What do you use when you have no electricity?

FWIW, if anyone decides to go the inverter route, you might consider paying a few extra bucks and get a "pure" sine wave inverter. A "modified" sine wave inverter does not produce a "pure" alternating current such as comes from an electrical outlet in your home, but a reasonable facsimile thereof that will power MOST electrical equipment successfully. However, some equipment won't work at all powered by a "modified" sine wave inverter and might even suffer damage.

When you have nothing -- sleeping sitting as upright as possible without letting your head drop forward (not letting chin drop down toward chest) is probably about as good as you can hope for to try to prevent apneas.

And after waking up with a crick in the neck and feeling pretty lousy.... ... might want to make preparations for next time:

LINKS to Battery operation, camping, power outage
viewtopic.php?t=9682

Another link regarding batteries and inverters use with ResMed equipment. Note the statement on page six regarding humidifiers and inverters.

http://www.resmed.com/us/assets/documen ... lo_eng.pdf

The point is to not go without although I have gone backpacking for 10 days straight without my CPAP. Real tough but I managed on a few hours of restless sleep.
When I go camping I take along a solar panel that you can buy from Bass Pro, 1 12volt deep cell battery a power converter and my cpap machine. Works great. I
tested it on a 10 day fishing vacation where I stayed in a tent with no electricity. My battery lasted 7 days without needing to be recharged. With the solar panel,
I hooked it up in the morning, let it trickle charge the deep cell battery all day and was at full battery power every night. NEVER set a deep cell battery on a cement floor.
It will drain the battery out in a couple days. Set it on 2x4's to keep it off the floor. Deep cell battery - $80.00. Power converter - $40.00. Solar panel $ 40 for the small
but you may need the medium 12'' x 12'' for $90.00. Well worth the price. I go camping all the time and never had an issue. Hope this helps.

Lizistired wrote:Dave, Can you please elaborate on what type of inverter you have? How big, cost, what to look for.Thanks

(Dave goes and takes a look) It is a Vector 750 Watt continuous, 1500 watt peak. It is not an expensive model and I got it used. It works. My pressure is HIGH and I expect to be on a bipap some day so I chose an inverter large enough. I made the cables figuring that I would be waking up at midnight and hooking this up. I have a short (15") cable from the inverter to a 3/8" bolt and nut. I hook up jumper cables from the car battery to that bolt & Nut. The jumper cables will not clamp on the inverter directly and is securely fastened to the bolt. (Keep it simple).

The setup is simple (and I have practiced a couple of times). Flashlight from dresser. To basement. Open hood. Set inverter on ground (inverter is near car on shelf). Hook cables from battery to inverter. (don't short out the battery). Male sure battery cables will not cross if dog or kids trip over it. Hook up extension cord and stretch that out to the bedroom cpap. Plug cpap into extension cord. Turn on cpap and disable the humidifier (turn humidifier heat to zero). Back to sleep. I've used it once on an outage. Slept like a baby and power did not come back until mid day the next day.

It is not a "pure sine wave" inverter which means I saved a couple hundred dollars but have to turn off the heater on my humidifier. Not a big deal.

What to look for? One with good reviews. Inverters have a history of cheap construction no matter where they come from. I would probably size something around 600 watts continuous and try to find a pure sine wave inverter with good reviews. Get everything set up with the idea that you, mostly nakid, no shoes, in the middle of the night, with only a weak flashlight, will be hooking up everything, after being rudely woke up gasping for breath. Keept it Simple. Easy. Safe.

I don't know ANYTHING about these guys but they do have information and I would seriously consider checking them out:
http://theinverterstore.com/blog/?s=cpap and blog from http://www.theinverterstore.com/

Where is Nikola Tesla when we need him??

From many years of camping by car, canoe and bicycle I would strongly suggest buying a second hand cheap machine without data capability to use when camping so that your top of the line machine will not be subject to flash floods, raccoons, clumsy kids and teens, spilt pop, rain events, leaks during rain events, camp fire smoke, insect repellent, skunks and other fun things that happen while camping.

I do pretty well without CPAP if I sleep on my side hugging a body pillow held between my legs to help me stay in that position. Sleeping on the stomach might help some people, but I can't sleep that way. I need to try sleeping on my side with my pulse oximeter sometime and see what happens.

Thanks for the info Dave.