Camping with deep cell battery & CPAP

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irbabey

Camping with deep cell battery & CPAP

Post by irbabey » Thu Jun 04, 2009 8:24 am

My wife has a SleepStyle 200 and I am wondering about camping using a deep cell battery and 400w inverter. On her old CPAP she had the option of not using the humidifier, which we were told you cannot use the humidifier while using the deep cell method.
With the SleepStyle 200 can we use the deep cell setup as above, or is there a way to disable the humidifier so she can go camping with the deep cell and inverter?
Thanks.

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LinkC
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Re: Camping with deep cell battery & CPAP

Post by LinkC » Thu Jun 04, 2009 8:43 am

I was unable to find specs on how much current the humidifier draws (or if it's possible to disable it), but a 400w inverter will easily handle the total load (110v x 1.4A = 154w).

How long your battery charge will last is another issue, involving the unknown number of hours of use and battery capacity.

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irbabey

Re: Camping with deep cell battery & CPAP

Post by irbabey » Thu Jun 04, 2009 9:32 am

Thanks LinkC,
So does this pull include the use of the humidifier? I am not too worried about the battery, as long as I can get one night out of it I will have access to recharge it daily.
Thanks

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timbalionguy
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Re: Camping with deep cell battery & CPAP

Post by timbalionguy » Thu Jun 04, 2009 10:34 am

You should easily be able to turn the humidifier completely off, as there are times when you may not want the heat on to prevent rainout in high humidity.

154 watts is a lot of load for a sustained period of use. If you figure your inverter is 70 percent efficient, the load on the input of the inverter is about 200 watts. This works out to 16.7 amps at 12 volts. This is a rather heavy load for most batteries for 8 hours. It works out to 133 ampere hours, and I would go for about 200 ampere-hours simply because the ampere hour rating of a battery is dependent on the load current.

I would look at using a CPAP machine that runs directly off 12 volts. You will use a lot less power this way, as you will not have the losses of the inverter and the machine's power supply together. If they provide the DC input, then the machine has obviously been engineered to be frugal enough in power consumption for practical portable use.

You might also check out another current thread, entitled 'Amp CPAP', where there is a similar discussion going on, and I have posted some information about the discharge characteristics of lead-acid batteries.
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billbolton
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Re: Camping with deep cell battery & CPAP

Post by billbolton » Thu Jun 04, 2009 1:26 pm

timbalionguy wrote:If you figure your inverter is 70 percent efficient, the load on the input of the inverter is about 200 watts. This works out to 16.7 amps at 12 volts. This is a rather heavy load for most batteries for 8 hours.
Modern inverters have tyical effiencies of ~90%+.

Cheers,

Bill (IEEE)

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harry33
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Re: Camping with deep cell battery & CPAP

Post by harry33 » Thu Jun 04, 2009 1:40 pm

people intending to run CPAPs from batteries should look for a CPAP with '12 volts DC in,' makes things much easier

I suggest a trial night at home first, you may need to limit the hours the CPAP is in use
australian,anxiety and insomnia, a CPAP user since 1995, self diagnosed after years of fatigue, 2 cheap CPAPs and respironics comfortgell nose only mask. not one of my many doctors ever asked me if I snored