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WARNING to CPAP Users: PREPARE for the Unexpected - When the power goes out
#81
RE: WARNING to CPAP Users: PREPARE for the Unexpected - When the power goes out
(05-30-2012, 07:38 AM)DCwom Wrote: For a widespread extended total loss of power a CPAP would not be my biggest concern, it would be water, food, and security.

People can't live without water for very long. This is often the biggest concern when the infrastructure goes down due to a disaster.
Sleepster

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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#82
RE: WARNING to CPAP Users: PREPARE for the Unexpected - When the power goes out
I open this up for discussion... what are your thoughts? Have you provided for some degree of alternative electrical energy for your CPAP machine? If so, what have you done specifically? If you can power your machine for a day or so without grid power, what could you do to make yourself less at-risk for a more sustained power outage for say - a week or two, or even a month or two,
What are your thoughts?

[/quote]


I got my lesson during the Blizzard of 1978. Our power was out for 5 days and the temperatures were below 0. We had a house with a fireplace and gas utilities. We were able to keep the living room warm with the fireplace and the kitchen warm with the stove. The hot water heater worked since both the water company and the gas company have their own sources of power. So if we got cold we could take a hot shower.

BTW, we learned that a case of wax fire logs are real handy, that way you can sleep for a whole hour or two between having to wake up and feed the fire.

Fast forward to today. We again have a house with a fireplace and I always have about a weeks worth of wood on hand at the beginning of the Winter. We have gas utilities again. We have an older model gas stove in the kitchen that will work if the power goes out. The newer ones won't light if there is no power because they have a safety gas cutout installed, safety first you know.

I have a stand alone generator that would run the refrigerator or another device. All I need to do is to run an extension cord to whatever needs power for a while. I have two 5 gallon GI cans full of gas stored in the garage. I haven't figured out how to run the furnace with the generator yet, I guess that would be a good idea though. For my CPAP I have two big deep cycle batteries and I have one solar charger.

BTW, if the power is truly out all over, there will be no gasoline available. The gas pumps work on electricity, so unless your local stations have backup generators and most don't. The only gasoline that you will have is either in your vehicles or whatever is stored in gas cans.

Due to our camping hobby we have lots of wool blankets, sleeping bags, axes, knives, saws and other "survival" type gear. If worse comes to worse we know how to cook over an open fire in the backyard.

So we are good for a week or two, but after that food starts to become a problem. I understand dog tastes pretty good.

Many Klatch


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#83
RE: WARNING to CPAP Users: PREPARE for the Unexpected - When the power goes out
(06-26-2012, 08:59 AM)Many Klatch Wrote: I haven't figured out how to run the furnace with the generator yet, I guess that would be a good idea though.

If your furnace runs on natural gas like the rest of your appliances, you should be able to get an electrician to install a switch box that will allow you to connect your generator to it. All you need is 120 V for the blower motor.

I have lived through two long grid outages -- Alicia in 1982 and Ike in 2008. Each time the grid went down for about ten days. I wish I had a whole-house natural gas powered generator that automatically starts when the grid goes down.

Currently I have the adapter cables that will let me connect my CPAP machine to a car battery. If we have a hurricane headed this way I may buy a battery. If I get caught unawares I'll take the battery out of my car and hook it up to the CPAP machine. I also have my CPAP connected to a UPS unit for short outages.
Sleepster

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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#84
RE: WARNING to CPAP Users: PREPARE for the Unexpected - When the power goes out
I do a lot of living history events which require camping with my C pap. A Wallmart trolling motor battery of at least 95 amp hours will run your C-Pap for eight nights providing it is not below freezing. Also you can't be using the humidifier as the high amps of the humidifier will suck a big battery dry in a couple of hours. If your C-Pap does not have an inverter to convert the 12 volts to 110, a small commercial inverter will work just fine.
The battery should be ran down to 1/4 power level before applying the three amp trickle charge. I use mine for around a month
each year.
One of those battery charges/110 volt inverters/ compressor units people carry in their cars will get you through one night.
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#85
RE: WARNING to CPAP Users: PREPARE for the Unexpected - When the power goes out
(06-26-2012, 07:43 PM)grzrob Wrote: The battery should be ran down to 1/4 power level before applying the three amp trickle charge.

How do you know when it's down to the 1/4 level?

When you charge it back up, how do you know how long to leave it on the trickle charger?
Sleepster

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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#86
RE: WARNING to CPAP Users: PREPARE for the Unexpected - When the power goes out
(06-26-2012, 07:43 PM)grzrob Wrote: The battery should be ran down to 1/4 power level before applying the three amp trickle charge. I use mine for around a month
each year.

If you're talking about a lead-acid deep cycle or "marine" battery, if you run it down to 1/4 of total amp-hour capacity too many times, you'll end up with a dead brick instead of a battery.

You really should not run a lead-acid battery down below 70% capacity at all, unless you don't care about battery life. Not allowing it to drop below an 80% charge will extend battery life significantly.

[Image: attachment.php?aid=220]



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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#87
RE: WARNING to CPAP Users: PREPARE for the Unexpected - When the power goes out
Found this interesting article on the fragility of our electrical grid in the U.S.:


Stormy preview of electric-grid crash


Cyberattacks could overshadow Mother Nature’s fury

By R. James Woolsey

Some two weeks after Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta warned of a potential "cyber-Pearl Harbor" involving a possible attack on the electric grid, Mother Nature took the cue and hit the East Coast with a storm that left millions of us for days without electricity from the grid.

Some said silent thanks for that old generator they'd thought to stick in the garage. Though it wasn't a cyberattack, but Mother Nature gave parts of the grid a good lashing anyway. On my country road south of Annapolis, two transformers were blown down from their perches on telephone poles, and the leaking oil and surging electricity produced 20-foot flames. In the meantime, our driveway was filled for days with 15 Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. trucks and about 25 electrical workers from Arkansas erecting new poles and replacement transformers. And that was just to deal with five days of outage, caused by falling tree branches, for a very small community on one short country road. What would it have taken to deal with damage that was far more extensive across a number of states because it had been planned by a group or nation that wanted, above all, to destroy our society?

The electric grid is the heart of our ability to function as a society. We have 18 major infrastructures that keep our civilization operating -- water, sewage, telecommunications, transportation, etc. All 17 of the others depend in one way or another on electricity. Imagine what it would be like for an electrical outage to last for months or years as a result of a cyber- or terrorist attack instead of merely for days.

Without electricity, we are not just back in the pre-Web 1970s, we are back in the pre-grid 1870s. Very few of us have enough plow horses or manual water pumps.

A little more than a decade ago, in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, the National Research Council published a fine report on how to use technology to combat terrorism. Unfortunately, its wise recommendations are still just recommendations because very little has been done in the intervening decade to deal with the vulnerability at the heart of our civilization's ability to operate: the electric grid.

The underlying reason is that electricity grew up as a local business in the United States, and its deregulation in the 1990s weakened central control even further. The 50 state public utility commissions in a way have responsibility for grid security, sort of. You can try to find who in Washington is actually taking action to improve the security of the electric grid overall, and you will look a long time. Eventually, you may come across something called the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC). It is basically the trade association for hundreds of utilities, and it issues some standards from time to time.

But the reason the secretary of defense is so concerned is that he is not just worried about bad weather. He's worried about Chinese and Iranian hackers and terrorists. He knows hackers and terrorists are smarter than tree branches and cannot realistically be defeated by a trade association consisting of hundreds of utilities.

We have the best cyberpeople in the world -- both those who play defense and those who play offense. A large number of them are in the National Security Agency and the military services, but some are "white hat" hackers in the civilian world and some are out-of-the-box inventors of software and technical systems. Many of these folks are brilliant and take cyberchallenges to our infrastructure seriously. If you have a few days free later this month, go to Las Vegas and drop by the DEFCON and Black Hat hacker conferences. Ask attendees how vulnerable our electric grid is and what is being done to protect it. Ask if they know if any of the very best hackers and inventors outside the government have been asked to help figure out how to protect the grid. You'll shudder at their answers.

But many in government and the electricity business focus entirely on other issues -- e.g., whether to bury utility lines (defends nicely against trees, but not hackers). No one makes the utilities stockpile a reasonable number of spare transformers or store them anywhere but right next to the operating transformer. Some utilities naively welcome Chinese electricity experts and other visitors with potential hostile intent to explore how our electric grid works. Utilities in the main don't require security clearances or background investigations; many of their top people can't even be briefed by the government on the threats they face.

Our military and those who are ready to help them can't protect us unless they are given the authority to get the job done and bring the very best people, quickly, to this crucial task. The way we now try to deal with grid security is worse than dysfunctional -- it approaches the darkest of humor.

And our lassitude could cost us everything.



R. James Woolsey, former director of central intelligence, is a venture partner with Lux Capital and chairman of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.


fair use applies, from:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012...rid-crash/

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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#88
RE: WARNING to CPAP Users: PREPARE for the Unexpected - When the power goes out
Forget about the terrorists. The real danger is our idiot government.

They're blocking construction of new power plants. They're shutting down existing power plants without having replacements.

They're concentrating on things like solar panels and windmills but not making plans for carrying the load when it's cloudy, at night, or when the wind isn't right. We aren't building enough power lines to move the power from places where there are windmills and solar panels to where the power is needed.

They've taken management of the power lines and other long range system management functions from the utilities and created new bureaucracies to manage the overall system. Remember the California electricity crisis of 2000/2001. Brought to you by the government mandated "open" electricity management regulation system and the good old boys from Enron and other companies figuring out how to game the regulations.

Even without the manipulation, nobody with any brains is in charge of the overall system any more. The electric grid is being run by people with the same level of competence as the post office.
Get the free OSCAR CPAP software here.
Useful links.
Click here for information on the main alternative to CPAP.
If it's midnight and a DME tells you it's dark outside, go and check it yourself.
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#89
RE: WARNING to CPAP Users: PREPARE for the Unexpected - When the power goes out
(07-29-2012, 05:02 PM)archangle Wrote: The electric grid is being run by people with the same level of competence as the post office.

I live on the west coast. I ordered a package on Wednesday. It came from New Jersey. It arrived on Friday via USPS. I have ordered a couple of packages from Minnesota and it takes over a week to get here via UPS. Currently, the USPS is not looking so bad! Smile
As always, YMMV! You do not have to agree or disagree, I am not a professional so my mental meanderings are simply recollections of things from my own life.

PRS1 - Auto - A-Flex x2 - 12.50 - 20 - Humid x2 - Swift FX
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#90
RE: WARNING to CPAP Users: PREPARE for the Unexpected - When the power goes out
(07-29-2012, 05:02 PM)archangle Wrote: The electric grid is being run by people with the same level of competence as the post office.


SHOCKING. Bug-eyed Too-funny



(sorry Arch, couldn't resist)... Bigwink
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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