestions and follow directions. I did a tear down on one of my s9 VPAPs the day I got it, due to smoke smell. I followed pics and basic info for tear down, then ran the slides in reverse to reassemble. The surprising part? No weird vibrations, noises OR spare/missing parts!

*lol* the slightly amusing thing is that the pics are actually the assembly process. I had it all apart and said to myself "I should document this".... so I just put the slides in reverse and said "how to take one apart" *lol*.

Sneaky rabbit.

Shameless self promotion on:

For those that don't have the time or desire to clean and soak the silicon parts, I believe Accurate can purchase new silicon parts for you. If my memory serves, we did this recently for a guy that wanted to change them in his Resmed. I think the cost for the silicon bits are something like 12 bucks and shipping. PM me with make and model and I'll see if I can run them down for anyone interested. We don't keep them in stock too often, but can get them and if there is enough interest we can keep a few packages around if you would like. Might help some people that purchase a used spare that has some odor.

We don't normally make a lot of parts available (manufacturer contract issues), but I get tired of turning down folks that are perfectly capable of pulling repairs off themselves. Plus, now being a cpap user myself and having read hundreds of threads over the past couple of weeks, I am developing an acute sensitivity to some of the issues that seem to be overly complicated when a simple resolution should be possible. In a thread I was reading, one of the phrases that got my attention was a reference to "Medical Mafia". That phrase kind of hit home yesterday when I went to purchase a P10 mask and got stopped at checkout needing a prescription. I thought "Really, if I have the cpap, a prescription should be assumed, if I don't then what harm am I going to do with a mask by itself?" If I thought through the whole situation, maybe there is a good reason, but I haven't come up with one yet.

Shameless self promotion off

Nice to know!

accurate wrote:Plus, now being a cpap user myself and having read hundreds of threads over the past couple of weeks, I am developing an acute sensitivity to some of the issues that seem to be overly complicated when a simple resolution should be possible.

This is how I feel about firmware upgrades. I really shouldn't have had to ship my PR machine from Washington state to a private vendor in Florida (thanks, Accurate!) for the upgrade, when my DME really should be providing that service locally.