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Camping with CPAP
#11
RE: Camping with CPAP
(02-28-2012, 03:00 PM)zonk Wrote: I don,t think pressure is an indication of the severity of sleep apnea, Some people might need 14 with moderate sleep apnea while others might need 9 with severe sleep apnea. It,s to do how much pressure needed to splint the airways open. It,s not worth taking the risk, Apnea takes NO holidays... Thinking-about

True. There is not always a direct correlation, but in general terms, one can generally draw some degree of conclusion based upon a patient's 95% (auto) pressure. People are all different, but not that different.

For instance, if I told you that I have two people, (Patient A and Patient B)....

Patient A has a 95% pressure of 18.5 cmH2O.

Patient B
has a 95% pressure of 8.5 cmH2O.

I'd be willing to bet you an entire case of 100% Columbian Coffee that Patient A has more severe OSA than Patient B. Bigwink

Coffee

Now, if Patient A has a pressure of 14.5 and Patient B is at 12.5, I don't think I'd take that bet. (don't wanna lose my coffee) Too-funny
SuperSleeper
Apnea Board Administrator
www.ApneaBoard.com


INFORMATION ON APNEA BOARD FORUMS OR ON APNEABOARD.COM SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED AS MEDICAL ADVICE. ALWAYS SEEK THE ADVICE OF A PHYSICIAN BEFORE SEEKING TREATMENT FOR MEDICAL CONDITIONS, INCLUDING SLEEP APNEA. INFORMATION POSTED ON THE APNEA BOARD WEB SITE AND FORUMS ARE PERSONAL OPINION ONLY AND NOT NECESSARILY A STATEMENT OF FACT.


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#12
RE: Camping with CPAP
I purchased a 12 volt rechargable cpap battery and I have used it for airplane travel, car and trailer camping, and backpacking.

It looks like a small notebook computer, weighs about 6 pounds and uses a cigarette adapter to connect to my respironics system one cpap.

I can get up to 5 nights with one charge.

It costs about $300 but the flexibility to be able to have it available has been worth it to me.

I don't want to break any rules by advertising a product so you can private message me if you are interested.

Don't give up camping and traveling because you are using a cpap.
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#13
RE: Camping with CPAP
Thanks jscholz and welcome to the new Apnea Board Forum!

5 nights of power is pretty good for a 6 pound battery... not bad at all.

While we can't post commercial links here, you can tell someone to do a Google search for "XYZ CPAP Battery" or something like that to get them to the right place... or posting the name of the product is fine too (just no links to commercial web sites).








SuperSleeper
Apnea Board Administrator
www.ApneaBoard.com


INFORMATION ON APNEA BOARD FORUMS OR ON APNEABOARD.COM SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED AS MEDICAL ADVICE. ALWAYS SEEK THE ADVICE OF A PHYSICIAN BEFORE SEEKING TREATMENT FOR MEDICAL CONDITIONS, INCLUDING SLEEP APNEA. INFORMATION POSTED ON THE APNEA BOARD WEB SITE AND FORUMS ARE PERSONAL OPINION ONLY AND NOT NECESSARILY A STATEMENT OF FACT.


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#14
RE: Camping with CPAP
Thank you. This is a descrption of the battery from where i purchaed it.

Compact Portable 12V Super CPAP Battery Pack - 266 watt-hr
Part Id: OW-12-C266

If someone types the above or OW-12-C266 into google, they will find websites with the product to do their research. The same battery can be found under different names and comes in 3 different sizes. I bought the mid-range.

When I just did a search to find the name of the battery I bought after seeing your reply, there was another product weighing in at 2 pounds for $198 that caught my eye. Does it provide the same hours as what I bought? Who knows, but 2 pounds verses 4.5 to 6 pounds is certainly enticing if I'm backpacking or carrying it while traveling. it can be found by typing Lightweight Travel Battery Pack for ResMed CPAP/BiLevel Machines but it is not limited to those cpap manufacturers according to the website I read.

I have used my battery on 3 night backpacks as well as long (12 + hours) overnight red eye flights without a problem.

I think it gave out during the 5th night at home after I tried to see how long it would really last.

Of course, the number of hours someone sleeps using the machine will determine the number of nights they can get out off a single charge.

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#15
RE: Camping with CPAP
Super! Thanks so much for posting this!

Thumbs-up-2
SuperSleeper
Apnea Board Administrator
www.ApneaBoard.com


INFORMATION ON APNEA BOARD FORUMS OR ON APNEABOARD.COM SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED AS MEDICAL ADVICE. ALWAYS SEEK THE ADVICE OF A PHYSICIAN BEFORE SEEKING TREATMENT FOR MEDICAL CONDITIONS, INCLUDING SLEEP APNEA. INFORMATION POSTED ON THE APNEA BOARD WEB SITE AND FORUMS ARE PERSONAL OPINION ONLY AND NOT NECESSARILY A STATEMENT OF FACT.


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#16
RE: Camping with CPAP
(02-27-2012, 10:41 AM)SuperSleeper Wrote:
BSirius Wrote:Travel and cpap don't mix. As someone who travels 7 - 10 days a month, it just wasn't feasible to haul my cpap around with me so I invested in a dental mouthpiece. Fits in my pocket and doesn't require a power source. I say invested because it took four visits to the dentist to get it fitted properly and it isn't cheap, but insurance picked up some of the tab. It's not as effective as the cpap but they claim 85% success rate and I seem to do very well with it. The follow-up PSG with the appliance showed a reduction from an AHI of 63 to 14.
And... I no longer get the strange looks from airport security!

How lucky, supersleeper, that the mouthpiece worked for you! It also worked for me, but my teeth would not meet during the day and I was so worried about damaging them, that I went back to my CPAP machine. It took over 6 months for my teeth to align themselves again! I am currently trying to find some happy users of Transcend II machine for camping with batteries (and carrying it all on our backs), as I a thinking of buying one.
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#17
RE: Camping with CPAP
(03-03-2012, 08:48 PM)jandi Wrote: How lucky, supersleeper, that the mouthpiece worked for you! It also worked for me, but my teeth would not meet during the day and I was so worried about damaging them, that I went back to my CPAP machine. It took over 6 months for my teeth to align themselves again! I am currently trying to find some happy users of Transcend II machine for camping with batteries (and carrying it all on our backs), as I a thinking of buying one.

That was actually BSirius I was quoting from an old forum post. Let us know how you like using the Transcend II with batteries after your trip! My wife and I go on at least one camping trip every summer and I use a big 'ol honkin' marine deep cycle battery for my CPAP. Works well enough, but it's not exactly light... weighs in at something around 45 pounds, I think.

Anyway, welcome to the new forum, jandi Smile

SuperSleeper
Apnea Board Administrator
www.ApneaBoard.com


INFORMATION ON APNEA BOARD FORUMS OR ON APNEABOARD.COM SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED AS MEDICAL ADVICE. ALWAYS SEEK THE ADVICE OF A PHYSICIAN BEFORE SEEKING TREATMENT FOR MEDICAL CONDITIONS, INCLUDING SLEEP APNEA. INFORMATION POSTED ON THE APNEA BOARD WEB SITE AND FORUMS ARE PERSONAL OPINION ONLY AND NOT NECESSARILY A STATEMENT OF FACT.


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#18
RE: Camping with CPAP
(02-28-2012, 02:18 PM)DCwom Wrote: I've simply skipped the CPAP the two nights when I had no power, as my Dr said "you lived without the CPAP for years, two nights isn't going to hurt you". I was apprehensive at first but it worked out and I was no worse for wear, your experience may be different, but it worked for me and now I don't worry about it. I do however carry the thing along when I have power.

Heh, we had a 24 hour+ power failure a year ago, about 8 or 9 months after I got my APAP machine...and I took pretty much the same aproach... "No worries, lived without it for years..."

I couldn't sleep.

Oh, and to answer the later question from Supersleeper - my average APAP pressure is usually around 15.5 to 16.5...it's slowly been going down, actually...

Not at all. I kept nodding off, snoring, and waking myself up...or I'd have an apnea and startle awake. Or kick my wife - bad idea. :-)
After about 3 hours I gave up, rounded up all the bits and pieces, and went downstairs to plug into an extension cord from the generator we were using to keep the fridge/freezer/etc running, and was asleep on the couch in minutes. :-p


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#19
RE: Camping with CPAP
(02-27-2012, 10:32 AM)SuperSleeper Wrote: Hi Silellak... welcome to Apnea Board!

I have a 12 volt system for my Remstar Pro and my system will work with a Remstar Plus as well. I have used this system for a solid 2 nights of sleep with no recharge (about 16 hours total); It might go longer than that, but I haven't tested it past 2 nights without charging the battery. With this system, you don't need a power inverter. Your Remstar has a 12-volt in hole in the back that will allow you to use 12 volt power directly, using the adapter below.

I purchased a heavy duty 650 amp, 12-volt deep cycle marine battery (Walmart or Kmart) for about $50 and a cheap trickle charger for about $25.

Then I bought the following items that are designed for Respironics' equipment:



I bought this for $25.

And this:

for $25 also.

Altogether, I spent about $125 for a system that will keep me going for quite a while. I don't do a lot of camping, but we do have power outages here quite often. My 2-day testing period happened during one of those "extended" outages.

Hope this helps, if have any questions, just ask.

Batteries have Ampere Hour (AH) rating. If you divide AH rating of the battery by the Amp rating your machine you will get the number of hours the battery will power your machine. A 12Volt 120AH battery will last for 40 hours powering a CPAP machine rated at 12V 3Amp.
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#20
RE: Camping with CPAP
(03-03-2012, 11:51 PM)subhas Wrote: Batteries have Ampere Hour (AH) rating. If you divide AH rating of the battery by the Amp rating your machine you will get the number of hours the battery will power your machine. A 12Volt 120AH battery will last for 40 hours powering a CPAP machine rated at 12V 3Amp.

Not exactly:

Using that formula would assume that you're planning on depleting the battery completely down to a 0% charge, which is a big no-no with standard lead-acid type batteries that have liquid electrolytes sloshing around and lead fins (the "marine" or "deep cycle" car-sized type battery).

Roughly, 11.6 volts is considered fully discharged (0%). You never want to do that to a standard lead-acid battery or you're ruin it.

Ideally, you want enough battery capacity so that you don't regularly discharge the battery much below 70-80% of capacity. That will preserve battery life to a much greater extent. Go below that 70% level too many times and battery lifespan decreases. Go below 40% a few times and you have a doorstop instead of a battery. In other words, in reality, you only have 60% of your battery capacity to work with (otherwise you risk ruining it).

The amp-hour rating for a battery is the maximum amps that can be drawn until the battery is completely discharged, over a specific time period. The effective amp hours available drops as you draw more amps. So a battery rated at 100 amp-hours (for instance) doesn't really have the capacity that the manufacturers claim.

Battery manufacturers do tests on the battery to give them an Amp-Hour rating. A typical time period for a test is 20 hours, but it varies... batteries are tested over different periods, such as 24 hours, 75 hours, sometimes 100 hours. Let's use a 100 amp -hour battery as example, just to make the numbers easier.... A 100 amp-hour battery tested over a 100 hour period (i.e. 1 amp drawn for 100 hours) will not have the same capacity as a 100 Amp-hour battery tested over a 20 hour period (i.e.-- 5 amps drawn for 20 hours)... If you drew 1 amp continuously from a 20 hour test battery, it would last about 110-120% longer than on a 100 hour test battery.

Suppose you have a 100 amp-hour battery, tested over a 20 hour period. 100 Amp-hours divided by 20 hours = 5 amps. That means that the battery manufacturer claims the battery can sustain a 5 amp load for 20 hours until the battery is completely dead.

That's great, but wait... like I said, you don't want to drain a battery to it's completely dead 0%. On a lead-acid deep cycle battery, you should only drain a battery down to 40% of it's original capacity, absolute max. (in other words you've only got 60% of the battery to use).

On a 100 AH, 5 amp load, for instance... You have 20 hours of time at a 5 amp draw, but really you only have 60% of that time, so 20 hours x 60% = 12 hours.

Thus far, what I've said is true because I've used the same amperage over the same time period at which the battery was originally tested (20 hour rate). So what if you took your 100 amp-hour battery, but wanted to draw 10 amps from it until it was at the "safe" discharge level (say 60%)?

Do the math: 100 AH / 10 amps x 60% = 6 hours, right? Wrong.

The More Amperage You Draw, the Lower the Battery Capacity. So, the effective amp hours available drops the more amps you draw. Now, that 100 amp-hour battery is not what it says it is.

Ok, now, using a 100 AH, 20 hour test battery, at 5 amps draw, you get the full 100% of the battery rating (that's how the battery was tested in the first place, so you should get all 100%). But step up the amperage to 10 amps, and you will lower the capacity of the battery by about 10% (or 90% remaining).

That makes 100 AH x 90% = 90 AH / 10 amps draw = 9 hours x 60% (max safe discharge number) = 5.4 hours. And that's a difference from the 6 hours you thought you had.

Where did I get the 90%? It comes from Peukert's Equation... that's where the approximate 90% comes from. The Peukert Equation explains this... using it, you can predict how much time you'll actually have on a battery given a specific discharge rate.

The whole point is that the more you allow your lead-acid deep cycle battery to be discharged, the more you reduce your battery's lifespan. Even though you can discharge it to low levels, it's probably not wise to do so, so buy a battery that has a relatively high amp-hour rating to begin with so you won't have to worry about discharging it too low and keep your battery charged up if you can rather than allowing it to go below 70% of charge (which is about 12.3 volts). Keep in mind that I'm primarily talking about lead-acid deep cycle batteries. Other battery types can be discharged to a greater extent, depending upon their design.





SuperSleeper
Apnea Board Administrator
www.ApneaBoard.com


INFORMATION ON APNEA BOARD FORUMS OR ON APNEABOARD.COM SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED AS MEDICAL ADVICE. ALWAYS SEEK THE ADVICE OF A PHYSICIAN BEFORE SEEKING TREATMENT FOR MEDICAL CONDITIONS, INCLUDING SLEEP APNEA. INFORMATION POSTED ON THE APNEA BOARD WEB SITE AND FORUMS ARE PERSONAL OPINION ONLY AND NOT NECESSARILY A STATEMENT OF FACT.


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