[CPAP] FIRE! - Printable Version +- Apnea Board Forum - CPAP | Sleep Apnea (https://www.apneaboard.com/forums) +-- Forum: Public Area (https://www.apneaboard.com/forums/Forum-Public-Area) +--- Forum: Main Apnea Board Forum (https://www.apneaboard.com/forums/Forum-Main-Apnea-Board-Forum) +--- Thread: [CPAP] FIRE! (/Thread-CPAP-FIRE)

FIRE! - Dreamcatcher - 06-27-2012 Your laying in your bed with your cpap happily pumping air into you while you sleep. We all know the picture but lets look at it abit closer. Lets say your fire alarm has failed and now toxic fumes are in the room. With your cpap machine high up on a side table or night stand your machine will probably pick up the fumes and pump them inside you. Surely it is sound advise to have your cpap as low as possible to the floor if not on it? I thought of this many times and have now placed mine on a very short table a few inches of the floor as if there is a fire and my alarms do fail it may give me a few more precious seconds of clean air, any thoughts RE: FIRE! - mjbearit - 06-27-2012 Agree! I actually have mine in the next to the bottom drawer of my nightstand. I'm not crazy about putting it on the floor, too many things could go wrong, but for many reasons, had never really thought of smoke was thinking more of rainout and such, I keep it lower than I am. RE: FIRE! - PollCat - 06-27-2012 The machine in the picture looks like the one I drowned several years ago. The pass-over humidifier, which sat higher than the machine, tipped over and .... Never really thought about the machines sucking in smoke; I guess we've become complacent with mandatory smoke detectors in our homes and lodgings. I keep my machine(s) under the bed when I'm at home. However, since most hotel/motel beds now have a kick-board under them, I usually put my travel machine on the floor or in the lowest opening of the night-stand. RE: FIRE! - BabyDoc - 06-27-2012 For most of us, I doubt that our CPAP machines will be pumping any toxic gases into us faster than what our tidal volume is demanding. In other words, the flow rate from the machine is not generally greater than what we would ordinarily take in, except for the brief periods when it overcomes apnea. So unless we were having frequent severe, prolonged apneas, the machine wouldn't be delivering poisonous gases any faster to us than we would breath without the machine. At least there is a filter on our CPAP machines which will filter out particulate matter. Too bad it won't do anything for those noxious gases. I would think that if our smoke alarm doesn't go off and we don't wake up, we are in deep trouble, no matter where our CPAP machine sits. A foot or two won't make much of a difference unless we can wake up and get out from the fire. If we are awake, then OUR position makes more of a difference. We should stay low, close to the floor, cover our faces, and get out as fast as we can. RE: FIRE! - Vince Waldon - 06-27-2012 On the flip side... I could see it being best if it's where it is on the table next to you. If the machine starts to suck in smoke you will very likely cough and sputter and wake up... you can then drop to the floor where there's still fresh air. If the CPAP machine is already on the floor you will be woken up when there is no more fresh air left in the room. Just a contrarian thought, Vince RE: FIRE! - zonk - 06-27-2012 Edited: RE: FIRE! - archangle - 06-28-2012 While you can't count on smoke waking you up, there's a good chance it will. Even if the smoke doesn't wake you up, and something else does, you'll recognize there's a fire much quicker if you can smell smoke. Putting the CPAP on the floor might delay you realizing there is a fire for those few critical seconds that are the difference between life and death. For the machine being on the floor to help, the fumes at table height have to be bad enough render you unconscious, then something else would wake you up, the air at floor height would have to not be bad enough to render you unconscious, and you have to wake up in time to escape. Way too many maybes there. To me, it sounds like on the table is better for fire safety. Put the CPAP where it works the best. Somewhere it won't fall off the table or get turned over. If you want to worry about CPAP position vs. escaping a fire, buy an extra smoke detector to put near the CPAP.