Breathe cool air

[jcarerra]

OK, get ready for weirdness...

I hate breathing warm air. Have all my life. If a pillow or person makes a 'pocket' near my face so that I am rebreathing warm air, I go nuts. I am in Florida, with naturally high humidity. Though air conditioned, at night, it does not run all that often, so the humidity in house does rise.

I started my machine with the humidifier on 3 based on the DME recommendation. Air felt too hot/thick--whatever the word is.

Humidifier down to 1---still not good.

Humidifier off, with water--barely tolerable, still not good.

Humidifier off, no water--just tolerable, not good.

Now the weirdness. A few nights ago, I filled the reservoir with ice cubes. Heaven had arrived! Cool air into my nose. Wonderful! Glorious. Unfortunately, it only lasts about an hour until the ice melts.

I don't think I will do this routinely as the ice is not sterile--just out of the icemaker. But boy, I wish I could get that cool air somehow.

[PaytonA]

I am with you on the cool air. I really enjoy breathing cool air. I have adjusted, however, to breathing warm air since my humidifier is set to 6. Oh well, I sure do miss the dooler air I had before.

[Bama Rambler]

You could get a 10' hose and coil a section of it into a small ice chest filled with ice and that'd cool the air without exposing it to outside contaminants. You could also get one of those personal fridges and use that to keep from having to supply ice each night.

[archangle]

As long as you empty and rinse the water tank every night, tap water in the humidifier is fine. Tap water mostly hurts if you keep adding water to the tank without emptying it because the crud in the water gets concentrated as the water evaporates. In many parts of the world, distilled water isn't as easily available as it is here in the US.

ResMed sells an optional "dishwashable" tank and says you should only use distilled water in the "standard" tank. If you wash it every night, I doubt it makes much difference.

BTW, distilled water isn't "sterile" when you get it because the manufacturing plants don't maintain sterile conditions, but it's probably got a lot less germs than tap water.

You could use ice cube trays with distilled water to make distilled ice. If you find an appropriately shaped container to put the water in, you might be able to make a bigger humidifier shaped ice cube that would work better. You might have to take the little yellow "fill level" flag thing out of the tank, but that is removable.

Using the bottom of humidifier chamber itself as an ice tray might come to mind, but I'd be afraid it might get damaged by the freezing action and spring a leak or not fit right any more.

[englandsf]

Have you tried nasal rinses to allow you to use pillows, much cooler all round - I'm in TX...

[PaulaO2]

It is something you will get used to. Sit up with it on during the day to acclimatize. If the humidifier is off, the air coming into your nose is probably not that much warmer, if any, than the air you would be breathing without it. During the heat of the summer, I often keep cool by putting my wrist at the exhaust vent so the moving (and therefore cooler) air is hitting me. My out breath is warmer.

To be blunt, which I typically am, this air feeling is mostly a mind thing. Which is why sitting up with it on during the day will help.

If that does not help, take off the humidifier and attach the hose directly to the blower unit. Take a frozen pack made for coolers and wrap it, place it, hold it, whatever it around/next to the hose where the humidifier used to be. You can also use flexible sports ice packs but they tend to not stay cold as long. Wrap that in an insulated lunch bag. Duct tape the hose to the dresser or table so the weight of the pack doesn't pull everything down.

[PaulaO2]

And as Archangle said, sterility doesn't matter. The air you are breathing isn't sterile nor is the tub you put the ice cubes into.

[jcarerra]

Lots of suggestions. Would not be easy to arrange any of those, but I expected that.

And I used the word 'sterile' but didn't mean it in it's literal sense. As pointed out, unless we are bleaching our containers, hose, mask (which we are not supposed to do) we don't have a sterile system anyway. I was just saying that ice making is using water that has been fairly stagnant most of the time and my mind said there was a HIGHER CHANCE of it being more contaminated.

Finally, I know this desire for cool air input is a mind thing--but I have been that way all my life, so I don't think acclimating to it is likely to happen; it will be more a matter of enduring it.

[archangle]

I was just saying that ice making is using water that has been fairly stagnant most of the time and my mind said there was a HIGHER CHANCE of it being more contaminated.

Well, do you feel safe using the ice in something you drink? Unless, for some reason, you're growing a lot of new germs in the water tank during one night's usage, it shouldn't be worse that what you drink in ice water.

In theory, most of the germs in the humidifier will stay behind as the water evaporates, anyway, so you don't need to be overly paranoid about this.

[jcarerra]

Very good point. I think inhaling give an easier path for germs that going in through digestive tract. But you are probably right, risk would be minimal--except I am immune suppressed due to transplant drugs.