Rudely waken by Power Outage

I have read many threads and even replied on a couple about backup power. I have thought about buying backup power for my Respironics tank, but never gotten around to it. There doesn't seem to be one perfect or best choice for power backup from the threads I have read, but would appreciate what might be the most economical and useful solution?

The reason I ask was that this morning, I woke up quite quickly when the power went out. I had no idea what was going on. I use nasal mask and I was breathing through my nose as usual as I woke and then it seemed odd that the air flow didn't seem right and I realized that there was no air flow. I didn't panic but at first thought someone was playing a trick on me. Man that was an odd feeling.

I then started to think what happened if the power was to be out for a day or two.... I am still feeling a bit hesitant about buying a power solution...I guess I am cheap, but I guess I should stop being so foolish and just buy something.

I keep a CPAP.com battery onhand at home and when travelling. Haven't had to use it yet.
My son has a cat who used to get his attention by pawing the power button on the CPAP - He said it was like having his brain sucked out through his sinuses. Only took a few times of cat-flying-across-the-room for said cat to learn that this was not a good idea. Now he pushes books off the shelf instead.

momadams wrote:My son has a cat who used to get his attention by pawing the power button on the CPAP - He said it was like having his brain sucked out through his sinuses. Only took a few times of cat-flying-across-the-room.....

Ah, what a smart cat............really a disguised staff member hired by PETA for not recognizing kats are not made for flying.... ........guess you haven't heard of the old wives tale of cats sucking the breath out of babies.......or humans using XPAP with a history of kat tossing across a room!!!!!

elg5cats

I just returned for a two week motorcycle trip and that was one of my concerns camping without power. Before I left I purchased a 12 volt power supply from cpap about $30.00 then I purchased a car booster from a local store. You should be able to get one a Wall Mart or nay auto parts store. Mine cost about $50.00 and has two cigarette lighter plugs in it. We were able to charge cell phones and use the cpap.

I purchased a larger size and I was able to use it two nights in a row with out a charge. Not sure how much longer it would have gone. It also can be recharged via a cigarette lighter and I would have been able to recharge that way also.

Don't know if you could get a much cheaper and more portable unit, It will also jump the car if your battery goes low.

Jack

I use a deep cycle marine battery, (it lives in the bedroom closet) and the 12V adapter you can get from cpap.com. I'm in Oklahoma, so we get lots of outages in the winter (ice storms) and spring. Works just fine and pretty easy to use.

JeffH

PinheadTC wrote:I just returned for a two week motorcycle trip and that was one of my concerns camping without power. Before I left I purchased a 12 volt power supply from cpap about $30.00 then I purchased a car booster from a local store. You should be able to get one a Wall Mart or nay auto parts store. Mine cost about $50.00 and has two cigarette lighter plugs in it. We were able to charge cell phones and use the cpap.

I purchased a larger size and I was able to use it two nights in a row with out a charge. Not sure how much longer it would have gone. It also can be recharged via a cigarette lighter and I would have been able to recharge that way also.

Don't know if you could get a much cheaper and more portable unit, It will also jump the car if your battery goes low.

Jack

JeffH wrote:I use a deep cycle marine battery, (it lives in the bedroom closet) and the 12V adapter you can get from cpap.com. I'm in Oklahoma, so we get lots of outages in the winter (ice storms) and spring. Works just fine and pretty easy to use.

JeffH

Thanks for the information. I guess I should stop procrastinating and shell out a few bucks - not that bad of a cost and I do have a spot where the battery unit could live in the closet. I guess you never know when I will need it. My wife and I do cruise so I should take some type of power supply with us.

I bought the Respironics battery. It is a bit pricey but it is worth it's weight in gold to me now! It will run for over 3 nights at my pressure. I just need to keep the charge topped up.

The first night the power went off (many months after I bought it), I was all set. I had tried it for a night so that I knew how it hooked up since I'm not good at these things. It is so easy.

The night the power went out I wakened immediately, hooked up the battery ( it sits beside the table where the cpap sits) In a matter of a few minutes and slept the rest of the night on battery power. Just a few weeks ago we had a crashing thunderstorm with outages during the evening and I hooked the machine up to battery power at bed time. We didn't have any outages during the night although we had a few in the evening. Had there been one, I would have slept through the night.

It's a good feeling to be ready. I don't want to sleep without my machine if I can avoid it.

Be a Boy Scout! Be prepared!

Hawthorne wrote:I bought the Respironics battery. It is a bit pricey but it is worth it's weight in gold to me now! It will run for over 3 nights at my pressure. I just need to keep the charge topped up.

The first night the power went off (many months after I bought it), I was all set. I had tried it for a night so that I knew how it hooked up since I'm not good at these things. It is so easy.

The night the power went out I wakened immediately, hooked up the battery ( it sits beside the table where the cpap sits) In a matter of a few minutes and slept the rest of the night on battery power. Just a few weeks ago we had a crashing thunderstorm with outages during the evening and I hooked the machine up to battery power at bed time. We didn't have any outages during the night although we had a few in the evening. Had there been one, I would have slept through the night.

It's a good feeling to be ready. I don't want to sleep without my machine if I can avoid it.

Be a Boy Scout! Be prepared!

Hi Hawthorne,

Can you run the unit with the humidifier for the three days? Or do you run it without. I was thinking to save a bit of power, I would turn not only the humidifier (awful in winter without it) and turn off the backlight on the buttons.

Also, can that Respironics unit run other types of CPAPs?

I cannot get 3 nights with HEATED humidity but I use pass over humidity almost all the time and I get it on battery power.

Unless you want to use a very large battery, it is impractical to run a heated humidifier from a battery because it draws so much current. Humidifiers also require an inverter, which is not normally needed for just the CPAP.

So, just pulled the trigger and ordered a Duracell Powerpack 600HD. Not entirely sure how I'll use it in an actual outage. I have the 12V cord for my CPAP (acquired that a few months back)....but have HC150 now. So is it plug CPAP into 12V jack, and HC150 into AC jack...or leave the HC150 in passive (guess it depends on when the outage occurs...) Alternatively, the integrated humidifier runs off of 12V.

OTOH, my powersource 400 has been keeping me going through other poweroutages so far.

It only makes a beep once when switching over (haven't run it down yet, so don't know what that sounds like)...and the beep is loud enough to wake me. It has covered me a couple of times during early morning outages. And, it covered me the night I had to go to bed with the power out (I did get some sleep, though it was difficult with there being no A/C or fans....), but it later woke me with a beep to tell me power had returned.

Now, I had been looking at getting one of these since the beginning....but had kept putting it off. The thing that changed was I got an email reminding me that shopAMEX is doing a 20% off thing...and with that, I had just enough points to get one....so I did that. Its taken me like 10 years to accumulate the points...and poof they are gone. Of course, the spending of real money was largely the factor in why I kept putting it off. I keep finding other stuff I feel is more important to acquire....

Wonder if I should be looking for a (quiet and effective) fan that will run off of an inverter or 12V?

Now the only fear is power outage on CPAP where I'm not at home....since I've experienced power outages while staying in hotels a few times....it is certainly a concern now that I have a CPAP. Just not sure I can pull the trigger on a batterygeek unit (even though getting a non-CPAP specific can make sense to power other stuff....there was a time where I wanted to get one to extend runtime of my laptop....but that was before CPAP...and before netbook).

The Dreamer.

Just thinking,if you use 12 volt to run the respironics and don't run heated humidifier,what about loading the humidifier tank with warmer to hot water for your passover humidification,i don' think you would know the difference that the humidifier was unplugged

The problem is heating the distilled water, without the use of electricity, to put into the humidifier....

The Dreamer.

Birddog wrote:Just thinking,if you use 12 volt to run the respironics and don't run heated humidifier,what about loading the humidifier tank with warmer to hot water for your passover humidification,i don' think you would know the difference that the humidifier was unplugged

For me personally, to spare power I could do with out it for awhile and use passively better than nothing. It is only in Winter in Canada where our forced air furnaces tend to dry out the air much like AC does that I would notice it. In a pinch passover would work for me.

Birddog wrote:what about loading the humidifier tank with warmer to hot water

Birddog...this is what I read in my humidifier
manual.....
CAUTION
* It is advised to fill the chamber with tap or boiled and cooled water.
* Do not add any products to the water in the chamber.
* Use only room temperature water, do not fill the chamber with hot or chilled water.
* Fill the water chamber away from the heated humidifier base
to avoid spilling water onto it.