Camping with CPAP

[SuperSleeper]

[parts of this thread were copied from our old forum]

Hey all,

I've been using CPAP for over 3 months now, and I love it, but, of course, the inevitable has occured: I need to sleep somewhere that isn't my house. Specifically, my friends would like to go camping in a little under 2 weeks

Unfortunately, when it comes to things such as portable batteries, Volt/Watt/Amp usage, etc., I am pretty clueless, and so I've been scouring the internet trying to find the easiest solution. The one I want to try is as follows, but I honestly don't know if it will work - from what I've read, it seems about 50/50. Although I do have DC power as an option, attempting to find a DC cord for my RemStar sounds like quite the pain - at least if I want the "specific" one for my RemStar. I'd prefer something like a portable battery jump starter with a built-in AC/DC power inverter, but I just don't know if it would last for 2 nights of camping.

I have a RemStar Plus (http://remstarplus.respironics.com/) with the following power specs:

AC Power Consumption: 100 - 240 VAC, 50/60 Hz, 1.0 A max.
DC Power Consumption: 12 VDC, 3.0 A max.

I was thinking of picking up a DieHard Portable Power 1150 on the way home from Sears, and giving it a trial run at home to see how long it could run the CPAP when fully charged (not using the humidifier):

But I honestly don't know if either can power a CPAP for 2 "nights" (10-12 hours).

The other option is to get a chargeable 12 Volt battery of some sort, then either get the DC Cord or a power inveter, but it's more expensive and requires more hardware.

Does anyone have any experience with trying this sort of thing? What would you all recommend? If the above options won't work, exactly what kind of hardware would I need to get, and where would be the best place locally to get it? (I live in a decent-sized city so any 'standard' stores should be fine).

Thanks for any help you can provide!

[SuperSleeper]

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.

[SuperSleeper]

Thanks for the help!

As I said, I was hoping to go camping in 2 weeks, and was wondering if I can expect these items by then.

[SuperSleeper]

I got that from Supplier #1 on our Supplier List. They deliver pretty fast, but I'd order today just in case. They have excellent customer service also. One of their sales people used to hang out here on Apnea Board (under the name Titrator), back when we were on ezboard.com, before our board "crashed & burned". I was impressed with both him and the company. Of course use your own discretion and you may want to check out other sites. All I can tell you is that I've used them several times and been completely satisfied. If you have any trouble, just call up their customer service number and ask for Ted (Titrator) and tell him SuperSleeper on ApneaBoard.com sent you. {I don't get any kickbacks from him, I just think it's a good company}

Edit: Titrator no longer works for that supplier, sorry, but they are still a good site to buy stuff from.

[SuperSleeper]

How rough of camping are you planning on ?

Many camp sites which are not way out in the boonies have AC power available on the site. Some argue if you have power you are not camping. I say the CPAP is the best reason I've ever come across for making sure the campsite has AC power.

I've seen somewhere a great post (here ?) that was a rechargable battery which used solar panel to charge the 12V DC battery during the day and ran the CPAP at night. I'll have a look and see if I can find it and post here if I do.

Forgot to comment on your DieHard Portable Power 1150 idea.

The problem I see with these is you have to plug them in to AC to charge the battery before you take them "portable" to run your CPAP. So if you are out roughing it in the boonies you are not going to be able to recharge these portable batteries once they run out after a night or two. One of them mentioned 50 hours of DC but that sounds optimistic to me.

If you are not out in the boonies and have power available on your camp site to recharge the Portable Power then all you really need is an extension cord to plug in your CPAP and forget the portable power completely.

Bottom line is unless you are only camping a day or two you are going to have to have a way to charge the battery you are using at some point in order to keep it going for anything longer than a night or two.

[SuperSleeper]

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!

[SuperSleeper]

FYI, we have some information on Traveling with CPAP on our Wiki, here:


http://www.apneaboard.com/wiki/index.php..._with_CPAP

[DCwom]

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.

[SuperSleeper]

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.

Howdy, DCwom, welcome to the new forum!

What average pressure do you have on your APAP? My 80 year old father seems to be like you - able to sleep without his CPAP, but his average pressure is only about 9.5 cmH2O. I can't seem to sleep without it now... and my average pressure is probably closer to 13.5.

I would suppose that doing without wouldn't harm someone with moderate sleep apnea, but might be worse for those with severe OSA.

[zonk]

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...