AirFit P10 vent blocked?

[OMyMyOHellYes]

The ResMed User Guide for the P10 recommends daily cleaning of the separated mask components in warm water using mild soap, including using a soft bristle brush to clean the vent, PLUS then inspecting each component and rewashing as many times as it takes to get it visually clean.

That's a lot of danged maintenance.

OMM

[OpalRose]

Maby that's why the P10 mask should be replaced every 3 months as insurance allows.
I usually wash the pillows every day, but only wash the part with the vents once a week.
Time to rethink that?
OpalRose

[OpineCone]

I just started having this same issue. My p10 was working great for about 5 months, and I love the mask. But all of the sudden it keeps getting clogged up. I wash it now every night, and it seems to help, but it kind of a pain in the butt to go through all that every single night.

The ResMed User Guide for the P10 recommends daily cleaning of the separated mask components in warm water using mild soap, including using a soft bristle brush to clean the vent, PLUS then inspecting each component and rewashing as many times as it takes to get it visually clean. I actually soak the mask components for at least an hour in soapy water before applying the soft bristle brush because I want to make sure that any dried on crud has time to loosen or dissolve.

The ResMed User Guide for the P10 recommends daily cleaning of the separated mask components in warm water using mild soap, including using a soft bristle brush to clean the vent, PLUS then inspecting each component and rewashing as many times as it takes to get it visually clean.

That's a lot of danged maintenance.

OMM

The daily cleaning doesn't take much effort really, if you include the additional step I suggested of soaking the mask components for a while in soapy water before applying the soft bristle brush. Soaking can result in more effective cleaning too. It's a bit like cleaning a breakfast plate that has the remains of an egg stuck to it: you can waste time attacking the dried egg manually using a brush or cleaning pad or whatever, or you can put some warm water and a few drops of dish detergent in the plate, add the dirty cutlery, let it all soak for a few minutes and then quickly wash everything clean.

The trick is to set up a little routine for cleaning your mask components and soon you hardly notice the time it takes, just like brushing your teeth. (No, I'm not saying that I soak my teeth before brushing them, although I know some people who do, after taking them out first.) Of course it helps to have somewhere convenient to let the mask components soak in the soapy water.

Because I soak and brush my mask every day, it always comes out "visually clean" without rewashing it.

[OpalRose]

Ok, I'm going to soak my mask now...how about adding some white vinegar to the soak?

OpalRose

[PaulaO2]

How about a mask that doesn't require so much maintenance and modifications and that absolutely does not need replacing every three months?? (sarcasm resistance was futile )

[OpineCone]

Ok, I'm going to soak my mask now...how about adding some white vinegar to the soak?

OpalRose

Why do you think it might be a good idea to add white vinegar to the soak? Is there an issue that you believe it will solve? Or do you think you recall reading or hearing a recommendation to use white vinegar?

I believe that ResMed used to recommend that white vinegar be added to the soapy water used to clean masks, hoses and humidifier chambers. However, it seems that they now only suggest that white vinegar be used for cleaning humidifier tanks.

Here's some background that may help you understand why. The essential ingredients of white vinegar are acetic acid plus enough water to dilute the acid to the required strength. White vinegar has many uses including the removal of those furry looking calcium deposits that tend to form inside electric kettles. However, electric kettle manufacturers usually threaten to void their warranty coverage if a kettle is damaged by the use of a chemical cleaner such as vinegar. Their principal concern is probably that the acid vapor from the vinegar will escape from the water chamber and then damage some of the electrical components of the kettle. In my experience, the acid solution and vapor has no effect on the metallic inside surface of the kettle even if the white vinegar solution is heated to its boiling point.

It would therefore seem likely that, with electrically heated hoses rapidly becoming a common feature of CPAP machines, ResMed recognized that the metallic electrical contacts at one end of a heated hose are not compatible with the use of white vinegar as a cleaning agent because the acid vapor could attack the bare metal, and so they limited their recommended use of white vinegar to the one situation where it is really needed, cleaning the inside of a humidifier tank.

All this suggests to me that the addition of white vinegar to a soapy cleaning solution may be useful to remove any calcium deposits from the inside surfaces of the humidifier tank, but for cleaning masks and hoses it is probably better to use warm, soapy water with no vinegar because the use of an acid would introduce an unnecessary element of risk.

[OpalRose]

Hi OpineCone,
As long as I can remember, have used white vinegar for a lot of different cleaning. I do use it on humidifier tank and hoses. With the heated hose, I place a small piece of black electrical tape over the electrical contacts then clean with soapy water and a small amount of white vinegar. I never used it on mask until yesterday. I have to tell you that the exhaust vent area of the mask has never looked that clean.

OpalRose

[OpineCone]

My vents seem to have some kind of coating on them preventing air from escaping.

I can disconnect the mask tube from from the heated line tube, plug the hole at the end of the mask tube, put on the mask and blow air into it and almost no air moves out of the mask-next to nothing comes from the exhalation ports.

When disconnected from the machine and the hose end plugged I need to blow hard enough to blow up a balloon. It was not like this when I got it.

Any one else have this problem or a solution?

Thanks.

After a personal encounter with P10 vent blockage last night, I offer an answer that worked for me and that may help at least some of you who are despairing about the inexplicable behavior of your P10.

Prior to last night my P10 had worked perfectly, and so last night I confidently donned my headgear, gently lowered myself into bed, used the mask leakage function on my CPAP while I adjusted the position of my nasal pillows, and then turned on the CPAP. Immediately I noticed that it was difficult to breathe normally. There was less air than usual available for the inhale part of the breathing cycle, and the air moved less than usual during the exhale. I also observed that the CPAP was making an unusual sound, a brief moaning noise, once during each breath. The CPAP display showed a normal pressure reading. Remembering what other P10 users have reported about vent blockage, I reached my fingers up to the area just in front of my mask and found that there was no detectable air movement. Knowing exactly what normal vent discharge feels like, I immediately concluded that both sides of the P10 vent were blocked.

I considered switching to my full face mask, but I love my P10 so much that I decided to attempt to solve the problem first. Fortunately, I had a wealth of information available in the form of the many contributions to this thread, for which I thank you all. I noticed that at least two people had claimed that they could see a plastic film covering their P10 vents, and so I held my mask up to the light and, sure enough, it looked as though my P10 vent had grown a plastic film. But my mask had been working perfectly less than 24 hours ago! How could this be?

Fascinated, I grabbed a small flashlight, put on my reading glasses, and took a good look at that vent. What I saw was puzzling: I had never seen anything quite like it. Each side of the vent seemed to be a perforated plastic screen with very small holes, with the screens consisting of two or more layers of the same material. The screens were not uniform in appearance, with a large central area the shape of a less-than-half moon and a narrow boundary area that somehow looked different. The vent holes seemed to be larger in the boundary area than in the central area, and I wondered whether the central area was blocked by something, perhaps the plastic film that others had observed. Or perhaps the central area was water trapped between two layers of perforated plastic. I squeezed it between my fingers but the shape and size of the central area did not change. I tried to dry it with a clean, soft washcloth. I tried pushing the bristles of a tiny, soft brush into it. I blew warm air from a hair dryer onto it. Whatever I tried, the water or plastic film or whatever did not change its appearance even slightly.

Obviously I needed to know more about the vent material. One of the early posts in this thread described it as micro-mesh, and so I did a DuckDuckGo search so as to better understand micro-mesh technology. Then I grapped a 14X loupe magnifier and took a much closer look at the P10 vent fabric. Fascinating. It’s essentially a densely packed arrangement of fibers of different thicknesses. The central area is very dense with a lot of very small fibers, and the boundary area is somewhat less dense and lacking the tiniest fibers of the central area, although light still cannot pass straight through it. This inspection under magnification revealed that the appearance of a plastic film or trapped water in the central area of each vent is an illusion caused by the different fiber thicknesses and densities in the central and boundary areas.

Yes, the plastic film is an illusion. So what was blocking my mask? Can you guess?

I found clues to the answer in three places. First, when I took my mask off last night after my brief attempt to use it, I noticed some condensation in the mask and its short hose. Not surprising, because the bedroom temperature was my preferred 55 degrees, but still worth noting.

Second, someone posted that he washes his mask “every night,” which got me wondering whether some people wash their masks in the evening rather than in the morning as I usually do.

Third, my cleaning routine had been interrupted yesterday and it was early evening before I removed my mask from its soaking bowl, rinsed it, shook the water out of the attached hose and set the mask to dry. Several hours later, I connected the mask to the CPAP and turned on the warm-up feature but ended up watching TV in the living room for long enough that the CPAP would have completed its warm-up, held the temperature for a while, and then cooled down again. In the past, when I was using a full face mask, allowing the CPAP to warm up and then cool down again before I put the mask on had sometimes caused a rainout event when I finally went to bed. And so yesterday, not wanting another rainout, I removed the humdifier tank and completed another warm-up to remove moisture from the CPAP, hose and mask. I then replaced the humidifier reservoir and did another warm-up.

Thinking about all this, I realized that it is possible, or even likely, that the micro-mesh vent of the P10 does not dry out as easily as one might assume, and the air blockages are being caused by water temporarily trapped in the micro-mesh fabric. After all, we know that the vent is designed to limit the amount of air that flows through it under pressure, and the vent is made of densely packed fibers. This suggests that the two sides of the vent may behave somewhat like a couple of sponges, but without the option of removing water from the vent by squeezing. Attempts to blow the water out of the vent are futile because the water is securely held in the tiny spaces between the fibers of the fabric by a phenomenon called surface tension. The only way that water is going to escape is by evaporation.

Using my 14X magnifier again, I took a good look to see whether there was any sign of moisture trapped in the vent, or whether evaporation had already changed the appearance of the vent from when I first examined it under magnification. I was encouraged to see that even more tiny fibers were now visible. With increasing hope, I reassembled the mask, connected it to the CPAP, and ran a test. The result was that the mask now operated perfectly and so I went to bed very happy.

Today I performed one further experiment. I immersed one side of the mask frame in tepid water, keeping the other side dry, and then did a side-by-side comparison of the two sides of the vent under 14X magnification. Somewhat remarkably, I could not directly see the water in the wet side, but I could easily tell which side was wet because the smallest fibers were no longer visible as separate and distinct but tended to merge together.

If you want to see a photo that clearly shows what the P10 vent looks like to the naked eye, including the central and boundary areas, go to scott1965's post of 06-10-2014 09:23 AM, which is Post # 7 in this thread, and click on the photo at the bottom of the post to open the full-size photo of the P10 frame. You must go to this original post. Clicking on the thumbnail picture included in some other post will only open the thumbnail, not the full size picture. Unfortunately I don’t have the equipment to take photos of the vent under 14X magnification. If someone else does, pictures of wet and dry vents would be most helpful.

Out of all this I offer the following suggestions for keeping your P10 functioning correctly:

1. Clean your mask components well in advance of going to bed, so that water has plenty of time to evaporate from the filter before you use it.

2. Try not to run the CPAP warm-up function and then delay going to bed, so as to avoid condensation in the hose and/or mask, which may get into the mask vent.

3. If, in spite of your best efforts, you go to bed and find that your P10 vent is blocked, consider it almost certain that you have moisture trapped in the micro-mesh fabric of the vent. Remove the pillows from the frame. Don’t let your naked eyes fool you into believing that there is are plastic films over the two sides of the vent. Remember that there is no way to blow the moisture out of the vent, you must rely on evaporation. Treat it like a sponge that you cannot squeeze. Gentle heat may help. If you have a hair dryer, gently blow warm air onto the vent and remember that you are only trying to accelerate the evaporation, you are not attempting to blow the water out of the vent, because you can’t.

If your experiences show up something I have missed on this issue, please post the information promptly.

I wish you a very good night.

[AshSF]

OC: Moisture is not retained in the P10 mesh. I wash my P10 assembly tube 2 hrs before going to bed. And its dry as bone by the time I go to bed. Although, if the room has high RH, it may not dry but I haven't encountered that.

Even if some water is lodged in there, it will be easily pushed/evaporated by incoming air from the machine. If that were not the case, and the water was indeed blocking the vent, it would be a major design flaw (since Resmed has to account for rainout conditions). It would also expose Resmed to lawsuits of angry, dazed & zombie PAPers complaining of CO2 rebreathing.

The mesh in P10 is indeed a micromesh with multiple layers sandwiched. There are more layers in the central portion of the mesh on both sides of the tube. This gives it a characteristic plastic film appearance that most people report.

Initially I did think that the vents are blocked but it was due to not feeling the exhaust of the mask (after using the F10 for a while). But the total leak rate on my machine is telling me that there is indeed a vent rate being maintained. The PRS1 has a pneumotachometer so its reading is probably highly accurate.

And I also saw that sometimes, the P10 vents when I inhale rather than exhale. It seems counter-intuitive but if I keep my hand about 1 inch away from the vent, I can feel the draft from the vent on inhale part of breathing but not on the exhale part.

[OpineCone]

OC: Moisture is not retained in the P10 mesh. I wash my P10 assembly tube 2 hrs before going to bed. And its dry as bone by the time I go to bed. Although, if the room has high RH, it may not dry but I haven't encountered that.

Even if some water is lodged in there, it will be easily pushed/evaporated by incoming air from the machine. If that were not the case, and the water was indeed blocking the vent, it would be a major design flaw (since Resmed has to account for rainout conditions). It would also expose Resmed to lawsuits of angry, dazed & zombie PAPers complaining of CO2 rebreathing.

The mesh in P10 is indeed a micromesh with multiple layers sandwiched. There are more layers in the central portion of the mesh on both sides of the tube. This gives it a characteristic plastic film appearance that most people report.

Initially I did think that the vents are blocked but it was due to not feeling the exhaust of the mask (after using the F10 for a while). But the total leak rate on my machine is telling me that there is indeed a vent rate being maintained. The PRS1 has a pneumotachometer so its reading is probably highly accurate.

And I also saw that sometimes, the P10 vents when I inhale rather than exhale. It seems counter-intuitive but if I keep my hand about 1 inch away from the vent, I can feel the draft from the vent on inhale part of breathing but not on the exhale part.

AshSF: Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I think you deserve some major recognition for having the stamina to read my entire post and then respond to it so quickly.

You are making quite a leap of faith when you say that moisture is not retained in the P10 mesh. Did you examine the mesh using magnification? I did, and I saw the evidence of moisture in the mesh, as I described previously. How do you know your mesh is dry as a bone when you go to bed? If you mean that the surface of the mesh looks dry and no moisture gets on your finger when you touch it, that is entirely consistent with my observations whether my mask is working or not. In my experience, neither the visual appearance of the vent nor its dryness to the touch tells you whether or not there is moisture within the mesh unless you examine the vent under magnification.

Your suggestion that any water lodged in the mesh will be easily pushed/evaporated by incoming air from the machine is questionable because it runs counter to my careful and detailed observations. I have seen visible evidence (under magnification) of moisture remaining in the mesh after my P10 has been connected to my CPAP and subjected to both the pressure of the mask leakage test and the pressures from the CPAP in normal operation. The fact that surface tension acts as a powerful force in micro dimensions is well established, and in my estimation it would probably be enough to prevent the moisture being pushed through the very fine holes of the mesh. If the moisture is not being pushed through the mesh, then only the exposed surfaces of the moisture will be subject to evaporation. A slower process, but maybe two hours is long enough to dry the entire mesh by evaporation.

As for your comments about the low probability of a major design flaw in a ResMed product, that hardly constitutes evidence of whether or not moisture is retained in the mesh of the P10. The same kind of argument once led a lot of people to believe that the Ford Pinto was a safe car.

The leak rate recorded by your machine is hardly reliable evidence that your mask vents are working because, as we both know, there are other common causes of leakage. However, your observation that the P10 vents more on inhale rather than exhale is entirely consistent with my own experience, except last night when there was no detectable exhaust from my mask during any part of the breath cycle.

I believe you when you say you have had no problems with the vents of your P10, even though you wash it two hours before going to bed, and I hope your good experience continues. However, I know what it feels like when my P10 is working properly, and last night it was not right at all.